The first one hit me. I all but drowned when I was about 8 years old. I was camping with my parents at a motor camp on the side of Lake Pukaki. I went for a canoe paddle on the lake which was freezing cold and fell out of the canoe. It was cold outside and I wore a woollen jumper and gumboots. Long story short. I drowned. I panicked and then felt a wonderful sense of calm, knowing I was the only person on the lake. Turns out I wasn’t and i felt a paddle on my head as I went down. I was rescued. But the feeling of calm when I was certain it was all over was blissful.
I LOVE that first one, Story No. 5: Too Deep. It makes me happy. THIS is special: "And when she’s sure she’ll die, she surfaces. Her lungs fill with air automatically, and her gasp is so loud it seems to come from someone else. Oxygen has never been sweeter, never more appropriate to her body’s design. To be human is to breathe." - MATT!
Excellent supershorts, Matt. You took me on a mini-roller coaster (and I do love roller coasters) ride--up, down, up. Or maybe down, up, down if you were going for a literal roller coaster comparison (because down on the roller coaster is up in the gut?). Roller coaster logic aside, hard to decide which of these three I liked best; each left me with a different feeling. I think though, that I'm going to let the first linger with me. It's the closest to how I feel about the completeness of life when I am able to write. Which is the closest I get to the feeling of "And she knows then that nothing beats this" (my favorite line). Thanks again for the Pod. Was such an honor, and I'll be posting about it in the extremely near future. 🥩
The first one hit me. I all but drowned when I was about 8 years old. I was camping with my parents at a motor camp on the side of Lake Pukaki. I went for a canoe paddle on the lake which was freezing cold and fell out of the canoe. It was cold outside and I wore a woollen jumper and gumboots. Long story short. I drowned. I panicked and then felt a wonderful sense of calm, knowing I was the only person on the lake. Turns out I wasn’t and i felt a paddle on my head as I went down. I was rescued. But the feeling of calm when I was certain it was all over was blissful.
I LOVE that first one, Story No. 5: Too Deep. It makes me happy. THIS is special: "And when she’s sure she’ll die, she surfaces. Her lungs fill with air automatically, and her gasp is so loud it seems to come from someone else. Oxygen has never been sweeter, never more appropriate to her body’s design. To be human is to breathe." - MATT!
Excellent supershorts, Matt. You took me on a mini-roller coaster (and I do love roller coasters) ride--up, down, up. Or maybe down, up, down if you were going for a literal roller coaster comparison (because down on the roller coaster is up in the gut?). Roller coaster logic aside, hard to decide which of these three I liked best; each left me with a different feeling. I think though, that I'm going to let the first linger with me. It's the closest to how I feel about the completeness of life when I am able to write. Which is the closest I get to the feeling of "And she knows then that nothing beats this" (my favorite line). Thanks again for the Pod. Was such an honor, and I'll be posting about it in the extremely near future. 🥩