The Skydive Video

Here it is. For those that wanted to see all the action, here you go! Note, the video doesn't really kick in for about 13 seconds after it's buffered. Be patient.

WMV Format: http://xpstream.winisp.net/agentcox/Skydive.wmv

Sailing

This weekend, I introduced three people to sailing. You're looking at my buddy Jack, who, after only a few hours on the water, single-handedly sailed the Capri 22' on Elliott Bay. I've also introduced Tyler and Betsy to the world of sailing this weekend.

My sailing instructor and mentor, Nathan, has made a very simple fact of my life clear to me.

It's time for me to admit to myself that this sailing thing has me hooked, and I had better get serious about it.

It's time to go for my captain's license. Captain Cox.

Booze

BOOZE IS not GOOD FOOD

Happy Anniversary

NavChart 008
Originally uploaded by agentcox.

It's my two-year anniversary with The Company. Seriously, the map metaphor works - I'm trying to chart my own life as much as anything. In any case, I've at least got sailing. I've got good crew for Saturday and Sunday, and beautiful weather. Who could ask for more?

The End of Grafts

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9397182/

The link above is to an article about a doctor preparing for the first facial transplant operation to be performed on a live human. Not a graft, a complete transplant. Stem to stern.

I mention it only because it evokes something in me - it's some kind of horror to consider; I'm not sure if that means I'm overly attached to my own appearance, or that I consider the possible consequences to be so grotesque that it seems sacreligous to attempt it.

I don't really know my own feelings on the subject well enough to say more, but for those that want to wrap their brains around the subject a bit, do take a look. There aren't any real pictures, just diagrams and vivid descriptions.

Not sure what else to say about this; it's probably one of the most disarming pieces of medical information that I've read in a while, right up there with fungating wounds and the Ilizarov system, and I thought that it warranted being mentioned. Even if I feel a little uneasy, I can see progress, and this looks like it. I hope this will be a successful pioneer effort.

iPod

iPodNano 021
Originally uploaded by agentcox.

I fell into the Apple trap tonight. I don't know if there's a human being alive that has what it takes to resist an iPod Nano. I couldn't.

Autism, Changing Your Attitude

http://www.gettingthetruthout.org/index.html

"Getting The Truth Out" is a pretty shocking page about autism that delivers in two hard gut-punches.

First, you get the "isn't it tragic" face of autism as echoed by the medical community, concerned parents, and every single sorry copy of Reader's Digest.

Then, after you're just about ready to cry and get your Granddad's copies of Life magazine out of the attic to remember simpler times, the face is turned completely around.

You find that the subject, a "helpless victim" of autism, is an eloquent, powerfully outspoken individual that's angry at having been typecast and used politically by an autism lobbyist group as a sob story poster child.

What this person wants, as far as I can tell, is to be recognized for who she is inside, treated fairly, and not discriminated against for a condition that she had no choice in being born with.

Fine, I say.

But how?

The worry with autism, at least with higher-level functioning autism, isn't that those with autism can't think or do things. They can. They can do plenty. The issue is more subtle than that and really exposes all of the little nitpicky unwritten social rules that make our society work from second to second without constant retooling.

From what I gather, and it isn't much, autism creates a social disconnect between those that have it and those that don't. Those without autism don't understand why those with autism aren't sending or picking up cues that are taken for granted - body language, eye contact, common responses to common phrases ("How are you? Fine", etc...) - and those with autism are frustrated that those without autism are so shortsighted that they cannot see beyond the lack of cues and give those with autism the same respect and attention they'd give anyone else.

I'm worried that I don't have what I need, including the time or attention span, to learn a whole new set of social cues and body language, and to retool my mind and inner responses to accept the lack or difference in these cues - a translation table, I guess - as a perfectly acceptable alternative to receiving them normally.

I feel like there's a mountain of special cases in front of me, and I'm being asked to be sensitive and caring but not patronizing or fearful in dealing with every single one of them in turn and maintain different rules, or perhaps create an overarching superset of rules that does not rely on cues or social subtlety of any kind because it cannot be assumed to be gotten reliably.

And, you see, even my interpretation of what autism means is so wrong for so many people who are autistic, because it's different for everyone, and their attitudes about their autism are different, it's going to be another order of magnitude of special cases to deal with.

To me, it's another variation of the "feed the world" problem.

If we took all the food we had right now and all of our growing capacity, would we have enough food to feed the world? What would have to be downsized? Who would have to take less in order for others to get more?

Some of the same being true here with regards to time and social efficiency.

Has anybody ever gotten the feeling that global social harmony, in which everyone is guaranteed the same opportunities, everyone is treated equally, everyone is afforded everything they need to have as equal a shot at life's treasures as everyone else - is going to be really, really hard to do?

What kind of person am I supposed to be to support this great project of global understanding? Am I supposed to be going to sensitivity training? I don't think I'm even that interested, I mean, maybe I'm being a bastard saying it, I don't know.

I realize that there's a big problem here, what with the stigmas we attach to disabilities and those that deal with them daily (good article here on medical vs. social models), but I'm really wondering if we're all going to change to be as inclusive as we truly need to be (and again, what is the goal here? Awareness? Equal social opportunity? Nobody's ever told me), what will it really take? We can stop being squishy, I think, with this "if just one person understands, the world is so much better", because that's not really working out very well. As "Getting The Truth Out" so clearly states, the problem is within the entire framework of society. Getting just one person to understand or "be aware" won't help. Seriously. One person? Per what? Per hour? Per second? What is the rate of spread of these ideas, how deep are they getting, are they working their way into organizations, what policy are they creating...who's asking these questions?

Maybe I'm just hanging on too much to my own way of life and afraid that learning something new about someone else will force me to change, oh God, but has anyone taken a good no-bullshit look at what we're going to do to make this world work best for everyone? Is it even mathematically possible to do? Does it fit the rules of logic? Can everyone be served equally by the world's services, nourished equally by the world's goods? Can everyone get equal consideration?

Maybe I am an idiot, but nobody has ever told me these goals were realistic.

I want to know, and after reading "Getting The Truth Out" I realize I'm tired of all the saccharine crap that I've been fed about the global, socially inclusive future. Has anyone factored the cost? Has anyone assessed the technology needs? Have we figured out what we need to have edited into or out of our cultural lexicon and what organiziational changes will be required?

I don't want more pictures of people holding hands. I don't want more catchy slogans and worthless bumper stickers. Getting to a point where we accept those with disabilities on a more frontal-lobe level where our animal sides don't want them to disappear, where we actually can use our brains to help us overcome the differences between peoples rather than just pretending we can; that's what I want.

But I don't see that. All I see are pretty dreams and donation cans in the checkout lane at the local Safeway and I'm starting to realize that that's not helping anybody.

Now, who can tell me, when we're talking global equality: can we reach it, and if so, how, how much will it cost, and what will we all have to do to change? Point me somewhere, anywhere that's got this information.

Flight Club, II

I cannot breathe.

Whoever told me in voice or in print so many years ago that freefall was a liberating, inspiring experience is missing a set of nerves. Freefall is terrifying, cold, suffocating, noisy, and painful.

Breathe through your teeth. I cannot smile. The air cuts up through the goggles when I smile, and it feels like the lids of my eyes are going to tear off and leave me looking like the victim of some horrible POW camp torture. I cannot smile. But I cannot breathe. I have to smile to breathe. I smile. I don't smile. I smile again. It hurts.

In freefall, you are falling at a hundred and twenty miles an hour (it'd be two hundred if it wasn't for a small drogue parachute trailing behind you), exposing as much of yourself to the air as you possibly can to help slow your fall. Every cubic inch of air that has the chance at a piece of that exposed flesh does not waste the opportunity to pound the absolute living shit out of it, and it does it with the noise of a freight train.

I'm folded out like an origami piece started all over from scratch, some kid having folded the crane back into a flat blue sheet. I can't see, hear, or even feel my instructor until two thumbs poke out around either side of my head. I'm clear.

Clear to do what?

When you get a certain distance away from the plane, you get the thumbs. That means you're clear to act like an ass in front of the camera mounted on the head of the guy that's falling right next to you. You can do whatever. Smile, stick out your tongue, give the thumbs-up, give the finger, or flap like a bird.

Flap like a bird. That's what my instructor said. Sounds good. I flap. How stupid. I can't breathe. I'm up here, with twenty seconds left of free fall, maybe a minute if the chute doesn't open up, thinking about being a lawn dart in some cattle farm, and I'm flapping my arms like I've got my genetic wires crossed and think I've got hollow bones and a beak.

The cameraman's smiling. He's smiling right at me with a little red light over his right eye and a white circle painted on his goggles. That's his viewfinder for the camera that's taking the wind in stride, riding shotgun in a cradle on his helmet. His face is being battered by the wind just like mine, but I know, I just know, that he's got a smile twice as wide as mine. I cannot top this guy, never in a million years. I want to tell him something, so he knows that I know that everything's okay. But I can't. Nobody can say or hear anything. It is deafening, falling in the largest wind tunnel ever designed.

He's videotaping while he's falling, videotaping me falling, attached to the chest of my instructor, who's also falling, behind Jessie and Vladimir who are falling, ahead of four other people who are falling, and we're all falling. Falling right out of the sky, being beaten senseless by the wind and we're all just a shroud of nylon each and four connection points away from never doing this or anything else ever again.

He comes up for a quick hand grab - I grab his hands, know he's there - got to keep my head up, give a good arch - and then he's got a thumbs-up.

What does it mean? Was there a second sign? I can't breathe. He is leaving. He is dropping like a rock, like there's any possible way to drop any faster. But he is; he's gone, looking up at me like he was underwater looking up to the surface.

Something grabs me by the crotch and digs in, yanking hard. My head snaps down and I feel like I'm standing in midair, propped up like a puppet. My spine goes straight, my arms slap down against my sides and the leg of my jumpsuit on the right side slides up exposing my thigh to cold, bare air. The noise is gone except for a deep, slushy slap that I recognize from a million movies as the canopy billowing full of air. The chute's just opened up. Freefall is over. And for an instant, the nothing that is everywhere is baffling, impossible.

It's so quiet. It's like dying and finding out there's no Heaven, no Hell. I didn't expect this.

In freefall, there is no peace. Everything is a war between your body and the world around you. Everything is telling you, including every cell inside your body, that you are in an unsustainable position. You have no ability, no possibility, no right to be falling this fast, this far, and in this way. You are beaten, yelled at, and frozen in an attempt to get you to do something to change this mess. In controlled descent, the canopy turns all conflict into harmony.

He's talking to me. Asking me how it is. It's better, I want to say. So much better. But all I can do is exult, nonsense and hell-yeah's and all of the macho stuff they taught me and I taught me when I thought it mattered. I want to tell him that it was so hard to freefall. I want him to understand what it felt like to me.

So I do. So I tell him, thousands of feet up, because I can talk to him. It's that quiet. I just lean my head over and tell him that I realized my fear right as I went out the door.

He tells me: that's when it happens for most people.

We spin; we descend like a roller coaster in slow motion with no screams, no noise, just a gentle -woosh- of air like there was a little desk fan following us down.

It's like being in a dream. It doesn't register. There's a two-mile long train chugging along down below. I can see all two miles of it - it's tiny. Miniature cars. The "16" painted on the runway of the airport. Our plane is landing below us.

Before I know it, we're on a final approach and I realize there's a very forward momentum to us. We're moving at about fifteen miles an hour forward, and we're going to squeak in on the grass. I lift my legs up to let my instructor bring us in.

The ride is coming to a complete stop.

It's nothing. Not even a scrape from the gravel like I got from the slides in the park when I was a kid. The landing is cake. From ten-thousand feet to zero feet, four minutes and the landing is pedestrian. It doesn't make sense. My brain overloads and drips out of my nose in a big runny wad of snot. It was cold up there.

But it doesn't matter what was. The danger, the pain, it doesn't matter now. I made it from there to here, alive. There's still something too unreal about it. I can see how shooters lose track of the number of bullets they shoot, the targets they engage, the time it happened, and where they were. When your brain doesn't understand things, it doesn't feel obligated to remember them right.

It screws them up, making them fit into your normal world, to try to bring them back to reality. To try to keep you sane. To protect you. I realize I went outside the bounds of that mental protection by doing something this foreign, something this strange.

I've scared my own mind into telling itself stories about where I was. Good. When it's done, maybe it'll wake up and realize that this is how it's going to have to learn sometimes.

Sometimes it doesn't make sense, but sense isn't all there is to reality.

Sometimes reality comes first, sense second. Reality reaches the ground first.

Flight Club, I

I’m not thinking about avgas. She’s telling me there’s a $6.75 surcharge because the cost of aviation fuel is so high. They call it avgas. More money. So what. I’m jumping out of a plane – another seven dollars isn’t going to kill me.

The plane has stickers in it. One of them says “Flight Club”. The aft section of the cabin has a tear in the rear cargo screen right over the warnings about “Max Load”. Gouges in the cabin are everywhere. The carpet is ripped to shit and it feels like we’re sitting on bleachers, back in junior high.

Sure, I’ll take video. Extra altitude? 12,000 feet? Throw that in too.

The Cessna Caravan is shaking like a leaf. Our teeth are rattling right along as the plane tears up into the sky, bound for the clouds. My ears are hurting as the membranes flex, trying to get used to the pressure drop. We’re moving fast, climbing as quickly as the Caravan will go. We go as high as the clouds and stop – that’s the rule. You don’t dive through clouds.

We’ll only be able to get 7,900, maybe, they say. Weather’s no good. Do you still want to go? It’s your call.

Your call.

I’m watching outside, looking through a big transparent plastic roller panel covering the long side door on the Caravan. It all looks the same – it all looks high, it all looks unreal, it isn’t possible that we’re going to jump out of this thing. The videographer shows me his altimeter. It’s a mutant wristwatch, an oversized dial on a wrist strap, painted with kid-friendly colors and holding one single hand pointed directly at the “10”. That’s ten-thousand feet.

We’re at 10,000 feet. Not 7,900. Ten-thousand. They call that “Angels 10”. And no clouds below. There’s a hole in the sky that we’re going to go through, from ten-thousand to zero.

The big roller panel slides up and out of the way. The slipstream is suddenly very apparent, very loud, and very uncomfortable.

There are only two rules. The first – smile. The second – arch your back.

A student jumper creeps toward the giant hole in the side of the plane, sky streaming past, wind already pinching at his jumpsuit, trying to sweep him away. He takes a breath, looking like he’s swallowing back spit, and jumps. We watch just a flash of him and he’s gone – sucked out of the Caravan and out there.

They tell me about rule one again. Remember to smile. They tell me I’ll have to – because the wind is so hard on free-fall, at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, you won’t be able to breathe unless you breathe through your teeth. So smile, and breathe through your teeth.

We’re strapped at four connection points, Kelly says. He’s behind me – I’m sitting in front of him, right between his legs, clinched to him by four harnesses that run from his front to my back. Jessie is on my right, clipped to Vladimir. The stream is waiting, looking impatient, the engine growling hard, the pilot ready to land and get it over with. No wasting time.

Jessie and Vlad are first. They scoot forward, on their butts, up to the side exit. Jessie waves to the videographer, and Vlad pushes on her. They tip over the side and disappear.

There’s nobody left in front of me. There’s no stalling. No panicking. When it comes to life, there isn’t anything unless you stop thinking about it and start doing it.

Either I’m going to scoot up to the door or I’m not.

The wind seems to be howling, now, shrieking in terror or delight, ready to claim us, to take us in. I notice Kelly’s altimeter, and again look at the hand on the ten. I don’t need to see it anymore. I’m scooting up. The wind is tearing at my feet now, jamming them out, trying to pull them off of my legs and into space. The goggles I’m wearing are cutting into my cheekbones. I feel a need to release, to complete this. You can’t go halfway. My feet are already into space. What’s another six feet of me going to change?

Either I’m going to go out or not.

I don’t have the time to finish my sentence. Kelly howls; a scream of a dying man’s last hurrah, the scream of the delightfully damned, and we’re not safe anymore, we’re not safe at all. Everything is a million and a half miles down and there isn’t any choice left to life anymore.

Oh, Christ, what have I done -

I feel a push in the small of my back. I’m tipping. I’m falling over. I have a last flash of regret and feel like a scream is building in my heart, but the wind rips it clean away as we go over the edge and into the air.

Terra

It is done.

We Have The Altitude

...We're jumping, bitches!

If you see a speck in the sky at 0900, say a prayer for that nylon to work like they say it's supposed to.

I promise not to say anything stupid up there like "I can see my house from here!"

We got a deal?

Good.

Mercury Steady

Goddamn these low pressure zones. Tomorrow morning's going to mark the second day I've tried to jump out of an airplane and I'm really hoping I won't have to wait for a third, but it's miraculous - almost the point of Jesus-miraculous - how much the forecast can change in a few scant hours.

For those that use the metric system, I'll explain. I've been trying to skydive. It's nothing incredible, just a tandem jump, since it'd cost me almost two grand and twenty-five days to even get qualified to jump on my own, but I've been looking forward to it all the same.

In a culture that at once ridicules and secretly wishes to be the people that launch themselves with wild abandon out of aircraft, off cliffs, towers, and antennas, there isn't a part of me that's yet to think that these fleet-footed flyers aren't somehow gifted with a little something extra that comes with that first breath of thin air. Maybe some kind of freedom. Maybe a little bit of righteous separation from the ground-pounders down below, and the noise and cramped confines of the aircraft overhead.

Or, maybe these motherfuckers really are completely off their nut and do it because they think the ground's one giant ball pit at Chuck E Cheese's and are just waiting for their chance to slam face-first into it at one-hundred-and-thirty miles an hour.

Point is, I want to know which it is, and what it'll do for my body, mind, bowel control, the works. And I'm praying to God, the Gods, The Smiths, whoever, to send me fair weather (and not this now-you-see-the-sun-now-you-don't bullshit) and a fine jump tomorrow morning at 9 AM. You hear me out there? This is part of my birthday present, so if it doesn't trouble you or anyone else too much, just leave the clouds open when you get up tomorrow so we can see the sun and have it on our backs as we fall from twelve-thousand feet. Because I think it'll be a lot of fun.

And by the way, if I come back in a closed casket because I turned into a Snohomish County lawn dart, try not to laugh too hard or have anything stupid put on my grave. Just because I tried something new and dangerous doesn't give anyone the right to rub it in my face. Have some respect for the dead. Anyway, we'll cross that bridge if we get there.

See you tomorrow.

New Clothes

WHO WANTS TO GO SAILING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS? HUH? ARE YOU REAAAAAADY? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

*ANEURYSM*

Whew. It's been a sailing week. Just today, in honor of my 24th birthday, my father took me on a shopping trip to West Marine to pick up some new gear.

While I'll say the essential-essentials were covered (gloves, glasses), there was plenty that I was happy to say hello to - a hat, new jacket, some deck shoes, and the best dynamic duo of all, the West Marine 3000 Type V auto-inflatable flotation harness with advanced tether for heavy weather.

Special thanks to Dad for being right on target with the presents, and there with the fatherly wisdom right when it's needed most.

I've been out sailing twice this week, maybe one time too many; I think I stressed myself sick after having some close calls the first day. Being hauled up four feet in the air, twenty degrees ass-over-teakettle, wondering if the boat's going to decide to say "fuck it" and dump all the way in the salty, sub-40 drink - it's not pushing the happy button.

But this is how we learn. I know how to push a Capri 22' better, without feeling like I'm on some bullshit amusement park ride.

I want to say special thanks to Mom for being out there with me - absolutely the best deckhand I could ever ask for, even when things got a little dicey. Next sail, coming up soon. I can't wait to wear the new gear.

Oh, who am I kidding - I'm already wearing it. Guess I love playing dress-up. And if you tell anybody that I'll hunt you down with this tether and clip it to your nuts until you call me "Skipper".

Pipeline

I asked Kim for a cigarette and she had one, but no light. I was getting tired of this, in my itchy watch cap and ugly sunglasses; I was supposed to feel really secure that I didn't have a choice in any of this, but as I watched the rain pile down all over the glass, beating a thousand tiny, microscopic drumbeats, halting in three dimensions against the invisible barrier all around us, I realized my shelter - head, heart, or home, was just temporary.

I had to be ready to face the rain however it came down. I shrugged my windbreaker higher on my shoulders, tossing up the collar a bit higher, knowing there wouldn't be much to hold the wind back soon.

"What is it?"
She was asking me. It wasn't someone she was reading on her cell phone, it wasn't a mind game she was playing with her marketing people; she wasn't being glitz for the sake of good press.

She really was being honest.
She was being honest.
I was digging for my book of matches, trying not to answer. Boy, you'd be sorry to answer her in this kind of a mood, with this kind of rain -

"Come on, Michael."
She's playing my tune, now. Using my name. I jerk out a pack of matches from CJ's and fumble to shut the cover before striking. It's always a game - keep it closed, don't keep it closed, have a little fun once in a while.

Don't look at her. Don’t -
"Michael."
The match flares up.
I turn and look at her stupidly, a cigarette poking out of my mouth, balanced between my two rows of teeth, the match dancing, reaching up toward the glass for the relief of the rain. Sulfur is between us, in the cracks of every thought.
"Yeah?" I say around the cigarette, looking at her, unsuspecting, unsuspected. The match flame grows lower.

She is stone. "What."
Not even a question. I don't even rate a question. And I know deep inside she's right to ask - whatever it is she's asking. And I'm a sonofabitch for pretending not to hear her. The rain is drowning everything out. It'd be a pretty bulletproof excuse. I feel like pulling my collar up higher. I'd be Bela Lugosi, all of a sudden.

And then there's running. When you can't hide where you are, run until you can. But there's nowhere to go. Kim knows me well enough. Everyone's told me to search inside myself, and when I do, there she is, and she won't let me forget that I struck a deal with the Devil and I get what I want, sure -

"Your heart's talking, Michael."

- But I get this while I wait. My heart is talking. How do you like that? I shake my head, giving her a healthy snort, and crane my neck down to touch the tip of my cigarette to the match head, when I find it's gone out.

The match is stone cold dead, no smoke, no burnt fingers, nothing. I look up. Kim's gone. She's zeroed out, not a scent of her perfume anywhere; not on me, not next to the wall where she was leaning, probably not even in the shitty bathroom that she tidied up in. She is gone.

Suddenly, my heart makes a wrenching - a single pounding beat against an errant rib and what it had to say is everything. It is everything, live, unrehearsed, one time only, and we weren't recording.

"My heart was talking," I admit to the rain, still spattering against the glass all around. "Okay, it was talking. Are you happy?" the cigarette, still unlit, is about to fall from my mouth. I snatch it out and throw it to the ground. It hits something solid and cracks - it's only paper - and spills tobacco. I tear off the cap and run my hands through my damp hair. "I'll listen to it," I say, louder. "Do you hear me?"

"Do you?"

"Kim?"

Just the rain.