Jumping (5 page)

“I can understand the act of child bearing as some kind of biological imperative, and you have relief when you act according to it,” I said, “but,
glad
?”

“Well, what about that feeling—that excitement and aliveness he feels the moment he jumps and feels his feet leaving the ground, knowing he's made the commitment? Doesn't it sound like a kind of happiness? It does to me. The kind that's heart-poundingly, breath-shorteningly
real
? The kind you know is brief, and more precious because of that? The kind that makes you feel as if you've suddenly entered territory, in and outside of yourself, that you didn't know existed? And you like it?”

I saw his face lit by this discussion, from the inside, where his passion is, and I was moved. I know that his passion is driven by sadness and longing, too.

I was caught up for a moment in the force of his description. Then I said, “But we usually know the
ending
of those kinds of jumps. We have a parachute, or others have done it before us and survived, or we know it's supposed to be fun, not life threatening.”

“Oh, he knows there might be a crash, into oblivion, or something worse, some pain and horror. He's taken a big risk here. He could die. But I'll tell you what I really believe, what I think made jumping possible for him, despite his knowing how it might end. I think the alternative scared him more.” He turned from his pacing and looked at me intently, watchfully.

“Alternative? What alternative?”

“I think Duncan Robert had always been fascinated by the potential of what we can't or don't know and often bored by or disappointed in the reality of what we think we can and do know. You know, those commonly held beliefs we're all expected to use to navigate our lives by—untried, untested, unfounded by us, personally. Who you can and can't love, when, where and how; when, where and how to live; when, where and how to die. Maybe that's why he jumped—looking for the excitement of acting on his own decision, that sort of aliveness, before he died. Not just to purchase, through your own hard work and sweat equity, a facsimile of someone else's life, by the book. He looked for a way to live his life as his own.”

He turned to lean his hands on the porch railing and stare out into the dark, watching as a car drove by on the road at the end of his drive. I thought about what he's said for a moment, trying to think how I can be clearer about my confusion. “Why do you think he felt that way, that he preferred jumping to the alternative?”

“Because he was restless. Because he said there had to be more. Because he kept finding ways to not follow the norm. He took a year off school, and everyone said he wouldn't return to finish, but he did. He hung out with the one guy in town with AIDS, even though everyone else seemed to think they'd catch it. He took in strays—cats, dogs, the occasional wounded bird. He seemed unable to settle for things the way they were. He kept his own hours, he wouldn't work a standard nine to five job, he wouldn't ‘settle down,’ he wouldn't pick the acceptable mate. Reggie being African American, that's definitely not the expected in these parts. Maybe he did find the best of a life, his ‘something more,’ in those first few moments in the Void.”

I tried to get hold of this thought. “Are you speaking metaphorically, then?” I asked, “The idea of jumping as a vehicle for gaining ‘something more’?”

“Look, this is all I've said so far: We know something about jumping, and it's not all bad. In life, we've all had some jumps of our own that were pretty good, that we're glad we did, and we'd do them again. Many of them were fun. We agree there's something unique about jumping, something that gives us our own experience, because the sensation of it can take us deeply inside ourselves, whether we're jumping rope, jumping out of a swing, bungee jumping, or even if we're jumping tandem.”

“Jumping tandem?” I asked, not sure what that means.

“It's the only way I've jumped out of a plane, attached to the trainer,” he said. He looked at me with a wry, sideways grin. “I'll admit it. I was too scared to jump alone, not sure I could handle emulating what Duncan Robert had done. It was an incredible experience. And I still felt the adrenaline rush for three days after. I did it to try to feel what Duncan Robert might have felt. And I learned, even though jumps have things in common, your jump is your jump,” he said. He looked at me again and sighed. “And the big and scary ones can be profound.”

“It's one of the easiest, most primary ways to know you're alive, to learn the parameters of your abilities and possibilities. If something or someone didn't provoke you, challenge you, tease you, push you into jumping, you would never have known that sensation of rushing into yourself, of meeting yourself so frankly, so openly. Maybe jumping should be an everyday activity? Even a required activity? Maybe if you haven't felt compelled to jump somewhere in your life, you haven't fully lived? That's what I think I think,” he said with a laugh.

“I have no idea what I think!” I shouted, with a laugh, letting my pencil jump in the air and catching it. “I haven't thought about it!

“I can remember the first time I jumped rope,” I remembered out loud to Miles, “with my sisters holding the ends of the rope, not sure I could navigate the timing and the sweep of the rope, not believing I was as smart and as quick as they were. I have to admit that I was pretty impressed with myself when I knew the rope had cleared the ground under my feet. Then I got my rhythm, and it felt easier. I forgot what a sense of accomplishment I got from that. What a rite of passage that was. I had forgotten.”

He laughed and gave a little two-footed jump, shouting back, “That's what I'm talking about! You made your own jump! And we don't really forget our jumps. They leave their mark. What would it feel like to you if you jumped right now, Babe—right where you are, not into the Void or even out of a swing? You just jumped. Why can't we still do it?

“Nowadays, fun tends more and more to have to do with us watching someone else doing something that's supposed to be fun. Our fun is supposed to be watching or reading or manipulating something that someone else has created. And it's so tied up with time and work—it has to be allotted a certain hour or week or holiday at some special place or other. It's like they've taken our joy and given us pleasure instead—a pale substitute—and Duncan Robert felt that loss.”

T
HE FOLLOWING NIGHT
I couldn't sleep, as I lay and thought about everything I was learning about Duncan Robert's jump into the Void. The more I heard, the closer I felt to Miles and by extension to Duncan Robert, and the harder it got to write. It was becoming personal. I had no idea where to start when it came to writing about the Void now.

I lay in the dark, thinking of Duncan Robert at the jump, as he felt his feet leave the ground, getting that sensation of falling, tumbling, nothing to grab onto, leaving everything behind. Maybe calling for his mother, as they say dying soldiers do on the battlefield. This jumping into the Void is serious business. If he ever returned, which most people assumed he wouldn't, he'd be different.

Two sleepless nights later I couldn't ruminate on my own anymore and I headed back to Miles's little house, waiting for him to get home from the community college. I'd brought dinner, from Alpine Alley, to feel as if I was contributing something, not just taking. I wasn't quite ready to expose him to my cooking.

We sat out on his porch after dinner, sipping tea, staring into the darkness that ringed the porch and extended out to the road, where it was broken by the lone street light at the end of his drive. I thought about the difference in visiting the dark, as we do each night, from the safety of our own well-lit territory, versus jumping into darkness on its own terms, not knowing if we'd see light again. Finally I couldn't wait any longer. “What do we know about the Void?” I asked Miles, imagining he knows quite a bit.

“As you probably know,” he said, and I heard the tone of the teacher for the first time, “the idea of the Void has been with us a long time. I've done a lot of reading on it, and discovered it's been a philosophical, literary, and religious notion since at least 300-400 BC, probably longer. It's a part of our spiritual and cultural heritage, no matter our religion. Aristotle and other Greeks like Democritus believed a Void was the space between things necessary for growth and movement,” he paused and smiled and me. “The means by which we get from here to there—which is what Duncan Robert did.

“The ancient Chinese, about the same time, were formulating the basis of Taoism and Buddhism and noted the necessity of the Void, too, as the beginning of all being. They wanted to access it, to ignite being out of non-being. It's the basis of meditation, for example—to achieve a state of emptiness, making the mind a Void. We do that to prepare space for what can enter—to activate the space with our own spirit. Some say Christianity doesn't have a concept of the Void; some, like Thomas Merton, say it does.”

He paused again before saying, “This is nothing Duncan Robert knew about. These are things I've learned about since.”

Some of this was familiar to me, from my own readings over the years. I asked him, “So, is the Void really nothing, or is it more of a blank slate? And if it's nothing, why do we fear it?”

He was ready with answers. “Because it's empty, and emptiness scares us. We're afraid it really might exist, as a place, and we might end up there in the dark, all by ourselves. It's correlated with Black Holes and vortexes, and other dark places, too—places where unknown forces might take you and never return you, collapsing you or distorting you in some way. Its very name suggests it's de
void
of anything and everything, so you could expect no comfort there.

“And it's always there. We've seen to that. We seem to continually create the idea of it, tell stories of it, include it in our philosophical and religious discourse. We seem to
need
it. That's what I think. It's the collection place—the dump—for everything we don't want. We create it—by pulling our deepest fears together in one place, under one name, and then treating that mental construction like an actual place.”

He stopped and looked at me intently. I held steady, not knowing if I'd ever get used to the power of those looks. “To Duncan Robert, a
life
could be an unacknowledged void—a place where we lived among our deepest fears, keeping them alive with our attention, our dread, our attachment—and we could be caught there forever by our own impassivity.”

“Okay, wait now,” I said, looking at what I've written. “A
life
as a void? Let me get this straight. What you're suggesting is that the Void—
the
Void on the outskirts of town—is imaginary? A thought construct? Isn't that like a metaphor? And haven't we all seen it with our own eyes?”

“Yes and no. You could look at it that way, something that may or may not have been imaginary, but becomes real with time. I mean, when anything collects that kind of ongoing energy, across space and time, there's got to be something to it. It's as if the energy, so focused, manifests something real. It is something we can see, but it's also a manifestation of a metaphor for emptiness, which we otherwise couldn't see. I think it's as real as we are. But I think it is empty—an empty dark place, until we fill it—with fears, with held breaths, with a jump. It's like fear—it's a concept, but it's as real as the human condition, right? What's more real than fear? Well, the Void is as real as fear. Can't thinking of the Void feel like thinking of anything we fear?”

Here we go again, I thought, trying to keep up, thinking about the reality of fear—though it's not a thing or a place. “So, over time, we've made it into this receptacle for fear—an adult version of the space that's under the bed? We enliven the Void, by filling it with our own fears? We bring it to life, make it what it is?”

“Yes,” he laughed. “I guess you could say so. I think, in Duncan Robert's case, the act of jumping enlivened the Void. It was just lying there in the woods, until Duncan Robert jumped into it. Then it became something, for him. And his jump became something for everyone else.

“A Void calls for a jump—for someone to leave where they were and want to get to somewhere else. The jumper makes it what it is—a means to an end. Duncan Robert had to physically risk leaving earth for a moment, trusting he would land, finding a way to somewhere else.”

“Why would we choose the Void, though, as a means of getting from
here
to wherever
there
is?” I asked, seeing myself standing at the edge of the Void again, in the fading afternoon sunlight. “Why would anyone jump into a dark hole in the ground?”

“Because there aren't that many places we can find to get us from
here
to
there
, and because I think it
enlivens
us to do so. It's all tied up together—the nature of the Void, the nature of the jump, the nature of us. Each calls out something in the other. A Void calls for a jump, a jump calls for a jumper, and we have to decide if we're a jumper. To be a jumper requires specific things of us—a certain focus, a certain energy or enthusiasm, a certain purpose. I think of those September 11th jumpers, choosing to jump versus choosing to wait for something to save them or choosing to succumb to the fire. I believe there's a certain triumph in a jump, no matter what happens, because it's a choice—a heroic choice. Those jumps became something powerful for us, too, images never to be forgotten. I know, I know. Not everyone would see it that way. These are my late-night thoughts.”

I was so caught up in the discussion now, I hardly took time to jot down a note. “So when we jump into it, we create something—the Void becomes something. What does it become? And can a person ever come out of it? I mean, what does jumping into fear get us?” I'm stumbling over my own questions, excited to be talking about the Void to someone who knows it better than I do.

“I don't know,” he said, shaking his head. “Look, if you think about it, you could argue that the Void doesn't last very long. How could it? You jump into it, it becomes known. Then it's not the Void anymore, because it's known. It's something else. So you have to keep jumping, not just one time. It's a life-long thing.” The look on my face must have spooked him.