Seven Immersions (2/7)

Immersion 2: Crackington Haven, Cornwall

Something peculiar happens when you run downhill for too long. 

No, it’s not that your muscles start overextending and eccentrically contracting, although that is what they do. What happens is that a strange lightness overtakes your being. You forget your weight. A part of you awakens to the possibility of hiding, of being deliberately left behind, of watching yourself fade off into the distance — never to come back. Maybe Milan Kundera once ventured from the Parisian streets to see a runner wheeling down a hill in la forêt de Meudon and ponder that her movements were as free as they were insignificant.

I trickle along the severe Cornish cliffs a couple of months after my first immersion — a timid droplet delaying the inevitable plunge back into the ocean. I weigh less than before and an age has prematurely fallen on my flesh, bringing my skin out in fresh, ruddy irritation. I run because walking is no good. I run because gravity acts faster than my thoughts.

How can they avoid suffering who trust their feet before their eyes?

The last kilometre to the shoreline drops suddenly like a grandfather's eyelids on a warm afternoon in July. The prospect thrills me. I begin the descent with measure, the cadence of my stride starts consistently and my posture remains upright. I stare ahead at the sea which sparkles unusually under the early Autumn sun — there is not as much recognition as before in today's pebble-hard eyes.

Before long an untethering begins. The animated self becomes detached from the sea-bound entity as if from a shell and cowers nakedly among the scrubby bushes above. I, meanwhile, carry on, my legs further akimbo with each footfall and my perpendicularity to the road increasingly under threat. My body cries out for help with an inaudible shriek, a voice returns —

Where are you?

My voice has shied and not made it down with me.

Senseless and dumb I seep into a cove where the retreating tide exposes some sand further on down past the rocks. Against the low reflected sun, the figures bobbing around me are little more than silhouettes. Nothing distinguishes these shapes but, still, I see them bristle as my red and sweating skin comes into view.

I creep upon a pillowy wave and lie myself down on my back as a child does in their parent's bed after a nightmare. I sense the meeting of salt — oceanic and perspirant — and close my eyes to better notice the slowness of breath and heartbeats.

How can they be seen by another who is already fixated upon themself?

I watch the coastal hills erect before me, amphitheatrical in shape, and follow busy specs zig-zagging across trodden grass pathways. Seeing the reflected light from this angle as it bursts towards its destination gives the scene a projected quality. Life over there is a postcard — mere light material for me to etch a whimsical thought upon.

Nestled among the browning greenery is my animated self, preparing to hibernate and spying the water guardedly. I see him how you see the same person waiting at the bus stop at the same time every day — I do not see him but know that he is there.

The Atlantic is just as I left it, cold and reassuring but unready to consume me. I float back and feel my weightlessness in the diffident waters: I am here. Time is not interminable but it feels most this way when you look as far as you can into the profundity of the sky — it can hurt your eyes looking too far, and it makes them produce little puddles of water as the vast space sucks all the moisture from them. But the sea does not seem to suffer from this.

Even the sea must run home for tea. It bids me goodbye with a playful shove back to the foot of the hill. I move my slow thighs and examine the ascent before me. As the darkness drops I slouch my way forward...

per la citta' dolente
per l'etterno dolore
per la perduta gente

Conclusion of the second immersion.