to escape, I jumped into a deep late dark, nighttime, cold and with stalks of algae around me. I went to the bottom and rested with my face against the hard sandy floor. I wondered if I could breathe, and so did, inhaled and exhaled in the heady double-hydrogened oxygen. It was easy, natural. To myself, I kept explaining the ease as something that came from a "few extra" rebreathing-breaths in my lungs, air that would run out eventually as I stayed there. But as I kept trying it, it kept working. Breath. I fell to the bottom like a bag that gives up the last of its need to see sky.

"An Estha-shaped hole in the universe."

Or perhaps, as I learned this weekend, the same material will sink or swim depending on the volume of water it displaces in this world. A raft-shaped me will float. A nail-shaped me will sink. I just have to stretch myself out over the surface of water and people could climb up on me and float away. Or I could curl, a fern swirling back into itself, and displace less water-volume than my mass. So much less than I am. The tighter I pull, the harder I fall.

The further I fall, the more extreme the pressure. Within ten meters, the pressure has doubled. Twenty meters, it has trebled. The tighter I pull, the harder I fall, the more my skin is squeezed. My ears will burst inward and my sinuses will shrink closed. My eyes will start moving outwards, bugging. Blood vessels will rupture around my sight. A gruesome.

All I have to do is pinch my nose, like something has reached a critical state of fetid, and blow out. Release a little air through my nose and these eyes won't bug, blood won't spill into my skin. Slow the rate of my descent. A raft-shaped me in the world. And I can control how hard I fall. How much water I displace. How much room there is for me in this world.

Sitting on the bottom, breathing breathing at the bottom, is so much easier than one can imagine. I found that when I came to the surface, I didn't quite know what to do. Was I supposed to breathe up there too?

On the bottom, we lean on the tips of our fins and release and add air, breathe in and out, to achieve neutral, or equalibrium. Meditation via second and first stages of air release. Pressurized survival. Less volume becomes more volume becomes volume in me that lifts and then leaves. Five minutes pass, and the only thing I notice is the up down, the bottom approaching, the bottom disappearing.

Little visibility in the pool where I am learning to turn aquatic. Too many children peeing in the chlorine, perhaps?

It makes it all the more surprising when the blue bottom comes. All the more surprising when it leaves.

My instructor tells me that I "am a natural." That I consume very little air, am extremely relaxed, achieved a more neutral neutral than even he was able to achieve (hovering is a new specialty?), and went through all my excercises without problems.

I remove one of the masks, watch the world blur through. Little bubbles racing past my face. I breath from mouth, to nose, from mouth, through nose... just because I can. It is startling. I put the mask back on, and blast the water out with elephantine capacity. I have my oxygen cut off, and it doesn't really startle me. I can escape with an ahhhhhhh. I get cold and shivery. I breath slow slow and want to swim around. I swim around. I am very quiet. I feel everything very quiet. A few echoes of hoses breathing in. I lose the capacity to respond to what the instructor tells me on the surface. Speak?

I think it is the instructor's job to tell every student that they are a natural, maybe just to relax them. But I do feel like a natural. I feel like my body has been sinking for awhile and was just waiting to find out what to do with this ability to breathe water.

Under water, in between emptyhead comfort, I think of the little song A was singing when she was here. She says it's Peter's underwater breathing song. I can't think out it goes; all I can think of is how she walked around the whole time in Ecuador making this sound. The blbblbblbblbblbblb sound, and I think she makes it to get her calm and remind her of someone she misses.

I make this sound, not exactly, because I can't remember the tune, but approximately, with a relaxing calm sound of those I miss. Even the misses I will always hide from, wrap myself up in stalks of algae and low visibility sediment, to breathe. A nail-shaped me in the world. Bblbblbblbblbblbblb, it makes me laugh. little child's tune under pressure. It reminds me of A and P, it reminds me that I'm going to buscear soon, ride turtles and pet sharks.

Next weekend, I will be lost under the ocean. Until I come up, letting inner volume escape as I change shape.