‘The
body’s seven cravings for buoyancy’
When the US SS-487 went down in the Timor Sea, a young navy cadet by the name of Harry from Oak Park, Illinois, which is where Hemingway came from too, had got a hold of one of the last devise with which shipwrecked men can reach the surface from a submarine. Fished out of the water by the Japanese and taken to their flagship, the YAMATO, he was undergoing an interrogation when the battleship was completely destroyed by bombs and torpedoes and sank the the bottom of the sea. He was incarcerated between steel walls weakly lit by emergency lights. Still full of willpower. A ship’s wall erupted, and so Harry ended up in open water and was drawn down to the depths.
How did he come to experience a whole human life after that? The reason for his rescue was the SEVEN FORCES OF BUOYANCY. They reside, in varying strength, in every individual.
The first force is that of the LUNGS. They possess a dogged will of their own. Even after the exhaustion of all their bearer’s strength, after the loss of his will to survive, they insist on making it trough to breathable oxygen, to the blue of the sky.
The second force of buoyancy was Harry’s LEVITY. The jolly nature so valued by his comrades kept his muscles warm as he fought his way up the now vertical steel corridors of the ship’s interior. Then in deep water. He was still treading water when his body lay calmly on the surface of te nocturnal sea in the dusky light of the stars. He would have been better off playing ‘dead man’- it would have spared his energy.
The third force of Buoyancy was his DISBELIEF. His mother had warmed her feverish child against her skin. Harry lacked the vision that death, masked as deep green water, might mean him. He refused desperation.
The fourth force of buoyancy was CONGESTED IMPROBABILITY. In invisible capsules, it slumbers in the veins of the brave. Ineptitude (he had never before swum to the surface from a depth of 80 meters) made his resistance against the water pressure less strong. That was a necessary dose of luck, because it slowed down his buoyancy so that the gas in his veins and cells did not explode through overly fast pressure alteration. No mind in the world could control fine-tuning like this.
The fifth force as the BRIGHT VOICES OF THE SIRENS. They did not lure the young man but propelled him upwards. They fired the fighter on with their songs. Had the maritime hero not been prepared for such a message in the inner self, he would have herd nothing and surely would have drowned. All seven forces of buoyancy must take effect simultaneously.
The sixth force consisted of a momentary HESITATION BY THE HAND OF GOD. One finger rests on the demise of the world. Yet there are interruptions in God’s activities, or those of nature. This has saved many suicides and accident victims from death. No one can deliberately discover or make use of this moment of hesitation.
The seventh force came from the DISTANT FUTURE. A future offspring pulled his greedily kicking ancestor from the depths. A navy cadet had to be recruited, a wife found, a daughter conceived and this daughter had to give birth to this particular son, so that this boy of the future, a stocky fellow, could come to poor Harry’s aid. This tracker dog from the future sent the drowning man speeding through the last ten meters to the surface – an almost imperceptible force, a breath, a kind of wind, not measurable by devices (wind rarely finds its way under water). The procedure cannot be reproduced in experiments.
One further coincidence was required to rescue Harry –namely, that a Javanese fishing boat picked him up as he floated on the calm sea and he was thus not discovered by a Japanese patrol. Harry stayed six months in their village and helped with the harvest.
Heaven has a long arm,
When the US SS-487 went down in the Timor Sea, a young navy cadet by the name of Harry from Oak Park, Illinois, which is where Hemingway came from too, had got a hold of one of the last devise with which shipwrecked men can reach the surface from a submarine. Fished out of the water by the Japanese and taken to their flagship, the YAMATO, he was undergoing an interrogation when the battleship was completely destroyed by bombs and torpedoes and sank the the bottom of the sea. He was incarcerated between steel walls weakly lit by emergency lights. Still full of willpower. A ship’s wall erupted, and so Harry ended up in open water and was drawn down to the depths.
How did he come to experience a whole human life after that? The reason for his rescue was the SEVEN FORCES OF BUOYANCY. They reside, in varying strength, in every individual.
The first force is that of the LUNGS. They possess a dogged will of their own. Even after the exhaustion of all their bearer’s strength, after the loss of his will to survive, they insist on making it trough to breathable oxygen, to the blue of the sky.
The second force of buoyancy was Harry’s LEVITY. The jolly nature so valued by his comrades kept his muscles warm as he fought his way up the now vertical steel corridors of the ship’s interior. Then in deep water. He was still treading water when his body lay calmly on the surface of te nocturnal sea in the dusky light of the stars. He would have been better off playing ‘dead man’- it would have spared his energy.
The third force of Buoyancy was his DISBELIEF. His mother had warmed her feverish child against her skin. Harry lacked the vision that death, masked as deep green water, might mean him. He refused desperation.
The fourth force of buoyancy was CONGESTED IMPROBABILITY. In invisible capsules, it slumbers in the veins of the brave. Ineptitude (he had never before swum to the surface from a depth of 80 meters) made his resistance against the water pressure less strong. That was a necessary dose of luck, because it slowed down his buoyancy so that the gas in his veins and cells did not explode through overly fast pressure alteration. No mind in the world could control fine-tuning like this.
The fifth force as the BRIGHT VOICES OF THE SIRENS. They did not lure the young man but propelled him upwards. They fired the fighter on with their songs. Had the maritime hero not been prepared for such a message in the inner self, he would have herd nothing and surely would have drowned. All seven forces of buoyancy must take effect simultaneously.
The sixth force consisted of a momentary HESITATION BY THE HAND OF GOD. One finger rests on the demise of the world. Yet there are interruptions in God’s activities, or those of nature. This has saved many suicides and accident victims from death. No one can deliberately discover or make use of this moment of hesitation.
The seventh force came from the DISTANT FUTURE. A future offspring pulled his greedily kicking ancestor from the depths. A navy cadet had to be recruited, a wife found, a daughter conceived and this daughter had to give birth to this particular son, so that this boy of the future, a stocky fellow, could come to poor Harry’s aid. This tracker dog from the future sent the drowning man speeding through the last ten meters to the surface – an almost imperceptible force, a breath, a kind of wind, not measurable by devices (wind rarely finds its way under water). The procedure cannot be reproduced in experiments.
One further coincidence was required to rescue Harry –namely, that a Javanese fishing boat picked him up as he floated on the calm sea and he was thus not discovered by a Japanese patrol. Harry stayed six months in their village and helped with the harvest.
Heaven has a long arm,
If it is minded to save a man.
World-Changing Rage; News of the Antipodeans by George Baselitz and Alexander Kluge; Katy Derbyshire translator. Seagull Books, London, 2019
World-Changing Rage; News of the Antipodeans by George Baselitz and Alexander Kluge; Katy Derbyshire translator. Seagull Books, London, 2019
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