˙˙00˙ ˙00˙01˙03˙01Philosophy at Night˙00 ˙ ˙˙01 ˙˙ ˙03˙02PUH / AGONY ˙02˙01˙01˙00˙ ˙˙01Alone, that was what I felt like, totally alone. Not that strange, though; I was totally alone, at least what comes to human beings; the nearest one was at the other side of the safety line, some twenty metres up, sitting on the cold rocks, probably staring up at the stars, wondering whether I saw anything down here or not. Not, that is what I'd say; even equipped with a boosterlamp, I saw very, very dimly. The thin ray of light only made me aware of how I little I saw when everything came around. They say you need to have a strong mind to do a night's dive, and I agree; it feels quite nasty, especially if you dive alone like I did. Quiet, oh so quiet, the only thing you hear is the sound of the air you just let out; the sound of bubbles seeking their way up to the surface, up to Mother Earth again. Sometimes you hear them explode, sometimes they hit the surface with a real BANG, sometimes you hear when the used air caresses the fresh as the two are united. Of course you hear your own breathing too, the best Dart Vader sound you possibly can imagine; hoarse, slow breaths, aiming to provide the diver with enough oxygen to keep him going, managing to both keep him going and keep him alert. That is as a matter of fact what you are at night; alert. While at day time you can dive with your eyes half open (there are, after all, no really dangerous creatures in Swedish waters), your eye lids are open to a hundred percent and your mind to a hundred and five. Of course, there are still no dangerous creatures around ("They come at night" as Nute put it), and you have nothing special to fear as the only thing that has changed since the sun went down is that darkness has come. Still you are kind of scared. You laugh at a big piece of rock at tea-time. You swim there, and you spot a big rock. Even if you come to think of it, you would hardly do something, maybe except for sitting down on it and look at its surroundings. Then, twelve hours later, you swim slowly, looking around, feeling a bit nervous, a bit scared and totally aware, and what do you see? You don't see a rock, that I can assure you. You see a huge, black shadow slowly growing in front of you; overwhelming you, devouring you like a beast. Your heart begins to beat faster, and sometimes you think Jaws, a car wreck with bodies inside, It, the creature of the Black Lagoon, that and that. That feels nasty, even though you know that there, after all, are no monsters here. Most of the times, however, you don't put a label on your fear. The great, dim blackness in front of you your fear, you do not know what it is, and it flees as soon as get close enough to be able to see it. This way, you never get to know your fear, you never grab it and behold it, and as you don't, you'll never come over it, you will always feel that eerie atmosphere at times when you cannot indentify neither what is around you nor what you are afraid of. Not that it is unpleasant to dive at night, not at all. It is extremely cool, one of the most thrilling experiences you can ever go through. After my first one, I was so high that a blood test surely would have revealed twenty five percent blood, twenty five percent ephedrine and fifty percent adrenaline. Still today, after countless visits in the Land of Utter Darkness, your heart keeps on beating and you go on listening to those hoarse sound of yours. I think that no matter how many times you go through it, it will never become an act of routine. It sure won't for me. What is scary about, say, a perch? I mean, the fish is extremely seldom more then thirty centimetres long, its skin is green, red, black and silver-coloured, beautiful indeed. It eats worms, insects, bread and small things like that, and it certainly is more afraid of you that you are afraid of it, if you happen to be afraid of it, that is, a possibility as one out of thousand humans suffer from ichtyphobia, the fear of fish. (No divers suffer from that, or?) When diving, you know that even if you run across a gigantic shoal of say four thousand perch, nothing can happen, nothing at all. Some of them come up to you to look at you, but most of them swim away. Peace, harmony and love. What is scary about a black thing hitting your flash-light, your only source of Life when diving at night? What is so scary about being surrounded by hundreds of things, some of which you can see rather clearly, some of which you can spot, some of which you cannot see at all, you can only feel their presence, what is so scary about that? It is, after all, only perch! You are a little afraid, not of the perch, but of the rapid movements of dark shadows around you, of the sudden, sharp rays of silver light that hits your cyclop when your flash-light rays bounces at a fish, of things you can't indentify in spite your directing your light directly towards it. Fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the things you know are there but you cannot see, fear of the things that you don't know are there, fear of things that you don't know of. The simplest thing, say a dead, rotten tree, get morbid propotions at night, the branches look like arms, like limbs of the Unknown, wanting to tear you to pieces, to swallow you, to take you to places you don't want to see, bring things upon you that you don't want to meet and reveal pictures you wish you'd never seen. You know, of course, that a dead tree can't do that, that a dead tree is dead, that it will never rise and cause evil upon you, but even when you have indetyfied that thing looking like a beasty hand in front of you, even then you feel that presence; it is still there. As much as you laugh at a fallen tree at night, you respect it when dawn comes, and believe me, dawn under water is not like dawn above the surface; the grey, blackish light creeps upon you slowly. You do not notice it first, and when you do, everything is already dwelled in that dim fog of nightly experiences. You wish but two things: that you were someplace else and that you were where you actually were. The Perplexity of Sea at night. The thing is that you are safe. You have two air bottles on your back with seven times two times two hundred litres of air, a total of two thousand eight hundred litres of fresh, clean air. You have your dry suit that warms and comforts you; you are warm and dry. You have your knives, one really big, large enough to give Jaws something to think about, and one smaller, good for cutting of ropes, hoses, wires and whatever else you come to think of. You have two flash-lights, one really big in one of your hands, one smaller (Mini Maglight, actually) attached to your left arm so that there's light wherever you direct your left arm. However, even tough these lamps really boasts on dry land, they give but modest of light down there, modest but enough. Further on, you have the possibility to rapidly take off all the lead and your heavy air tanks, causing your floating up to the surface like a piece of cork. Last, you are connected with the man on land by a rope, a rope that is connected to your waist in one of the ends, connected to the land man's waist in the other end. Consequently, you can talk with each other (one short pull corresponds to OK (and similar), two to NO, three to COME UP ( down there:I'M COMING UP) and four to EMERGENCY, PULL ME UP. You can of course work your own signals out too.) The fact is, you are safe! If you run out of air, which is a slow procedure, lasting for say fifteen minutes, during which you notice that it becomes harder to breathe (nowadays you most divers have an "areometer" that shows exactly how much air you've got left. I don't.), and during which you can ascend nice and easy, knowing that you have your reserve of seven times two times fifty lites left. If you don't notice that you're running out of air, why, you just pull the reserve and go back up again. Even if you get hurt, not that liable, you just ask to be pulled up, and the man at the other side does so. If you faint (never heard of that, but...), the hopefully awake man at the other side will notice that your air bubbles stop coming up, and he will pull you up. All these problems are practically solved if you dive two together. If one gets in trouble, the other one helps the first one. The two divers, tied together with a say two to five metres long rope, can't lose each other, and help is never more than five metres away. Most of the accidents of nightly diving have been total screw-ups by the divers. One dived alone with no man on land and consequently no rope, paniced and all that. Another one dived together with a buddy, but as they were not connected, she got away from her buddy, never to be seen again. The examples are many, and they all look about the same. The truth is clear: follow some simple rules (some of which are listed above) and you're as safe as you can get under water! After all, there are accidents you can't really help. Your air bottles might explode even though you had them checked a month ago (I've never heard of exploding air bottles, though), or you might run into our Jaws friend (if you dive in South Africa or Australia, for example). That is life, you can't really help it, acceptable or not. After all, the breaks of your brand new Volvo just might stop functioning, leaving you without real possibilities to stop your vehicle that runs is 130 km/h. You know that if you drive a car, there is a slight possibility of your getting in trouble even if you are a perfect driver. The same thing goes for all diving. Experience makes masters, and masters don't cheat with security as masters know they, too, are vulnerable. The dive was over. What had I seen, what had I experienced. Well, all that happened is this article, i.e. impossible to put into words. There you sit, in front of your screen, some of you at The Party 5, others at home, and you cannot understand why I was afraid of a dead, rotten tree. You are not alone; I don't either. ˙01