when i close my eyes the lights of the world go out

When I close my eyes the lights of the world go out.

My most unrelenting fear is of drowning. Tonight I read about an airplane disaster. A plane crashed into the ocean. Later they found a few bodies. Many they never found. How many of those people had a fear of flying but never thought about drowning? Reading it, I found myself hoping that they were killed in the crash itself, that death was quick and painless.

To die slowly in the ocean, utterly alone, would be the worst of deaths. There was a movie made a few years back called Open Water that dealt with this. Supposedly based on a true story (really, the connections were tenuous...yes I researched it; I am obsessive in my own way) the story concerned a couple who went out with a scuba diving group. The group was not well run, the crew failed to take an accurate head count, and as a result the boat later left without the couple, no one aware they were ever there in the first place. The film follows the couple as they come to grips with what has happened and their inevitable demise. It is a minimalist film, as befits such a terrifying idea. There is almost no soundtrack, just the sound of water, of the vast ocean.

How cold they must have been. How very, very cold.

My reaction to this movie was visceral. I still find it hard to write about. I don't know how to swim. I'm uneasy around the water. And yet I love the ocean...love it and fear it. I am utterly in awe of its power. The ocean doesn't care about you. The ocean can make you disappear without even trying. Your life does not scale to the ocean. The ocean is always at the end of the world.

I can feel my bones humming. Rolling waves of my blood. Warmth. I am not cold, I am not chilled, I can walk and the solid earth is beneath my feet.

In the dark early morning hours I roll over and drape a hand across my wife. Her body is warm. My body is warm. Together we make warmth, the blankets covering us. I say a prayer into her skin. We are alive and together. We will not escape death. But for this moment, we are alive together, she asleep and I awake. These moments are known only to us. This is our secret history, the history of lovers. This is the other side of the unknowable Cosmos.

The cold ocean waits out there. The end of the world waits out there. Let it wait, wait, wait.