Drowning in Clarity
By Chila Woychik

The water swirls first in one place then another, large concentric circles expanding wider and wider before gently merging with the stiller water around it. This could mean bass, or maybe northern pike; the lake contains both. A strong cool wind fits and stammers. The gray clouds have moved eastward and the sun glares above. Wind and sun, wind and sun: braided felicity.

We’ve found a sheltered spot here, a friend and I. We sit in foldable director’s chairs. She draws; I write. She wears a cap. We are artsy.

A blue-black dragonfly rides atop a second dragonfly. This is not spring mating; this is not spring. This is merely animal attraction in July. I look at my friend; she is drawing a tree.

The weeds are flowers, blooming, bloomed, green and white and some parts brown, the dying, dead. Lavender is here too, tinges of pink. These too will brown one day but today they bliss my world with vibrance. I reel in wonder in the inner woman; the beauty is my lunch, the dying my dessert.

The dragonfly thrums—a mating ritual? A bumble bee engages a clover blossom nearby then another and another. It inches closer. I move to avoid confrontation. Once when I was young, I went walking barefoot in our yard and stepped on a group of bees, they tell me. They tell me it was a horrible experience, the yelling, the swelling, the fear. They told me years ago and it’s stuck with me since, and stinger-like it lingers. I move my director’s chair a second and third time, and the bee moves on, disregards me, knows it makes the stronger point.

Trees ring this large manmade lake—a nuclear power plant reservoir lake—and provide a home for deer and nameless other creatures, fisher folk. There are walking trails and airplane-sized mosquitoes, riding trails and gnats that strike and welt, an area for campers and numberless no-see-ums with no-regard. I’ve seen snakes. The question as always is what price we will pay for an excursion into nature, and is the heart brave enough, the skin thick enough?

A ringing like a cell phone occurs a short distance away. My purse is suspect but it’s only a bird. And it’s a sad day when I can no longer identify the innocence of a bird call. (I silently condemn technological intrusions while thanking the powers that be for bug spray in technologically-brilliant pump bottles.)

A spurt of wind bursts through the trees behind me and another in front. My hair explodes at the convergence of the two. Before I know it, I find myself clinging to my chair in neck-high water. I panic. I yell. My immediate concern is that I will be forgotten in the end.

My companion sits calmly by and continues to draw. She may be on the leaves now and it’s intricate work. I flail my arms but it’s no use; I can’t swim. The seconds are years then an eternity, but the chair holds. I believe, then, that I can make it to shore because my left big toe touches a rock. The moss is soft, the rock’s size is moderate; my confidence grows.

Then a stealthy slipping around occurs at my ankle, on the left foot that touches the rock. It wraps around, this slipping thing, completes the ligature, once, twice, three times. Bees come to mind, but I can’t move my chair this time, can’t escape the threat. I feel sick and worry more and yell louder, the loudest yet. Still, the woman draws. She may want to sign it Van Gogh.

The gripping thing yanks and I go down, dragged along for feet or yards, I’m not sure, I just know it’s down and some along. I’m gulping water now and air is spent, the “life flashing before my eyes” nonsense flashes too, and it’s real as the Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Brownie single serving ice cream I had earlier in the day—this is how real.

 I can’t see it—this thing. It continues to pull me backward through the water. If only I could flip over, get a better position, but I can’t swim.

The water is blue, no, never blue but in swimming pools and films (ever notice how the older movies of ocean scenes actually looked like ocean scenes and not a Hollywood swimming pool made up to look like an ocean like many of today’s ocean scenes?). Khaki is the color. With patches of shimmering silver where the wind riffles along the top of it and lifts it slightly. Khaki, dark, and deep. Close up to the windswept shore is detritus, fallen leaves, algae, me. Dead things breaking down into simpler matter.

The view is beyond spectacular so I go limp, quit fighting, watch and learn. I sketch in my mind’s eye. My brain absorbs the water and the words.

I write from shore, close to shore, from my director’s chair. My friend lays her 7B pencil aside. A dog barks from a boat nearby; maybe he too seeks sense beyond ringing technology and weediness, and maybe, like me, the wind and sun shamble his conceit.

And daisies. There are daisies on the hillside. My vision has cleared once more.