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(Apparently I have not accepted that it *is* in fact 2011. Written today.)

WE ARE HERE TO MAKE WORDS.

I wanted to be an astronaut until I realized that I sucked at math.  That was the fourth grade.  I’d failed the same stupid test for the third time in a row, consequently developing a deep, psychological hated for red ink pens…

My next “when-I-grow-up moment” didn’t really come until high school, when I decided I was either gonna be the guy who made monster suits and spaceships on movie sets, or I was gonna be a writer.  I’d been writing since I could hold a Crayon and figured it was as good a destiny as any.

I was still a freshman in high school when I typed up a nine page short story about a guy who drove around the country hunting down the losers of a state-sanctioned lottery as an alternative to global thermonuclear warfare.  I sent the story to my parents, who unbeknownst to me sent it to a publisher, who in turn called me up and told me that if I finished the story before the end of the summer, I’d have myself a book deal.  I panicked, blindly polishing every spark of creativity out of the story, missed the deadline and shelved it forever.

But the experience gave me a real push toward words.  From that point on, I became obsessed with writing.  Maybe this was a doable destiny!  I started forming the idea in my head that if I just focused on this lone and immaculate objective, I’d someday perform a great and magnificent feat: I envisioned doing something amazing, something that could change the course of history and unite the world in a common emotion, like an athlete who trains their whole life for one shining moment while overcoming great obstacles along the way.

I decided that I wanted to be able to express human emotion in a way that no one had ever done before.

Still in high school, I looked into haiku on the advice of a much-respected English teacher, quickly becoming a fan of the medium’s prison shiv beauty — short, sharp and, inserted just beneath the ribcage, designed to take your breath away.

In just seventeen
syllables, I swore I could
smell cherry blossoms.

As you can imagine, I was crap at writing haiku.  Everything I wrote looked suspiciously like something someone else had already written a long time ago and I felt ashamed.  Plus, I’d made the mistake of telling the wrong people my dreams.  Presently I gave up on haiku.  Why not?  I was nowhere near a temple, and there were no monks to guide me.  Sweeping the floor was just sweeping the floor, and a glass of water was just a stupid fucking goddamn glass of water.

Still obsessed with words, I then had the notion that a person could somehow open their mouth and let brand new sounds tumble forth — words and phrases never before spoken by a human mouth, in any language, by any race, anywhere on the face of the Earth.  Beyond dead languages, beyond glossololia.  I thought that maybe the key to expression was locked inside this new box…

Except I had no database or monthly scientific journals to base my findings upon.  So I made a lot of retarded noises and jotted them down, hoping one of them might be even slightly virginal in nature.

(It’s no wonder that I remained in a similar physical state until I was in my early 20s.)

After that, I wanted to come up with an answer for the question of why we find some people more attractive than others.  I thought that maybe it had something to do with the measurements of the human face — the height, width or angle of the nose, the spacing of the features, the length of the jawline, the width of the mouth, or the specific color of the eyes.  What if all these factors added up to some sacred number, one that doomed a small group destined to succumb as prey to holy integers?  Years later, I would find this on the internet:

It’s nice to know that as an adolescent, I wasn’t completely off the mark; just off my rocker.  And understandably horny.

Following high school, I gave up on my dream of being a special effects artist.  It seemed the only way to achieve this was to move to Los Angeles and hang around on movie sets until I found someone to teach me.  Instead, I applied and was accepted to a prestigious Midwest art college.  I was hopeful — until they told me how much it would cost.  So I revisited my writing dream and, after reading too much Hunter S. Thompson, decided I wanted to be a war correspondent.

And Uncle Sam was gonna fund it, because I sure as fuck couldn’t.

At first I considered a stint in the army, or maybe the Marines.  I’d need to learn some very valuable survival skills before setting out into the wild.  I had a vision of myself in four or five years time; a half-smoked cigarette permanently attached to my bottom lip, a gaggle of battered cameras slung around my neck, an ancient carbine across my back, dust-caked goggles pushed high on my forehead, and an ancient Underwood under one arm.  Once I finished my enlistment, I’d take any assignment, no matter how dangerous.  And wandering to some of Earth’s far-flung shit holes, I’d explore the last remaining exotic lands still hidden from the light of Western progress.  I would write stories about the things I saw there, and take photographs of the fascinating people I met.

And one day I would simply miss my deadline, never be heard from again.  That was my retirement plan.

I was not yet 21.

So I approached several recruiters and attempted to make an intelligent decision based on the horrible lies they were paid to tell me.  I tested well, and applied for jobs in photography, journalism and for some reason, cryptology.  But the recruiters all told me those fields were closed, and that I should pick something else.  We went round and round in this manner until finally, disgusted and hopeless, I stormed into an office and spoke thusly to a Navy recruiter:

“I want the most far-flung, whacked-out job you have, something that will take me to the far side of the globe, without threatening to bring me one inch closer to the chair I’m sitting in.”  And that’s the story of how I never became an astronaut, or a war correspondent, or the guy who makes monster suits or spaceships for movies.

Had I known that recruiters are instructed to ‘guide’ people into certain job fields where their respective service was experiencing shortages, or had I only been willing to wait.  Well, the outcome might have been different.

Instead, I went to Europe and built bombs for four years.

I’m pleased to say that the desire to write came with me.  I started keeping a journal just after high school, and I took it with me where ever I roamed.

Journal writing frustrated the fuck out of me at first.  I lacked skill, and I was impatient.  I was in a big damn hurry to write perfect things and powerful sentiments.  I didn’t know the first fucking thing about real writing but I still wanted to do something amazing, something so insightful that it could lift the veil of reality, and part the curtain to another world.  I wanted to write modern spells and conjure new truths.

I wanted to surpass all previously written works for their ability to inspire and split foreheads with the lightning of the profound.  I didn’t even know what the fuck I was gonna write about, but I figured that once people read these holy words the message would spread like wildfire…

The world would lay down arms.  Millions of people would wake from a terrible dream, weeping and gnashing their teeth.  The leaders of the world would turn to one another and exclaim, “Goddamn, but we’ve been going about this all wrong!  The last book has been written, all words can rest!  We must now aspire to fuck one another with the cock of peace and harvest grain together under the same sun, washing our clothes together in the great river and turning our swords back to plowshares yet again.  God won’t save the world.  Science won’t save the world.  The earth plain-ass wasn’t meant to be saved.  This book has said everything we’ve been trying to say, everything we ever thought about saying, and everything we probably would have said in the next ten thousand years, but didn’t know it yet!”

Sure, I was a pretentious ass.  I wanted to write magic holes through mountains, and weave spells, blah, blah, blah.  But I also genuinely wanted to understand beauty, and lust, and savagery.  I secretly hoped I’d go crazy when I got old so I could map my experience in a journal, holding on clarity like a fading lamplight as I ventured down that last and darkest of tunnels.  I was convinced that there was so much more to the world, but I didn’t know how to express it beyond my diet of tabloid headlines, song lyrics and science fiction movies.  Sometimes the words were right there on the tip of my tongue.  I wanted to be able to communicate anything to anyone, and make the whole world understand everything.

But how could I?  I didn’t understand myself, and I couldn’t separate myself from what I wanted to write about.  I didn’t know where to begin, or where I ended.  I didn’t know jack shit.

So I kept writing.

I continued to write through my early twenties, but without success.  Journals came and journals went.  I wrote letters about this, that and the other thing.  My friends were full of praise, and they let me live in the world I’d created.  I was The Writer.

I devoted years of attention to the recommended greats – the Beats, those who’d come before me and who by measure of their poverty and fearlessness were far more devoted to the craft than I knew how to be, each of them a pioneer in some regard.  They explored and exploited their own wormhole, staking their claim to a particular voice or style one step ahead of the gold rush.

The voices that called loudest to me were: drugs, music, sex, and road trips – oh, my!  And the strangest of those voices?  Assassins.  (Giant fucking millipedes??  Really??)

I wasn’t prepared to give up on writing, but I also realized I wasn’t very good.  Still, I promised myself one drunken night in a land very far away that if I ever became homeless I’d still carry a pen and a piece of paper.  “You can abandon your work, but your work will never abandon you.”

Years passed, and I thought that perhaps stronger measures were called for.  Suppose I made a Robert Johnson deal with You-Know-Who, and waited my turn at the midnight crossroads, armed with the wing of a bat and the eyes of a newt.  Would the Horned One grant me my deepest desire based on the strength of a pinkie swear, or was I going to have to slit my palm with a crude dagger carved from the jaw bone of a murdered stag?  Headless hooves stomping in the bloodied winter grass, the end result of my quest to harness above as the below…

But I didn’t believe in the Devil, and I didn’t actually think I could murder a stag.  So that plan was out.

Time passed.  Journals were purchased and filled.  The majority were dog-eared, covered in duct tape and existed pretty much as ad space for my ego, their pages weighted with stapled concert stubs, proclamations, one-liners written on airliners, photographs of models, quotes torn from magazines, strange things and coffee rings, but mostly drunken heartache.  Twenty years, nine countries, five states, three islands, one Indian reservation, and one snow globe later, and still I have no idea of what I was trying to say.

My apartment is pitch black tonight, and my hands look so much older by the glow of this laptop screen.  Time is out there, snorting and stomping the snow, exhaling demons from its nostrils, waiting… sometimes I think I can almost feel it at my elbow.

Like right now.

I’ll be 40 in a few months, and no closer to writing anything more powerful than a good one-liner.  In the absence of my all-powerful epic, I’ve managed one novel, sixty short stories and thanks to a second enlistment in the other nautical-sounding of our Armed Forces, a stack of official-sounding press releases — none of which has ever escaped being disemboweled by a red pen.

There is the known, which we sometimes tire of.  And then there’s the rest of it.

All I’ve learned about life is that I don’t know much.  And from what I can tell, neither does anyone else.  Everything we think we know takes place on this planet, and in this dimension.  We are born here, and we die here.  We are bound to this rock.  The stories we tell are of this world, for this world, and by this world.  They describe our experiences in this dimension, and how we live this life.  And we know only these stories and their endless spin-offs.  We’ve described our home to death, and pretty much worn out our tongues.  I don’t think there are any virginal sounds left.

I recently deleted The Doors from my music collection, but I’ll give Jim Morrison one last nod: “No one gets out of here alive.”

There’s no such thing as magic, only science we haven’t figured out yet.  Emotions are not facts, and love – as much as you wish it wasn’t true – is purely chemical.  Relationships are all about timing, security and chemistry.  And one man’s words aren’t gonna change the world, so long as there are people around to disagree with them.

Being successful in this life only means that your physical needs and comforts will be taken care of while you’re alive; inhabiting your body, existing in this dimension and playing your role in this traveling production.

The pawn and the bishop go back in the same box when the game is over.

But there has to be more!  Something just beyond, something left behind, maybe something we’ve forgotten?  I feel as though we’re living in a collective dream, standing tall on the edge of a trance:  All the while you thought you were having a lengthy conversation with Iggy Pop in a half empty bar late one summer night in 1993, in reality you’ve been standing in the checkout line of a Memphis convenience store for the past ten minutes, transfixed by the mutated face staring back at you from a Pringles can on the conveyor belt, and frankly people are beginning to notice…

In the end, maybe Words have failed me.  Maybe I failed the Words.  Maybe there was nothing to fail.  George Washington Carver once said that if you love something long enough, it would give up its secrets.  Was I deemed not worthy to peek behind the curtain?  Did I perform the wrong spells?  Whatever the reason, whenever the moment, when it came time to select my Holy Path, I chose the soft option.

And so my reward was a different life.  Instead of leaving this world on a pillar of fire to walk among the stars; instead of traveling to distant lands and capturing beauty reserved for only the bravest; instead of a day-to-day fight for survival and a life lived on the edge of a fast-moving knife; instead of summoning sentences both sage and surreal, crafting tales with the power of the Old Gods like the Jackie Chan of Juxtaposition, or the Wolverine of the Who, What, Where, Why and When…

Instead, I’m writing this blog.

Thanks for reading.

(There may be secrets left, but I’ll be damned if I know where to look for them.)

Shimmer Man

(Story originally appeared in Tastes Like Chicken, issue 9, 2005)

The year was 2046.

My parents took me to a fancy restaurant for my birthday; a giant wedge-shaped thing perched on a series of curved, reinforced stilts 200 feet above a forest of deep and infinite green. The sun singed the treetops with an inaudible hiss as it slid below the horizon and a sweet breeze, pumped in from somewhere overhead, made the candles of my birthday cake flicker and sway softly. The light in my mother’s eyes danced and waved like fire. I was nine years old.

As the waiter set the cake down on the table and everyone drew a breath to sing “Happy Birthday”, suddenly there came a terrible pain in my skull, and I screamed like a wild thing. Throwing an arm across my face, I flailed and lashed blindly at the jungle of comforting hands tangled up in mine. My father seized me in his strong arms but was unable to prevent me from flinging myself out of my chair and onto the floor, taking the table cloth and the contents of the table with me. I felt as if the sides of my head were going to burst out like dammed waters, and I could imagine a boiling wave of bloody red breaking like the tide, spilling across the floor.

As I rolled around howling like a wounded animal and nearly blinded by pain, I saw something through my tears. Beyond the enormous picture windows which framed the off-season balcony was a sight unlike anything I had ever beheld– a stack of twinkling lights in the shape of a man, leaning casually against the railing and admiring the view. Those one-hundred-thousand colors I would never learn a name for stood out against the fading twilight, changing and shifting without pattern, without end or beginning. “Shimmer Man,” said my writhing brain. And as I continued to gape in painful amazement, I swear it turned to face me and even waved hello. The knives of pain subsided, and the twinkling lights began to fade.

The year is 2079.

It took the former United States almost 50 years to get it fully functional.

Despite the hundreds who lost their lives before the keel was ever laid, despite two serious on-board fires, despite a near-total fuel contamination which resulted in the jettisoning of a billion-dollar experiment, the Space Orbiting Platform “Promise” was christened on schedule and became a rallying point for post-war citizens. It was our symbol of the pride we thought we’d lost forever.

Nothing lasts forever, except nothing and forever.

When the main stabilizers went offline 72 hours ago, the ship began to slide, drawn ever closer to the Earth’s atmosphere. The captain of the broken Promise gave the order to evacuate the research vessel’s full compliment: giant robotic arms managed to deploy the twin 770-foot life pods before the Earth’s gravitational pull played “she-loves-me-not” with chunks of the mighty ship, dissecting indiscriminately, sending flaming red petals skipping across the sky. It was a horrifying sight, visible from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, and covered by every network in every country around the world, simultaneously.

The first life pod was struck by debris from the initial explosion and destroyed immediately. The survivors never had a chance, and the pieces burned up on re-entry. The second managed an emergency crash landing in the North Atlantic Ocean, vanishing under the waves in the time it takes to read this sentence.

The floatation system failed. Two hundred people died, and two survived.

The Promise came down hard. A lot of people wanted to know why, and they wanted to know yesterday. So I admit, I was in a bit of a hurry. And maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing. We were nosing in and around the engine room of the lifeboat, this once-colossal wreck that lay twisted on the ocean floor. Me and Perfect Tommy, my by-the-book dive partner of five years, noting different instrument readings and keeping our eyes peeled for the Engineering Officer’s electronic logbook, which might shed some light on what happened up there. The “black box” system on board the Promise was designed to store reports in triplicate. Two of them were lost forever; the last was here. Somewhere. That’s why we get paid the big bucks.

P.T.’s voice, punctuated by carefully measured gulps of air, came over the Divelink. “Coffee, our window’s up.” Hiss. “Mark position, let’s go.” We use short sentences to preserve energy and air. “Roger.” Hiss. “Mark position.” I removed a luminous wax marker from my sleeve bag and carefully scribed my initials, the time, and a few symbols on the bulkhead in our team-specific color, to show that this space had been checked. “Head for the Bouncer.” Hiss. “Right behind you.” Hiss. “Just want to wave a light in that corner.” Hiss.

“Leave it, kid.” Hiss. “We’ll be here awhile.” Hiss. “Check it later.” But he was out the door, and headed for the Bouncer. He’d probably noticed our mixture running low. He’s good on details.

The remote-operated Bouncer is a combination decontamination station and hyperbaric chamber; it was also our slow boat to the surface. Decom first, depressurise on the way back up. There are formulas to be followed to prevent the dreaded bends.

When high-pressure gases in the air come in contact with water, they dissolve into the water. That’s how carbonated drinks are made– exposing water to high-pressure carbon dioxide gas, and dissolving the gas into water. Surface too quickly, and it’s like uncorking a bottle of champagne. Only really painful, and a lot more fatal. To avoid this, we have to rise slow or make intermittent decompression stops on the way up so the gas can come out on its own. The only solution is to enter a pressurized chamber in which the air pressure matches the pressure at depth (breathing 100% oxygen on the way to the chamber also helps). Then, the pressure is released slowly. But to get to the chamber you have to be “clean”. After all, contaminate the chamber, and we’re all screwed.

P.T. turned to make sure I’d followed him, and I saw his face light up with a smile behind his visor. “Bet I whip your ass in checkers again.” Hiss.

“Sure you will, you cheatin’ bastard.” Hiss. Hearing the sound of your best friend’s digitized laughter in your ears when you’re a mile underwater is a strange experience.

The hatch of the Bouncer is controlled by a gamma-specific fluorometer, which takes a reading from every diver working this wreck before allowing them access. The water passing through a cell in the chamber is exposed to an ultra-violet light from a shielded source. Some molecules absorb the energy from this radiation and give back this energy by emitting a light, which is then read by a super-sensitive detector and transmitted to the Bouncer’s brain. The amount of fluorescent light produced depends on the amount of gamma detected, so a high reading above background in an already hot environment like this means I show up hot. And if I show up too hot, the door won’t open, essentially protecting the rest of the crew, and our only hyperbaric chamber from whatever threat might be present until I can be safely cleaned. If the chamber gets contaminated, you lose eight divers to the bends instead of one to gamma poisoning.

Like I said, that’s why we get paid the big bucks.

P.T. eased the bulk of his suit into the chamber, gave me a thumbs-up, and closed the door. The chamber is only big enough for one diver at a time, and the decon cycle takes about five minutes. As I waited my turn, I nervously eyed the rapidly falling needle that registered the amount of good air available (if you can call this shit “air”). Suddenly, I noticed flashing lights on my BUG. Tiny digital words scrolling across the screen made my blood run cold: my suit was losing pressure! As I was leaving Engineering, I must have snagged my suit on something– I couldn’t tell what, or where, or how bad. Looking up and around me, I could see a tiny stream of silvery bubbles colliding with the overhead, coming from somewhere behind my left shoulder.

“A diver need not worry about having his body contaminated, unless the diving suit or helmet physically leaks.” That’s what the rule books say. Unfortunately, I’ve got some urgent little lights flashing on and off on my BUG that say otherwise. The Bathymetric Underwater Gauge on my forearm provides me with critical information, like updated water temperature, present depth, estimated amount of nitrogen, and in this case, a plus-or-minus-10 reading of gamma in my immediate vicinity. Those numbers are rising. Slowly. I’m hot and getting hotter, fast. At this rate, I won’t be able to get into the Bouncer!

I glance up at the stream of bubbles over my shoulder again. They’ve gotten more pronounced.

“If a leak does occur, the dive must be terminated.” Rules are rules. I tried to remain calm. Water is a very dense material, and acts as an excellent shielding material to protect me from gamma. Because I’m immersed in water, I can control the amount of significant shielding maintained between me and the source by increasing the relative distance. Simple. The water itself is not radioactive– the only radiation that can be detected in the water comes from particles suspended in the water. Gamma and neutron radiation are not particles– they’re pure energy without mass, and must be shielded by material that has a great deal of mass, such as water, concrete, or lead. Of these forms of radiation, gamma is the ionizing radiation source from which the diver will receive the majority of his accumulated dose. Since water is such a great shield to ionizing radiation, I work in an environment which protects me from radiation. Pretty smart, huh?

Unless, as previously mentioned, I happen to tear my suit. And that’s just the beginning of my problems.

At these depths, wreck divers face nitrogen narcosis, high partial pressures of carbon dioxide and physiological mechanisms that experts have yet to understand, which can either lead directly to or contribute substantially to certain death. With the increased use of breathing media other than air over the years, there’s been a dramatic increase in fatalities caused by oxygen toxicity. Central Nervous System Toxicity (CNS) is a real motherfucker. Breathing oxygen at very high pO2s for a short period of time means problems arrive that much quicker. We’re talking visual disturbances, pronounced ringing in the ears, dizziness, mood swings, and convulsions and comas. Oh, yeah. And hallucinations.

So, I may or may not be seeing what I think I see ahead of me at the end of Passageway 4– a stack of twinkling lights in the shape of a man, leaning casually against the bulkhead, staring back at me: a hundred thousand colors I’ll never have the chance to learn the names for, changing and shimmering without pattern, without end or beginning… I shake my head several times to get rid of the vision. Must be ambient light passing through the stream of bubbles, casting a shadow, my eyes playing tricks on me, something. But I can’t shake it away, and I can’t tell myself I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.

The great thing about the Divelink communication Voice Recognition Chip is that it isn’t triggered by bubbles or ambient noise. The mouthpiece is a patented silicon rubber speaking cavity, and doesn’t require any straps. The automatic gain and squelch controls leave my hands free while I’m working, and it’s good to a range of 4,500 feet. Furthermore, the system is equipped with an emergency signal that alerts other divers (and the surface!) when a diver is in distress. I’ve had conversations with multi-billion-dollar company heads, sitting safe in their polished offices while I’m surveying a wreck, offering an on-scene, real-time cost estimate as to how much it will cost to salvage their ruined high-tech chunk of shit sitting on the ocean floor.

My words are automatically picked up by the surface unit, relayed through a wireless transmitter, and sent anywhere in the world as streaming audio. In this case, my dying words. Somewhere above me in a Shoreside Control Facility crammed with radio equipment and laptop computers, I imagine my raspy voice floating out of the speakers, filling the crowded room with the sound of a broken riddle.

“…so beautiful….”

“Beautiful?” Big Bobby Keegan grins broadly at the gathered logistics team and keys the mic. “Hey, Coffee! Who the hell ya got down there with you?” Schoolboy titters flash like fish in the water from a group of hardened men who work hard, play hard, and live like kings the world over.

“Cut the crap, Bobby,” barks Cappy. “Play back his last transmission. What the hell’s he talking about?”

The looped playback of my voice crackles over the speakers. “…so beautiful… (crack) …so beautiful… (crack) …so beautiful… (crack) …so beautiful… (crack).”

“Good Christ, he’s hallucinating! How long has he been down there?”

“About 45 minutes, doing an engine room survey with…” checks the roster, “Perfect Tommy.” Checks another gauge. “…who is… in the Bouncer.”

“How much good air does Coffee have left?” Cappy looks straight to Big Bobby for an answer, who checks the dancing LED readouts in a hurry as his grin dissolves like sunset.

“Maybe, uh, five minutes.”

“Maybe?!? Shit! How far is the Assist Team from his position?”

“Far end of the ship, about five minutes away, but they can’t do anything for him, Cappy.”

“Why?!?”

“Coffee’s hot. And he’s getting hotter.”

“Rad! Talk to me!”

During all nuclear diving projects, our dive crew is under the omnipotent control of the senior radiation protection technician, Rad Man. Rad is responsible for the radiation protection of each diver, plus the entire crew. He’s a short, fat bastard with more chins than a Chinese phone book, and total authority on the project– any doubt about conditions, the first sign of trouble, and Rad pulls the plug: all the budgeting issues, scheduling delays, and pissed-off stockholders in the world don’t make a fucking lick of difference. Rad’s word is final law.

Rad checks the numbers, frowning, hesitating. “At present… he’s still ALARA.” As Low As Reasonably Achievable.

Cappy takes a deep breath. “Plain English, Rad. Give me something good.”

Rad looks up from his instruments and returns the deep breath. “He’s got a bad suit tear. If we don’t get him out in the next few minutes, he’ll–”

Cappy pointed a finger in Rad’s face. “I distinctly remember using the word ‘good’ in that sentence.”

Cappy turned to another man. “Can P.T. still get to him?”

“Negative, Cap. Tommy’s already in the chamber, with another two minutes in his cycle. We’d lose two trying to save one.”

“Well, we can’t just leave him there! Think of something, damnit!” He keys up the mic again, and tries to find a smile among the cracks in his voice.

“Hey, down there! You doing okay, Coffee? We’re working on something. We’ll get you back. We’ll get you clean, and you can return to the surface. Don’t forget, you still owe me $500 from that bar in Singapore, remember? Don’t make me come down there and get it myself, over!” His voice is shaky with laughter, but his eyes are far from twinkling. He snaps the mic off again.

In the silence, the drops of sweat forming on his bald head are the only sound.

He snatches up the mic again.

“Coffee? You listenin’?”

Static.

“Coffee? Come on back, brother. Don’t you give up on me, over!”

I can hear the chatter from my Divelink’s cushioned earbuds– a tinny voice from the world far above me, somewhere in the warm, glittering sunlight. A world I know I’ll never see again. According to the BUG I just ran out of breathable air. I can feel it already– that shortness of breath, combined with a burning throat and chest associated with Pulmonary Oxygen Toxicity. Damage to the cell lining of the lungs, the lung walls, the formation of fluid in the lungs. The simple act of breathing becomes steadily more painful. In order to conserve my energy, I kneel down to think. Assess.

What do I have going for me? The surface team will try to come up with something. The Assist Team always carry pony bottles of air, maybe it’ll be enough. Too far… I could… maybe I could… what if I… nothing. Nothing’s coming.

The Bouncer won’t let me in. I’m out of air. The nearest Assist Team is probably 50 yards away. That’s nothing if ship’s in orbit. But when that 50 yards is pitch-fucking-black and twisted like a snake with a broken back… they’ll never make it in time. I’m too weighted with gear and too far down to attempt an emergency ascent. In desperation, I refrain from swallowing. Typically, this action seals the glottis and allows pressure to build in the lungs. “Always exhale before trying to inhale,” says the rule book. I’m hoping beyond hope there might be just a few more breaths in there somewhere, and I fight down panic, forcing myself to keep my lungs at mid-volume. Hoping. Waiting. But the doubt creeps in.

I’m done.

And so I raise my eyes again to the shimmering apparition before me, telling myself again that it isn’t real. It can’t be.

I haven’t seen the Shimmer Man since I was nine years old, but I’d recognize it anywhere. For a thousand nights after that first encounter, I tried in vain to recreate what I had seen with my colored pencils and pens, hiding under a blanket in my room till all hours with a flashlight, but without success. Every time I had a headache, no matter how slight, I looked around for the Shimmer Man, but I never saw him again. Why here? And why now?

Nitrogen narcosis. High partial pressures of carbon dioxide. Pulmonary Oxygen Toxicity. Central Nervous System Toxicity. Gamma radiation poisoning. Sure and sudden death. Drowning. The tremendous pressure of the ocean. A host of problems seeking me out, as I cower in this darkened wreck full of dead bodies on the cold sea floor. That’s why I get paid the big bucks.

And then I can hear the sound of Perfect Tommy’s digitized laugh. “Bet I whip your ass in checkers again.” Hiss. “Sure you will, cheatin’ bastard.” Hiss. I see all the weekends spent at his house on the beach, playing with his kids, and keeping my eyes off his wife. Like any good friend would do.

I stopped focusing on the grim facts and concentrated instead on the glowing apparition before me. “…let go… return to surface….” This thing, this creature of light is speaking to me in soft broken phrases, but the meaning is crystal clear. It’s time to go.

First, I have to purge my suit.

Of course, there’s no way I’ll be able to follow the Shimmer Man to where ever it is we’re supposed to go with all this equipment on. Ignoring the flashing depth gauges, and struggling against the depleted heliox for every breath, I reach up and begin to open the top-mounted helium double exhaust valve on my DESCO 9 Commercial Diving Helmet, and begin working my face free of the chin button, which allows me to regulate my exhaust and control my buoyancy without using my hands.

My heart is pounding, and all I can think about is the water that’s going to rush in and the terrible pressure that will shove the last breath of life from my lungs.

“What the hell’s he doing?!?”

“I can’t tell! He’s just… kneeling in… Passageway 4… outside Engineering near the Bouncer shaft. He’s just staring at a blank bulkhead, I don’t– oh, Jesus….”

“What?!?” Cappy’s face is contorted, the face of calm control is gone.

“He’s trying to take off his helmet.”

Cappy snatched up the mic again. “Coffee!” he shouted into the mic. “Do not take your fucking rig off, Coffee! You hear me?!? Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real! Get it together, son! We can get you out of there! Hang on!” He slams a hand down on a large red button on the console before him, and throughout the cramped quarters of the dive pod, a blaring klaxon wailed.

“Goddamnit, where’s the Bouncer?!?”

“On the way down, 30 seconds!”

A second flashing red light appears on a control panel, and sirens begin to wail. The pressure in my suit begins to drop rapidly.

“Assist Team! Move on Coffee now! Move it!” Cappy’s anguished voice fills the SCF, and desperation grips him in the pit of his stomach.

“Coffee! It’s Tommy!” P.T.’s voice, wrapped in warm echoes, comes to me. He’s safe and sound in the Bouncer. Such beautiful children, a loving wife. He’s fine. He’ll be fine. Looks like we won’t get that last game, though. Pity. “Hang on, man! We’ll get you out of there! Wait! Wait for me, Coffee, please! Wait! What the hell are you doing?!? Wait! Coffee–” The water is absolute cold, and pounds against my head, turning it inside out with blows from a giant hammer. And there is nothing else.

The Shimmer Man smiles at me with infinite patience, one hand extended and waiting for mine. As I turn around, I see the jagged lights of the Assist Team moving as fast as they can down the darkened passageway, skidding to a halt when they see that my lack of a head will more than likely prevent any resuscitative efforts. The bright beams twirl like fingertips in red paint, stirring infinite patterns. I feel bad for them, having to find me this way. “It’s okay, guys. I’m fine. I’m here.” I want to reassure them. I can see them gesturing to each other, and I know they’re talking to the Shoreside Control Facility, delivering the news. They’re going to take it hard. But it will pass. Everything does.

The Shimmer Man smiles at me again with infinite patience, one hand extended and waiting for mine. And there is nothing else.

Hipsters in the Mist

Hipsterus Williamsburgia in his natural element

An Ohio native, Thomas McKenzie, is inspired by anthropologist Dian Fossey’s work with Rwandan mountain gorillas, and decides to devote his life to the study of hipsters.  Relocating to deepest, darkest Brooklyn, New York, McKenzie becomes fascinated with the lives and habits of the rare urban hipsters of the Williamsburg jungle.

Appalled by the poaching of the hipsters by locals for their ironic attire, scrawny tattooed hides and novelty sunglasses, McKenzie complains to the city council. They dismiss him, claiming that poaching hipsters is the only means by which some of the Brooklyn natives can survive in a stifled economy.  McKenzie rejects this stance, and dedicates himself to saving the rare Williamsburg Brooklyn hipster from illegal poaching and likely extinction.

He mysteriously vanished one weekend shortly after his arrival. What follows are the only remaining fragments of his research journals, rescued from a fire.

May 7, 2010 – I shall never forget my first encounter with hipsters. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. Peeking through the vegetation-like display of a Slim-Jim rack in a Korean-owned convenience store, I spied a curious phalanx of black clad, tattooed hipsters peering back at me, their eyes darting nervously from behind heavy black-rimmed glasses and the brims of their respective trucker and snap-brim hats as though trying to identify me as familiar friend or potential foe. I was fascinated with the expanse and expense of their tattoos, and wondered how they could possibly afford what appeared to be thousands of dollars of old-school flash which adorned their arms, hands and necks, while wearing what appeared to be common bungee cords through the belt loops of their three-dollar thrift store corduroy slacks. After establishing that I was not a threat, the males went back to a series of actions that included chest-beating, scratching, yawning, and texting each other. The females stood to one side while the males glared at the ground and nudged rocks with the toes of their Chuck Taylor’s, fidgeting with the excessively long chains of their biker wallets, and sharing what I can only assume were skateboard tips and the general lameness of the local music scene.

Research notes: The term “hipster” is cross-applied from the 1930s Beatniks. Hipsters rejects “mainstream” culture while embracing and contributing to an independent culture all their own. They typically live in young, artsy neighborhoods of a major city such as Wicker Park in Chicago; Greenwich Village in Manhattan; or Williamsburg in Brooklyn. A hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat. Yet, they rely on reusable earth friendly Whole Foods bags for carrying their overpriced organic food. Must have no reliable monetary income, and rely on their parents to shoulder the cost of living in expensive metropolitan areas. Hipsters work (or want to work) in music, art, or fashion. They are known for “elitist” musical tastes and listens to nu-rave (i.e. The Klaxons, Cut Copy, Hercules and Love Affair), minimalist techno, independent rap (i.e. Spank Rock, Talib Kweli, Aesop Rock), nerdcore (i.e. YT Cracker, MC Lars, MC Chris), Elephant 6 (i.e. of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo), garage rock and punk rock, in addition to all manners of independent rock, the more obscure the better.

June 20th, 2010 – Spotted an unusual specimen today crossing Humboldt Avenue. Far from dominant, this male was attired in crusty canvas shoes, pencil thin jeans, a worn t-shirt emblazoned with a slogan I was not familiar with, multi-colored plastic novelty sunglasses, and a coonskin hat perched jauntily upon his greasy mane, despite the raging summer heat. He seemed entirely oblivious to the oncoming traffic, dragging his feet slightly as he crossed the street, his shoulders slumped forward. Not wanting to spook this magnificent specimen, I averted my gaze but continued scribbling in my notebook as he slumped away down the sidewalk sipping a cup of Starbucks coffee.

And now, a documentary on the athletic habits of the Williamsburg hipster:

Putting “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” to shame, it’s

TWM

One Thursday in Chocolate City

My boots are shiny and my uniform is freshly dry cleaned, pressed, heavily starched. The sleeves are rolled high and tight, snug against my biceps. I’m sipping a cup of Sulawesi (black, two sugars) listening to Social Distortion ‘Ring of Fire’ and anticipating [see also: dreading] a meeting in about an hour. I’ve already gone through two or three websites looking for anything useful; stories of successful SAR (Search and Rescue) cases, but there is nothing. Recreational boating season is over for the year, and only the foolish and the fishing venture into heavy weather during these months.

My head feels like it’s been invaded by some kind of strange, sticky life form that communicates in a series of clicks and pops, placing gentle pressure on the rest of my cranium as it slithers through my skull, in search of what I cannot say. It doesn’t appear to be eating my brains or feeding on the whites of my eyes, which would be a delicacy in some parts of deepest Africa. Maybe it’s just looking for a home. Too bad, because I have yet to receive a dime in rent.

“Last call, strange alien!” I stand up suddenly in my cube, flicking the lights off and on and clapping my hands as though I were a bartender driving out the drunks. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!” Explaining this to my stunned co-workers would take too much time, so I just give them a wink and a nod. One of them stares at me, astonished, the crumbs of her Pop-Tart cascading down her chin like a Martian avalanche. I’ll have this mess cleaned up before the credits roll, same as any good sitcom. By lunch time, they’ll have forgotten the whole thing… I am in complete CONTROL.

It seems a crime that my most creative period happens between 0800 and 1300 each day, right when I’m stuck fast in my veal fattening pen. Don’t let my employers get wind of this fact! “Well, maybe you can do some creative database building!” A ham-handed approach if ever there was one. Spend enough time in The Machine, and you begin to hear everything in terms of Team Motivation Training (“Find out what your people are good at and help them to ACHIEVE!) It’s a lame duck form of verbal and mental jujitsu handed down from the top, designed to spur the troops into productivity. And it makes me want to punch a goat when I get wind of it.

On this cold December morning I’d rather be on the road, bound for someplace reasonable; my camera close at hand, some inspiring music in my ears, a hearty breakfast decomposing in my stomach, and the whole day laid out before me like a feast for the senses. I should get paid to write, paid to take pictures, paid to create! I crave a deadline! Sentences strung together in colorful and descriptive patterns! Free coffee! Final wisdom!

It is in these moments that I feel the urgency of music, and understand anew what the artist was trying to say. Some produce pop pabulum for profit and prosperity, while others, all too aware of their fleeting presence on the human stage, seek to weave threads of their mortal soul into the songs they sing, in hopes that when they die they will not be soon forgotten. It has been said that life is a large bird flying silent and unobserved over a moonlit pond. When that shadow has passed, as there were none to witness the event, it never really happened. Eighty years means nothing to a mountain.

Taking another sip of Sulawesi, I turn Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’ up… just… a little… louder, thinking again of that new Fuji camera I’ve been eyeballing as the buzz saw of Eddie’s famous axe fades into nothing, absorbed by the calm-inducing gray of my cubicle walls on this fog soaked Thursday morning.

Time for that meeting. I stand, gather my coffee cup, my notebook, a pen, and head for the stairs…

TWM