a man named red pennoyer told a story once in maine at a dinner table in a seaside stone and timber cottage passed down generations through his family to his comedic hands and where he invited many characters to join him… whom of which i was one… about how he wanted to be a deep sea diver and and inventor (having become the latter in fact–he invented the dog-run! pulley system!!) and how he invented an underwater breathing apparatus consisting of some form of a bucket helmet with a window and boots sealed in concrete he laced on and a garden hose running from the top of the bucket latched to his head and the hose connecting to some form of kids bicycle pump that would pump fresh air down to his bucket head and how he put it to test one summer day back when Lyman Islander boats were the hottest thing running on the Maine bay waters and he asked his flower-loving little sister to please do him the honor of operating the life-breathe pump for him and he walked to the end of his family’s dock and subsequently stepped courageously into the clear sea and sank… far. The table went silent and red held it like he was robin williams… or billy dee williams (i have no idea what that means, it just sounds good)… then he punched it. He said he stood on the rocks fifteen feet down standing with the lobsters and immediately struggling for breath. He had not accounted for depth pressure in pumping the air of course… and he had underestimated his sister’s attention span… she had grown bored with her brother’s drowning act they later supposed and wandered off in pursuit of a butterfly. That’s the truth! red says and hits the table again! From tight breaths to no breaths red frantically tore at his at that moment no longer so cool concrete boots laced tighter than he should have and he wondered if this was it.
Butterfy!!! red said and hit the table again and laughed.
He survived and his sister lived to laugh about it. and i lived to hear it retold and embellished…
There was a time in my life where I dreamed I could breath water. Literally I had dreams where i swam with the fish and I would suck in thick lungfuls of the sea and exhale the salty mixture with stout pleasure. That was when I was living in maine and first making my way in life. My dog would go with me to select rocky coves with tiny sand beaches few knew of and i would hold my breath and dive and swim like this for hours until my body couldn’t hardly take the cold even with a farmer john wet suit. My dog would round the cove tracking my passage by my bubbles i imagine and sometimes diving in when i was close to the rocks. The sea was my mother and my lover. it may seem weird to say it that way but that is how i remember it. It was that intimate and quiet. Like a perfect and unending womb shared with a million species.
I have talked a lot about the sea this week with students and workers. Someone asked me, why aren’t you still there? And I told him I don’t know why. I made up some explanation later about having a duty to serve mankind and work in places like haiti but i knew i was just making stuff up. I don’t know why i am not there. I know that looking at this photo of mine from the other sea in the west it reminds me of the phosphorescence of the waters of maine at night. little glowing eddies and swirls as a hand passes through the cold water. On this day in the west it was as if the light from the sun was not just being filtered in the evening sky but was actually gathering in the clouds so that it was actually the clouds glowing… as if the sky had become phosphorescent… and I wondered about building a plane and learning to fly so I could put my hand in the clouds to see them swirl the more
Uploaded by: flip holsinger on 4th May, 2010.