An Unforseen Force

It's been a while since I have written on here, I know. My excuse is
simply that I have been rather busy and I will begin to write more
often from now on.

Before I begin I would like to clarify that this post will not be quite as emotionally in depth as the previous entry.

In February 2008 the weather in Palermo becomes rather bipolar for some strange reason. I found this out, again, the hard way. For about three days in a row the sky had been completely blue, not a cloud in the sky, and occasionally you could hear those invisible song birds sing. For three days the temperature had been higher than normal, high enough to wear shorts and a T-shirt. For three days, tanning out on the balcony was an option. Of course, the inexperienced, ignorant, and benighted Americans thought it was summer. Palermo being twenty minutes away from the beach, that was obviously the first notion, and choice. We decided the second day of the heat that we were going to go to the beach and awaited in anticipation. The last time any of us had been to the beach was before the school year started, so naturally the excitement level had risen to a rather high point. While we waited through that last day we would look at the sky, let the sun bake our faces and fantasize about the bright blue water flowing across our bodies, the water slowly evaporating off of our slightly burnt skin, and the sound of little children laughing while they dug their moat around the castle they had made. But in eighteen hours, all the dreams we dreamed would soon disappear. The next day we woke up, and for me my first thought was about how wonderful the beach was going to be. I got in the shower, without looking out the window because, of course, the weather was going to be perfect. I finished my shower, popped a couple zits, scraped stubs of little hairs from my face with a razor, smeared a odorous liquid on my armpits, ate a piece of bread, and walked out the door. Within the forty seven seconds it takes for the elevator to reach the Ground floor from the fourth floor, the thoughts that ran through my head had no order or any particular vindication for being in existence. My mind attempted to see into the future by predicting the interrogation that was going to come at school, then it shot to the beach and all the fun that we were going to have in the sun, and once again back to school where Fabio would ask me for the text book in every class, then it switched to after the beach, telling my family the happenings of the day. Then it switched to - with a sudden and unexpected "qualoonk" the elevator stopped, gravity seized this opportunity to jerk my brain out of its fantasy. In the process of thinking, my body had leaned slightly forward and with the sudden attack of gravity, my entire body and any thought that remained in my mind was put off balance. I felt my eyeballs pull a little bit out of their sockets, and my cheeks drooped with the sudden push of gravity. My stomach muscles flexed and my legs stood planted but pushed away from each other in order to compensate for my lack of bodily equivalence. My strange techniques to save myself from falling seemed not to be working at a satisfactory level, and I could feel my body slowly toppling to an embarrassing fate. For some strange reason, my arms flew out from my sides without me having to file a command of any sort. The four small walls of the elevator never made any physical contact with my body, but the action of flinging my arms out at such a speed seemed to balance my body and realign my senses. I thought about what had happened, cocked my head and chuckled as I opened the elevator door. Gravity, on the other hand was not as amused as I, in fact I'm almost positive that gravity was rather frustrated with the fact that I had wiggled myself out of his little trap. While gravity lingered in the empty elevator grumbling to himself, I opened the big metal door to the outside world. Not only were there clouds, but the sky had been utterly enshrouded by them. The air was no longer dry and hot, but it was wet and soggy. It was almost possible to see the air itself drooping and drowning from the overflow of humidity. I stood there staring at this image that sent a shock starting at my eyes and traveling through my entire body down to the lifeless toe jam that was rotting in between my tiny pinky toe and the next toe over. I blinked once or twice, and only in between those flashes of darkness when my eyelids veiled my pupils, I saw the sun covered beach.

Forrest and I made it to school without any troubles, and as predicted, my teacher interrogated me, and as predicted Fabio asked for the books in every class, except one. After class the three Americans debated over whether or not going to the beach was a good idea. Since the majority of the Americans were of the male sex, going home was not an option. Whether or not swimming was going to take place, we were determined to leave at least a small sign of our bravery behind. We took the bus, trying to either prepare ourselves for the cold water,or praying that it would not rain.

We arrived at the beach after about a fifteen minute bus ride of junior high Italians trying to speak English. Words were said over and over like "What is you name" or "Where are you from" we would give them the truthful reply of "California" hoping that they had never heard of such a place, but "The OC" supplied them with the material to have heard of California. Followed by the "ohhh"s always came the theme song to "The OC". However, the only words anyone has ever learned from that song are "Californiaaa". The Italians apparently thought that by singing this song they impressed the holy Americans on the bus, and continued to sing the same one word over and over for fifteen minutes. What they didn't seem to understand is that when two of three people make eye contact and groan when someone starts to sing "The OC" song, it is considered a bad thing.

Forrest pressed the small red button on the bus to open the doors when it stopped, and the Italian Children's Chorus broke out in one last verse of "California". At the same time, Forrest broke out in one last particularly loud groan to show his unhappy feelings about the situation. The bus jolted to a stop, and if you were looking at the heads of everyone on the bus you would see that almost every head went down to check their feet, just in case they disappeared and the stubs left would sustain their inability to keep their balance on such a bus. The doors opened and we leaped off the bus as fast as we could and hoped that the choir did not notice our departure and follow us. The doors closed and we waited for a moment listening for the sound of high pitched male voices. There was nothing. Just to make sure, I looked at the bus and saw three or four small heads pop out the window and yell "bye bye!" Pretending to smile I waved back in the hopes of never encountering such people again. As the bus turned the corner two or three fists of glory shot out next to the heads as they screamed "Californiaaa" as loud as they could. Sighing, I squinted my eyes, looked at the ground, and twisted on my heel in an attempt to distract myself from the awkward silence. After a quick moment of relief, we decided to venture our way onto the sand. The cold, yet dry sand crunched and ground on my feet with every awkward and unbalanced step. We arrived about half way to the water and decided to put our bags there. We stood around our bags and began to remove our shoes. While removing our shoes, Forrest began to mumble about his dislike for the Italian youth. While I partly concentrated on the shoes, and partly concentrated on the combination of the weather and the water, Forrest's complaints seemed to get more and more trivial by the second. By the time we finished removing our shoes, Forrest's voice had been completely blocked from my mind. A giant gust of wind came flying down the beach and managed to move its frozen invisible being up my shirt, shooting an extremely uncomfortable tingle starting at my neck, and slowly and painfully moving down my spine, making sure to freeze every pore in my body. I let out a yelp of utter discomfort followed by an uncontrollable twitch, shifting my entire body into positions that are not commonly concealed within the mind. As my muscles hysterically flexed and relaxed, and my spine twisted in odd directions, I heard Chaney and Forrest, obviously unaffected by the wind, giggle at the sight of my uncontained emotions manifested through my body. After a few seconds of my distressed shivers, I calmed down and let out a sigh of relief. Then I realized what I was about to do. Just the thought of diving into water that was probably colder than the air gave me a couple more mini twitches of anticipatory agony. We stood there and shivered while we stared at the bright blue water and I began to wonder if it would really be worth any of it. That thought was immediately broken by Forrest when he said “Well, shall we?” With a slight hesitation in my mind, my voice seemed to make my decisions for me and I heard myself say “Let’s”. Immediately I was telling myself ‘no, no, no, why did you just say that?” but I had no choice. Apparently my subconscious had made my decision without my approval. Regretting I ever came, I began to remove my shirt and felt the evil invisible force torture me once again. I felt a small advancement in the wind and heard a fast rhythmic crunch behind me and determined that Forrest had already started his way into the water. Feeling a good amount less manly, I began to run along behind him. I felt the frozen wind whip across my body. With every leaping step I took, it stung my body like very small needles softly tapping my skin, but with just enough pressure to get underneath my skin. I felt the sand form to every ounce of pressure I planted. I could feel occasional grains of sand tap my back as my feet wildly sprayed it in every direction. I saw Forrest dive into the water and could only imagine what he was thinking. Within seconds I would have the opportunity to think my own thoughts. My feet hit the wet sand and I felt yet another shiver slide its way up my body and attack my senses once again. Then I saw Forrest return from his journey with a shocked face. He began to scream and my left foot hit the water. The shock of the cold seemed to launch me up two or three feet. I let out a yelp as I flew into the air. Forrest’s screams seemed to become delayed, the wind stopped blowing, the water wasn’t splashing anymore, my body was frozen in time. Then I realized what was happening, gravity was going to take his revenge. For some reason, on this particular day an invisible force had something against me. I could see the water slowly moving towards me Forrest’s scream still lingering, but barely. Why had I made this decision to jump? I could feel gravity pushing down on me, and time slowing down to make sure I felt every bit of the ice cold liquid. I moved towards the water and with every moment that passed, my fear began to rise along with my morbid prediction of what was to come. The water touched my foot and time returned to its normal state of rhythm, my body was violently thrusted into an uncaring, soundless, frigid place. And once again, while I was submerged in a frozen hell, time stopped to delight in my wild state of numbed suicide. The cold encased me from all sides, it slowly put more and more pressure on my being. The cold began to seep its way into my body after it chilled my outer layer of skin. I launched my feet towards the direction that I thought was the ground, but the cold began to neutralize my body with every moment that I spent in the gravity-less realm. Finally I felt the rough sand on my feet, I tightened my muscles in my legs and I began to feel the water slowly create friction on my body. It flowed around my body freezing me as much as it could with the little time it had. I began to scream while still underwater, just out of pure instinct. I felt the surface of the water break over my head, and the bubbles protruding from my mouth found freedom from their confined world. Once again time returned to its recognizable flow and my body launched out of the water, my vocal cords tightened and continued to vibrate like an entire orchestra composed of only violinists. I found Forrest through my blurred vision and found him still screaming. We stood there for a few moments and shared our pain by simply screaming in each other’s direction while the wind relentlessly stormed our bodies. Finally I ran out of breath but had too much energy to stop the screaming, I inhaled deeply while small droplets of water flew into my mouth off my upper lip. I choked on one or two of the droplets, coughed just enough to add frustration to my discomfort, and continued inhaling. After my compacted lungs were full, I tightened my vocal cords once again, and blew as much air as I could through them. Forrest followed in my action, or I followed him, either way we both ended up screaming as loud as our bodies would let us, while Chaney stood on the beach and sadistically laughed at our misfortune.

There is much more to this story, but I feel like it has been to long since I have published a blog, so I will post this much now, and finish the rest at a later time. I will not finish this particular post with a lesson because the story is not over yet. I will definitely make a part two, and if that becomes too long, I will finish it with a third “Chapter”. Enjoy this section for now, and the rest is coming.

Dustin Douros