“I was faced with an overflowing immensity.” An underwater river.
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From the age of 10, I was allowed to swim alone in the Nieuwe Maas River. The cold water shocked me, calmed me down and stole my heart. I went into the water, lay on my back, closed my eyes, and floated away. Then I staggered back along the stony shore, my legs turning blue and numb from the cold. I wrapped a towel around her and put her head in my lap, shivering. I let the water drain from my ears and the sound of the car returned. It took me a long time to convince myself to stand up again because I didn’t want to go home. As I put my weight down, the stone pressed into the thin soles of my feet, and every time I left the beach I told myself that if I just put the same stone in my pocket and went out into the water, I would never have to go again. I’m going home again.
It was an effective illusion. I was able to continue because I knew I didn’t have to. Every time I swam a little, and every time I climbed ashore, the stones dug deeper into my feet. One afternoon in early fall, I felt particularly hopeless. I couldn’t see any realistic way to escape from Geat’s situation, and I lived in constant fear of him. Storm clouds were approaching and the beach was deserted. I felt a dangerous tremor, felt free to ignore my own safety, and grimaced as I continued into the water. The water burned me and an amazing energy coursed through my body. It was very cold. When I reached the point where my shoulders were submerged in the water, my chest began to spasm and I swallowed a mouthful of bitter water. Then, as if from far away, very faintly, I felt it trying to give way.
I opened my eyes and dove into the water, digging and kicking out. Although it was only a few meters deep, it felt like I was digging another tunnel, entering a crack and swimming through a new realm, my own secret chamber. The water was muddy with the movement of my limbs, but when I stopped I suddenly saw everything clearly. The large rocks on the riverbed were dotted with insects, sponges, limpets, and lichens. Beyond that, green and purple river grass floats. It didn’t make the slightest sound. No water pressure thuds in your ears, no competing voices in your head. I hung horizontally, staring at the scene floating below the water’s surface, there was no further movement clouding my vision, but suddenly, as if out of nowhere, everything around me came to life fully alive. As if he realized that it was happening.
There was no gap between my body and the living world. I was pressed against the teeming vastness, where every cubic millimeter of water was dense with living things. These creatures were so small that I couldn’t see them, but somehow I felt their presence, their camaraderie around me.I wasn’t looking out of the water. towards Life, I looked straight ahead. into the The vast patchwork of water life that supports my body flows into my nostrils, ears, tiny cracks and crevices in my skin, swirls through my hair, and enters the same eyes that observed it. In what felt like minutes but should have been just seconds, I found myself floating in a web of entirely different worlds, important and complex places, and an almost infinite number of independent life forms. , I saw it scoop up countless creatures with every slight change. And the undulation of the body.
extracted from Ascension in progress Written by Martin McInnes, published by Atlantic Books. Ascension in progress This is the latest recommended book from the New Scientist Book Club.Register here and read along
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