Perfect Imperfection

The Muse

While driving home the other night I was listening to a former NFL player talk about his career on a local sports radio station. Of course there was the normal stuff about teammates and brotherly camaraderie, blah, blah, blah. But then he said something that stuck with me. He said that when looking back on his career he could clearly see that he played at a much higher level when he was married. When the host asked why he thought that was he said it was because he was no longer playing for himself, he was playing for her.

That got me to thinking about my own work. Whether it is acting, writing, photography, or whatever I can clearly see that whatever project I am working on is motivated, both directly and indirectly, by one day giving it to my wife and muse, Heidi. If she likes it then who gives a rat’s ass what everyone else thinks?

I think every artist (however that term is defined) works for that one “special” person in their lives; be it spouse, a mentor, or a parent. How lucky am I that for me that person is a lovely lady named Heidi?

Very lucky.  Yes indeed.

Into The Blue With A 20 Year Old Nikonos V

Nikonos V, Ilford 400 iso Film

After the events surrounding Tyler and Robert’s early withdrawal from Cozumel, it took 21.7032145 hours for Hypochondriac paranoia to hit me. Suddenly I was feeling all kinds of weird pings and pangs in my own chest, ribs… Did I see a small line in my left earlobe, ‘cuz that’s an early warning sign of heart disease, right?

Bill: Bubble?

Heidi: What?

Bill: Does it look like I have a line in my earlobe?

Heidi: Uh…what the hell are you talking about?

Bill: Does it look like I have a line? That’s supposed to be a warning sign of heart disease?

Heidi: Well…why don’t you grab my witchcraft bag, while I go find a chicken to sacrifice so that we can read your fortune in it’s blood. That way we’ll know for sure. (Pause) Stop acting like a nutcase and come play UNO.

The 1% of my brain that still had a modest grip on reality assured me that these were just phantom pains.

Brain: Look, you just witnessed a friend, only a few years older than you, have a heart attack right in front of you. That’s some jarring shit. You’re feeling the built up tension from that experience.

Bill: Cool. But, then how come Heidi isn’t feeling the same thing?

Brain: Cuz she’s not crazy like you.

Bill: Oh, okay.

I was able to manage my crazy until Thursday. Dive day.

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

But here’s the thing. As the minutes rolled by, leading up to the time I was set to board the dive boat, I wasn’t paranoid about heart attacks, or drowning. No. My primary concern was getting sea sick.

On our honeymoon in Maui, Heidi and I had gone on this ridiculously long snorkeling trip to Molokini Cater, a journey that could probably be turned into one of the better sequels in the Hellraiser franchise. Halfway through the trip everyone was a lovely shade of green. By the time we got to the crater for a fun day of snorkeling you had the added bonus of swimming amongst the piles of vomit people were spewing over the side of the boat. By the time we were in route to shore I remember wishing I had telekinetic powers so I could burst a hole the size of Volkswagen in the hull of that piece-of-shit boat and end the nightmare. And I don’t think any of my fellow passengers, including my new wife, would have tried to dissuade me from doing so.

That trip left some scars.

Nikonos V, Fuji Superia 400

As Heidi and I walked down the pier to the dive boat I didn’t see much, if any, pitching and rolling of the boat anchored to the end of the dock.

This might not be so bad, I thought to myself.

Then with every step closer I saw a little bit more bounce in the boat.

I bid adieu to the Mrs. and stepped into that smirking little vessel, which was now rock’n and hopp’n like it had a fire under it’s feet.

Sonofabitch!

I took a seat, a deep breath, and waited…

They tossed the ropes and off we headed into the blue, Caribbean waters.

I waited for that thick, sweaty first wave of vertigo to hit me. And waited…and waited…and it never came. Not one bit. Huh? With that I think I have discovered the recipe for not getting sea sick on a dive boat day trip.

1) Go to bed early, no later than 10:30, even if you are reading the new Dan Brown book.

2) Have a decent, if not large, breakfast despite the fact that every ounce of it will show in your wetsuit. You wanna be sick? Fine, then don’t argue with me on this. Plus, if you still end up sick you’ll have some good stuff to foul the water with.

3) Never, ever, EVER allow them to stick your ass on one of those 5:30AM trips. Think about it. You just spent the night lying prone for 8+ hours. It was too early to eat anything, so you just swallowed a little bit of toothpaste to tide you over. And now here you are standing upright on a rocking boat that smells like melting plastic and diesel exhaust. What’s going to happen? Exactly.

So there you are. Bill’s 3 helpful hints to avoid slipping around in half digested scrambled eggs on a dive boat.

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

Here’s the funny thing. With all my crazy shit about phantom heart pains and sea sickness, I never once considered that there would be any danger in doing my first ocean dives while lugging along a 20-year-old, manual, underwater film camera that I’d only had in my hands for about a-week-and-a-half prior to diving with it.

What kind of a jackass am I?

I’d been wandering around for the better part of a day stressing about the equivalent of “catching a heart attack,” which is…uh, retarded, but I didn’t give a second thought to fiddling around with aperture and focal distance settings 60 feet down on a reef of which I had no knowledge . That might be the very definition of a jackass.

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

The blue cast to all the shots I took underwater are a result of not having a strobe with me. Did I know this would be the case prior to embarking? Yes. Did I disregard this knowledge? Of course. Needless to say, on the next journey to the depths I will bring along a strobe light.

Once back on the boat after our first dive I settled into my seat and squirmed out of my BCD feeling quite privileged to have swam along the incredibly beautiful Columbia Shallows reef. Trust me, I ain’t blue or black and white. There is so much color down there it would make your Crayola Crayon 104 pack (with the sharpener) weep with feelings of inadequacy.

The boat kicked into gear and off we headed for our second dive site, the Palancar Gardens.

Our dive guide, a gentleman from Austria (let’s call him Klaus because I can’t remember his name), handed us a cup of water and began to brief us on the second dive.

Klaus: So, und dis dive ve vill be descending to between 60 and 90 feet.

I looked up at him with some concern. Two days ago, at the dive shop, I had requested shallow dives.  90 feet didn’t sound all that shallow!

Bill: Uh, 90 feet?

Klaus: Ya.

Bill: Wow. That’s seems…a little deep.

Klaus: It’s not deep.

Bill: What we just did was as deep as I have ever gone to this point.

Klaus shot me an incredulous grin. The look on his face would have probably been the same had I just told him I had never kissed a girl.

Klaus: But…dat was only, like, forty feet.

I nodded and took a sip of my water.

Bill:…Sweet. Let’s…do those…90 feet. Hell yeah.

Nikonos V, Velvia 100

By the time I reached our maximum depth in the Palancar Gardens I had given up hope of taking shots down there, not only because I knew I had no chance of getting anything worth looking at without a strobe, but the realization that I had to keep my ass from doing something stupid was now firmly in the forefront of my thinking process. This held me in fine shape until the very end of the dive.

Anyone who has taken even a “get acquainted with SCUBA” class knows that the 2 main rules of diving are: 1) Don’t ever hold your breath, and 2) Don’t ascend too quickly.

Well, I can say that I was Johnny-On-The-spot with rule number 1. I am a “don’t hold your breath” champion. Old number 2, however, was going to play games with me when I least expected it. To this point, as we drifted along with the current towards the end of the Palancar dive, everything had gone perfectly. In fact, not taking pictures had allowed me to truly enjoy what I can only describe as the closet I will ever get to floating in outer space. What I hadn’t counted for was my tank’s increasing lightness (and resulting buoyancy) as we made a very slow ascent. Suddenly I was gliding towards the surface.

Oh shit!

I grabbed the handle to my BCD’s inflator and pressed the deflate button, but it was too late. I felt my tank bob through the surface of the water.

Ahhhhhh!

I quickly expelled all air from my BCD and lungs and gunned my ass back down to the bottom, certain that I would be spending the remainder of our trip in a decompression chamber.

“Un-fucking-believable,” was all I could say to myself. Of course, with a regulator in my mouth it came out, “Um fum’n faleivaval!”

Back on the boat I mentioned my mishap to Klaus.

Bill: You know, at the end there I kinda bobbed to the surface for a second.

Klaus: I saw dis. I vas vondering vhat you ver doing.

Bill: I couldn’t believe it.

Klaus: You’re tank jist got light. It’s not problem.

Bill: You don’t think so?

Klaus: Ve vere only in 30 feet of vater at dat point. You’re fine.

Bill: Cool.

This should have been enough for me, right? Hell, it would be enough reassurance for anyone that didn’t need fucking shock therapy.

Nikonos V, Velvia 100 (And, no, that’s not me she’s talking to)

Once back in our room I dug my SCUBA training manual from our suitcase and looked up decompression sickness.

“Symptoms of decompression sickness can show signs within minutes to 12 hours…

Okay. I can deal for 12 hours.

…”Or longer.”

Huh? Minutes to hours to LONGER? What, did a lawyer write the goddamn book? What does longer mean? 13 hours? 3 months? Christ! Is there ever a clear, definitive answer to anything?

“Of course there isn’t,” my brain said. “What you’re looking for is a guarantee of safety for you and those you love. If the past week should have taught anything it’s that are no guarantees in this life. Thus the emphasis should be on this very moment, here and now, cuz that is really all you can count on.”

Who’d have thought there as an ounce of wisdom in this brain of mine?

Heidi came out of the bathroom and saw me sitting on the edge of the bed with the book in my hand.

Heidi: What are you doing?

Bill: Oh…just…you know.

Heidi: You know you’re fine, right?

I looked up and saw my perfectly sculpted, generous-hearted, best friend and wife grinning at me. If I wasn’t the most fortunate guy on the entire planet then there must be no fortune in the world.

Bill: Yes. I couldn’t be any more fine.

Post Script:

Updates on Tyler’s condition can be found at: www.tylerheart.blogspot.com