The Stream
Posted By Paul Kotik on 11 September 2006
That's when it's going well. It's the zone, the way to breath-holds that win competitions and set records. Unwelcome dropouts do happen. Sometimes it's a noise, a splash in the pool, a ridiculous itch in her left big toe. An eruption of doubt. Sometimes it's just imperfection in the practice of static apnea. Whatever the cause of it, she's suddenly just a girl in a pool in a rubber suit again, face down in the water, holding her breath. That's when it gets tough. Sometimes painful. It's a real struggle lying in a pool holding your breath. She's no good at it, and frankly hates it.
Four minutes have passed. She's in the apnea Stream. The current is strong, and warming. The view ahead is displayed on the insides of her eyelids, a red-orange screen backlit by the brilliant tropical sun reflected off the pastel blue pool bottom.
Sometimes she sees something like the bridge of a starship, the celestial bodies materializing from a centerpoint and streaking past her, beyond the periphery of her vision. Her pupils, under closed lids, settle down to the bottoms of her eye sockets. If the eyes are not relieved of all animation, if a stray motor signal has them flit or flicker it's a near sure thing she'll fall out of the Stream, so she forgets all about her eyes. There's no need for them in the Stream.
Other times the Stream darkens, and swirls in eddies and plumes. Each section of the Stream has its own character. She knows them all, and how they follow one on the other. That's another part of getting to the destination: knowing the way there. She drops out for a few seconds when she reflexively swallows. She's a girl in a pool again. She's had a contraction. A tap on her left shoulder, a whisper: Five minutes. Her index finger extends, all is well.
That is, all will be well once she's back in the Stream. The closer you are to your destination when you drop out, the harder it is to get back in. She's had another contraction, and her tongue's not sitting right. She can feel her throat tightening against the pressure of the desperately large volume of air she'd stuffed into her lungs at the beginning. Her chest begins to tingle, presaging the inevitable burn. When her tongue sits just right, the tip against her bottom teeth and the body splayed onto the roof of her mouth, the pushback to her pharynx is oh-so leveraged and keeping her air in her lungs is effortless. There! Her tongue has assumed the position. Her soft palate melts and her body disappears. She's just Her again, a being, and now in the Stream again.
This is her way of static apnea. It's not getting from now to then. She feels it as getting from here to there. In reality – in her experienced reality – it's really the Stream moving, not her. She does nothing but let the Stream flow through her, maintaining the proper attitude (so to speak) at all times. That's all there is to static apnea.
The Stream is darkening now, the Voice's cue: Five thirty. It's cooling down, too. It always darkens and cools just before the six-minute mark. She notes this waypoint with an indifference such that it's long forgotten by the time the Voice whispers again: Five forty five. It's no good thinking about things too much, things like the way the Stream always matches the Voice. Thoughts like that have sharp corners, on which the flow can snag and tear. Then you might drop out of it and back into being the girl in the pool, struggling to hold her breath. Ouch.
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