Lost Souls
Altitude: 13,000 feet.
Time it will take to travel from plane to ground in freefall: Approximately 3 minutes (with parachute- less if you choose to attempt levitation before impact).
Pulse: Racing
Blood Pressure: Near verge of CVA levels.
Commitment: 98%
Time allowance between choice of backing out of bay door or jumping forward through it: Less than 3 seconds.
And there I was. While we stood in the bay door of the plane, the air roared past my ears so loudly that I couldn't hear my jump instructor tell me we were going NOW. It was a tandem jump. I wasn't prepared for this. My first jump had been a freefall on my own but this skydiving school insisted that you had to do 3 tandem jumps before they would let you freefall on your own. I realize that this is infinitely safer for the parachutist-to-be than the backwater jokers from lower Delaware obviously thought necessary when I was there but I remained horrified.
I am a control freak. I do not like depending on other people for much more than entertainment. I would trust a rabid animal before I would trust something as fallible as another human being. My first jump in Laurel, Delaware was done when I was going on close to 23 straight hours without sleep and I was offered a tandem jump then. I refused then because if I were going to do this thing, I wanted to do it right the first time. In reality, it was simply a matter of trust. If I were going to die, it was going to be because of my own stupidity not someone else's. And here I was again, this time in NJ and much better rested, knowing that my parachute was not on my own back but on another human being who would ride with me like a turtleshell strapped on with tethers to my back. There was obviously a deeper lesson here for me so I allowed myself to have the experience in spite of my magnificent misgivings.
With a leap, we fell forward into the sky. There are no words to describe the sheer terror of being airborne at 12,000 feet with nothing solid to stand on or hang on to and knowing you are hurtling toward the earth at a speed that is only slightly short of suicidal. Looking around, I can see sky and a patchwork quilt of lines and dots that could only be roads, trees and houses. Where do you go? Which direction are you heading in? Which way is the right way? From the middle of nowhere, where is here?
The feeling of being completely lost and helpless consumed me like a small child being swallowed by an ocean wave. My only contact with something I could understand and identify was my altimeter and I checked it regularly making mental notes of the altitude dropping as swiftly as any illusion of control I had started this journey with. My instructor signalled me that it was time to deploy the parachute and I reached back to find our rip cord. One firm pull and we were both yanked up into the sky as if the hand of God had reached down and pulled us up before we were lost for good. The corners of the silk canopy came into my peripheral vision as it tilted side to side stabilizing during descent. I refused to look up at it as it took everything I had to take deep controlled breaths instead of shallow, panicked ones. We were safe, it was all good, that was all I wanted to know in that moment.
A slow, sweeping ride down with my instructor controlling the rigging didn't set well with me. He gave me as gentle and playful a ride that he could maneuver and we discussed small bon mots about skydiving as we sailed down. In the meantime, I was become dizzy as my blood pressure performed its own acrobatic stunts. I didn't like hanging there with absolutely nothing to do except rely on him to guide and steer. It was making me physically ill. Have I become so pathologically controlling at this point in my life? It makes me wonder.
Finally, we hit ground and the 3 minute wonder journey was over. There was a moment of clarity that occurred to me somewhere between the ledge of the plane and stepping into nothing more than air and it sounded something like...." and what IF I did die, right now? What then? What has my life amounted to? Who loves me enough to care?".... and before I could become sad enough to wallow in self pity or anger, stepping down into blue skies and absolute chance eclipsed any previous mental processes. Later that night, much later... I had an emotional release in the shower. Uncontrollable, irrational and unexpected. No thought process with it just a flush of hot emotion and salty, pained tears that came from deep inside. I still don't know what they were for but I know that something inside shifted as a result of it.
Perhaps this is the insanity that drives skydivers. I don't believe it is the adrenaline rush that spurs them on to jump, over and over again. I think it is that moment of clarity that forces you to recognize how fragile the fabric of your life is that seduces them. We are not testing God's love by demanding that He/She/It pay attention long enough to give us one more day, week, month with a safe jump. Perhaps, there is a desire to prove to ourselves that we can and do trust God so much so that we want to be reminded of what a gift our life is and how much of it depends on our focused attention on being in each moment of it.
We are all lost souls in so many ways. I felt lost and realized how lost I was in that 30 seconds of freefall. That was my great epiphany. I am as lost as I felt I was. Something significant has shifted though. I may not know where I am but I feel as if I am heading in the right direction... and perhaps that is what I needed to find up there at 12,000 feet.
A friend of mine has accused me of being the most sane person he knows. I find this incredibly hard to believe as I am regularly questioning my sanity on a daily basis. The cause for my concern is not because of my lifestyle choices or my sport hobby choices. The cause for my doubts about my own sanity is the constant disbelief with which I operate when I look at the "normal" people passing through my daily life in their own little dramas and psychotic wonderlands. I feel disconnected from them and worse, have no desire to connect with them. Do any of these people even know how lost they are? Full of judgements and ignorance, they scare me and bore me in ways that are far too insulting to say out loud. My most perverse playmates seem more reasonable than the rest of the world at any given time. I understand why someone wants me to piss in their mouth or dress them in a diaper and spank them. I do not understand why someone would believe that a corporate position is worth selling your integrity for.
The ones who are so quick to hand out judgements like name tags at a convention... are they even capable of recognizing how lost they are and how deep a trench they have created walking in their narrow, familiar paths?
Support my addiction so I can go and play with my own moments of sheer terror and mind-blowing bliss. Sex could never give me what skydiving has. Real intimacy is with the person you trust and at 13,000 feet and falling, the only person I really want to trust is myself.
Maybe that is what this thrill seeking is really all about. Experiencing absolute trust ... in yourself.
Time it will take to travel from plane to ground in freefall: Approximately 3 minutes (with parachute- less if you choose to attempt levitation before impact).
Pulse: Racing
Blood Pressure: Near verge of CVA levels.
Commitment: 98%
Time allowance between choice of backing out of bay door or jumping forward through it: Less than 3 seconds.
And there I was. While we stood in the bay door of the plane, the air roared past my ears so loudly that I couldn't hear my jump instructor tell me we were going NOW. It was a tandem jump. I wasn't prepared for this. My first jump had been a freefall on my own but this skydiving school insisted that you had to do 3 tandem jumps before they would let you freefall on your own. I realize that this is infinitely safer for the parachutist-to-be than the backwater jokers from lower Delaware obviously thought necessary when I was there but I remained horrified.
I am a control freak. I do not like depending on other people for much more than entertainment. I would trust a rabid animal before I would trust something as fallible as another human being. My first jump in Laurel, Delaware was done when I was going on close to 23 straight hours without sleep and I was offered a tandem jump then. I refused then because if I were going to do this thing, I wanted to do it right the first time. In reality, it was simply a matter of trust. If I were going to die, it was going to be because of my own stupidity not someone else's. And here I was again, this time in NJ and much better rested, knowing that my parachute was not on my own back but on another human being who would ride with me like a turtleshell strapped on with tethers to my back. There was obviously a deeper lesson here for me so I allowed myself to have the experience in spite of my magnificent misgivings.
With a leap, we fell forward into the sky. There are no words to describe the sheer terror of being airborne at 12,000 feet with nothing solid to stand on or hang on to and knowing you are hurtling toward the earth at a speed that is only slightly short of suicidal. Looking around, I can see sky and a patchwork quilt of lines and dots that could only be roads, trees and houses. Where do you go? Which direction are you heading in? Which way is the right way? From the middle of nowhere, where is here?
The feeling of being completely lost and helpless consumed me like a small child being swallowed by an ocean wave. My only contact with something I could understand and identify was my altimeter and I checked it regularly making mental notes of the altitude dropping as swiftly as any illusion of control I had started this journey with. My instructor signalled me that it was time to deploy the parachute and I reached back to find our rip cord. One firm pull and we were both yanked up into the sky as if the hand of God had reached down and pulled us up before we were lost for good. The corners of the silk canopy came into my peripheral vision as it tilted side to side stabilizing during descent. I refused to look up at it as it took everything I had to take deep controlled breaths instead of shallow, panicked ones. We were safe, it was all good, that was all I wanted to know in that moment.
A slow, sweeping ride down with my instructor controlling the rigging didn't set well with me. He gave me as gentle and playful a ride that he could maneuver and we discussed small bon mots about skydiving as we sailed down. In the meantime, I was become dizzy as my blood pressure performed its own acrobatic stunts. I didn't like hanging there with absolutely nothing to do except rely on him to guide and steer. It was making me physically ill. Have I become so pathologically controlling at this point in my life? It makes me wonder.
Finally, we hit ground and the 3 minute wonder journey was over. There was a moment of clarity that occurred to me somewhere between the ledge of the plane and stepping into nothing more than air and it sounded something like...." and what IF I did die, right now? What then? What has my life amounted to? Who loves me enough to care?".... and before I could become sad enough to wallow in self pity or anger, stepping down into blue skies and absolute chance eclipsed any previous mental processes. Later that night, much later... I had an emotional release in the shower. Uncontrollable, irrational and unexpected. No thought process with it just a flush of hot emotion and salty, pained tears that came from deep inside. I still don't know what they were for but I know that something inside shifted as a result of it.
Perhaps this is the insanity that drives skydivers. I don't believe it is the adrenaline rush that spurs them on to jump, over and over again. I think it is that moment of clarity that forces you to recognize how fragile the fabric of your life is that seduces them. We are not testing God's love by demanding that He/She/It pay attention long enough to give us one more day, week, month with a safe jump. Perhaps, there is a desire to prove to ourselves that we can and do trust God so much so that we want to be reminded of what a gift our life is and how much of it depends on our focused attention on being in each moment of it.
We are all lost souls in so many ways. I felt lost and realized how lost I was in that 30 seconds of freefall. That was my great epiphany. I am as lost as I felt I was. Something significant has shifted though. I may not know where I am but I feel as if I am heading in the right direction... and perhaps that is what I needed to find up there at 12,000 feet.
A friend of mine has accused me of being the most sane person he knows. I find this incredibly hard to believe as I am regularly questioning my sanity on a daily basis. The cause for my concern is not because of my lifestyle choices or my sport hobby choices. The cause for my doubts about my own sanity is the constant disbelief with which I operate when I look at the "normal" people passing through my daily life in their own little dramas and psychotic wonderlands. I feel disconnected from them and worse, have no desire to connect with them. Do any of these people even know how lost they are? Full of judgements and ignorance, they scare me and bore me in ways that are far too insulting to say out loud. My most perverse playmates seem more reasonable than the rest of the world at any given time. I understand why someone wants me to piss in their mouth or dress them in a diaper and spank them. I do not understand why someone would believe that a corporate position is worth selling your integrity for.
The ones who are so quick to hand out judgements like name tags at a convention... are they even capable of recognizing how lost they are and how deep a trench they have created walking in their narrow, familiar paths?
Support my addiction so I can go and play with my own moments of sheer terror and mind-blowing bliss. Sex could never give me what skydiving has. Real intimacy is with the person you trust and at 13,000 feet and falling, the only person I really want to trust is myself.
Maybe that is what this thrill seeking is really all about. Experiencing absolute trust ... in yourself.
posted by Samois at 6:35 PM
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