Symbolism Theatre I

Symbolism Theatre I

They say it is the most exhilerating experience ever. Only thrill seekers need apply. You get the idea. It's dangerous, fun, and supposedly worth the effort. So I gave it a try. In retrospect, I guess it wasn't my best idea ever.

I'm talking about bungee jumping. With a twist. Off a moving helicopter. Granted, the helicopter does just go in a straight line, but when you are that high up, it doesn't really matter what it's doing, just that you are really fucking high.

I'll skip all the boring bits and go straight to the action. After sitting in the helicopter for 9 hours while each person took their lovely time bungee jumping, things got pretty boring. So I picked up an old, tattered version of "The Catcher In The Rye" that was laying nearby and began to read. Before I knew it, it was my turn.

When you look down from a helicopter, you get scared. Really scared. You don't want to leave the safety of it. I didn't have a choice. The jackass instructor pushed me out of the helicopter and I began my plummet downwards.

When you are falling, you speed up. It's physics. If you don't know it though, it scares the motherlovin' shit out of you. Once you reach the bottom of your arc, all the blood has rushed to your head, and your flash is all flustered and red and all that stuff. You also lose feeling in your extremities. They get all pale and stuff.

Anyways, after you reach the bottom, you begin to go back up. Really, really fast And, of course, when you get near the top, you slow down, and reach a kind of plateau where you can see the fast landscape below you.

As you go through these motions, up and down, over and over, things run through your mind. At the bottom, all you can think is, "Oh shit, Am I going to fall? Is the rope going to snap?" At the top, you feel wonderful. I've always loved flying, looking down on the vast landscape below. It's stunning. You are above all that goes on down below.

My experience, however, went sour. On my final fall, my rope tore free of the clasp it was attached to. As I went into freefall, I prayed. I'm not religious, or any of that, but I still prayed. Lucky for me, the instructor, James Cavensh, the best in the business, had set some slack on my cord. With the help of an anchor point on the helicopter and one of the other jumpers I got pulled up by him. But not before I got the shit scared out of me.

I never plan on redoing the experience. It was exciting and fun and all, but what if James Cavensh and the other guy hadn't been there? What if they hadn't caught me?

Let's not go into that. I don't like talking about my own mortality. It scares me, it really does.