I Jump in the Lake

Today, I feel a little more lively again. I hope it lasts. I hope it lasts forever. I wouldn't mind if I never felt good again, as long as I didn't have to suffer. My brain still works fine, after all. Who needs a perfect body?

Anyhow, I've been working all day, so I've got to write this down before I get tired and forget about it. I never remember these things in the morning. (One might contend that I never remember anything, ever, but that's simply not true. My own name, I'm quite comfortable with, and I get my date of birth right nine times out of ten. I think I even know where my shoes are at this precise moment. But this, now, this, I probably would forget, so here it is, without further ado:)

I don't remember when it happened (see? See? What did I tell you?)--I don't remember when it happened, but it must've been in autumn, and it must've been in Canada. I must've been young, too, maybe fifteen or sixteen. I stopped doing silly things after that. Well, I stopped doing that kind of silly thing, at any rate. Silliness itself, I'm afraid, is in my blood, much as forgetfulness is, and the love of garlic.

We were skyving off class that day, which wasn't terribly unusual. The weird part was where we'd skyved off to. Ordinarily, see, we weren't terribly imaginative with our skyving. We'd loaf round the library, maybe, or sit outside with our cigarettes. (I didn't have a cigarette, of course, but the general pretext for being outside tended to involve smoking, and I'd be along for the ride.) That day, though, we weren't in the library, or on the steps, or even on the lawn. We weren't on campus at all. We were way off in Wainfleet or Welland or some such place, standing out by a muddy little lake. Trespassing on someone's private property, no doubt.

I don't remember who was there. I hung about with such a load of wankers back then. It doesn't matter, anyway. Someone stuck a foot in the lake, and commented on its deceptive temperature: the top inch was warm, but underneath, it was like a glacial spring.

"It probably has a sea-monster," I said, just to have something to say.

"Why don't you go check?" said some wiseacre.

"Okay," I said, and jumped in. Yeah, I jumped in. It was practically my destiny to jump in the lake. I mean, I'd been jumping and falling into various bodies of water all my life, from a frozen-over farmer's pond (and the ice scarred the bridge of my nose), to the river Cam. I'd stuck my feet in the North Sea and floated for hours in Snow Lake. If I'd ever been to Venice, I'd probably have gone in the Grand Canal, and all. (Faugh.) So, you see, I was meant to jump in. I did so with characteristic abandon, throwing myself bodily from the end of the jetty: whoosh!

It really was cold. Oh, man, it must've been October already, maybe even November. All the leaves were down, which I remember vividly, seeing as most of them seemed to have wound up in the lake. There were leaves, and grasses, and little murky particles. Stunned by the chill, I sank quickly into the gloom. In addition to being much colder than I'd imagined possible, the lake was very deep. It was an interesting experience, sinking to the bottom. There was a little circular patch of sky, greyed out and then browned out by the water. Around that patch was a tunnel of leaves and debris, which closed in over me as I sank. Then, as the last of the air went out of my lungs, I settled into the silt at the bottom, and a glittering dustcloud rose over everything.

Then, of course, I got this uncontrollable urge to find out what dirty water smells like from underneath. I only meant to sniff up a little, but, of course, I started choking immediately, and had to make haste to the surface. Not one of my more brilliant moments, right there.

When I got out of the water, I got even colder, because then there was the wind. And with all that manky water up my schnoz, I sneezed for ages, but sod that part. That wasn't why I was telling this story. I thought of it a couple of days ago, see. It was a particularly lousy day, and I was in a condition I usually refer to as ratted out*: sprawled flat on the couch with little hope of moving. The pillow shams had conspired against me, forming a peaky wee tent over my face. Through the tiny gap between self and intruding shams, I could see the sky, with the light going out of it. And that made me think of the lake, and then I got all clever and made up a metaphor about my life slipping away, but I decided not to put that in. Oops. I just put it in, didn't I? Ah, well.

While the pillows were over my face, a film I wanted to see came on the telly. I blew and blew at the shams, wanting to see, but they hardly fluttered. In the end, I had to wriggle my head for several minutes, then extricate my right hand from under the covers and squash those starchy bastards down. Although I didn't move my torso at all, my comfortable position was ruined. I had to rearrange myself slightly, which got me all wheezy. Stella woke up and started squeaking, and that tore it. I sucked in breath for an "aaaargh!" noise, but then I sneezed. It just wasn't my day.

Today, though, I feel more lively. I got some work done--not nearly enough (it's never enough!)--but some is better than none. I hope it lasts.

* Although I now use ratted out to describe any prone and helpless condition, when I first started saying it, it actually referred to rats. See, when a rat's really tired, really hot, or just plain ol' comfortable, it goes completely limp. With a very tame and docile rat, it may even be possible to rearrange its tail and limbs in amusing ways, without encountering any resistance. With Stella, well, it may be possible to touch her once or twice without being bitten.