Drowning or Breathing Under Water

An old high school girlfriend of mine drowned last November. She was only 52 years old. Death is always a shock, but the hardest part for me was that she drowned. She was an expert swimmer and kayaker, but yet somehow she drowned in her kayak. Even if she had been trying to commit suicide, I don't know how you could accomplish it, when the river was calm, the weather fine.

We used to swim together in high school and I thought of her as a sister mermaid -- one of those people who is extremely comfortable in the water, as I am. Why did the water have to take her? Or did she want it to take her? We will never know.

In one of my poems, "Breathing Under Water," the mysterious shape-shifting woman/fish learns to breathe under water. It ends,

She has learned
to breathe under water,

she has done several things today
already that she knows to be
impossible. She has turned
into a squirrel, a frog, a rat,
a baby. She has turned
into a secret about how
men drown, even on land.

--"Breathing Under Water" (from the book Aqua Curves, 2005)

The artist must become a shape-shifter in order to create and in order to survive and in order to show ways of being to her/his readers/viewers. This is the shaman-like quality that an artist should have. Being stuck in our perspectives too rigidly can cause us to "drown," become depressed and even die. What is needed is an emphasis on flexibility and changing consciousness. In one day, we can be a squirrel, a frog, a baby. How? We have to step outside ourselves and take an imaginative leap. We have to dare.

Even when we feel we are drowning, we can imagine that we are breathing under water. Imaginary gills may save us long enough for us to change form.

My friend's death may have been a freak accident, but it may have been a failure of imagination. The sadness of that possibility will stay with me.

We all need each other and humor and some beauty in our lives. When all else fails, your imagination can save you. Remember that.

Happy shape-shifting,

Karen