| At what point does a crisis begin? One minute, we were laughing and playing around on the shore, the next - Van was acting on impulse and stripping off. As I watched her innocence, and realized her intent was to get right in there - in that mystical blue, and be part of the experience, I never noticed the danger swimming towards us. |  |
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I stood at the water's edge, gazing down and watching as she swam - a magnificent mermaid - through the rippling world of plankton... when, without warning, it happened: a sudden transparent colour in the water, a fleeting glimpse of shock upon a water-rippled face, a stream of air bubbles, and then a terrible instinctive feeling that my Vanessa was doomed! |
|
I
was in the water in a flash. Maybe there was a fleeting thought about capability...
water-logged clothes... and purpose... but it was wiped aside by an overwhelming
feeling that my Vanessa was gonna die. Thinking back... I realize
now - it was 'time' and 'fate' as 'hand and arm' which took me in that
moment, and tossed me like a dart into the sea of our possible futures!
In quiet moments late in the evening here in Putney, when I stand alone and watch with a late night drink in hand - the timeless Thames crawling darkly beneath - I realize I did not dive to save her... but to die with her! And I tremble with that shiver which comes when one connects momentarily with an instinctive sense of 'before-life' and 'after-death'... ...or is it just the drink? |
 
As I
look into the dark Whisky of my last glass tonight, I see again Vanessa's
face slipping, as if asleep and somehow contented, into the lower ocean
and away from the bright light of optimism and this temporary reality we
call 'life'. |
| I
was stilled with cold in the sea. It was an instant thing.
It wasn't the ocean: it was the cold of seeing beloved flesh turn white, and life leaking through lovers lips... ...and me here, 5 yards too short to stop a gasp - which should have been triumphant scream, with eyes wide - not shut, and 2 souls joined by love in the dark - instead of that muted sigh alone. I
saw her clearly... dead... the 'half' of me... and knew I was lost!
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| And maybe too... I saw a light... | ||
| ...something else: the thing that came and struck 'un-knowing'. To this day, I'd swear I saw that jelly fish flung across the fine divide of species boundaries, clung tight and firm to the lips I'd caressed and explored so lovingly... and oh, so strangely - 'it' giving life! I know this was a special sight - a shadow of reality, a furtive symbol from the mind or of the ocean... who knows? |
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| All I knew was - "The jelly-fish which stung her blindly now caressed her strangely... as if to give her breath and hope... as if to save her...!" |
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| (c) Larry Legg, Vanessa Summers, & Lightscape 1998 |
