my road-explosion and the death of the deep horizon

Sex and anxiety do not mix.  I had not even wanted to have sex until now, there had been no one to have sex with.  I was coming back to life in every way possible.   I began to believe, no I began to perceive, that everything that was happening around me had a purpose.  My theory in physics required predestination, and while that was inherent in the fundamental principles, I had not applied it to what was happening around me as the theory was built around a math model.

I was, instinctively, feeling pretty forgiving, taking everything in, evaluating it one body part at a time; body, heart and soul, the last of which I don't remember studying in comparative anatomy and which apparently doesn't even belong to me.  I did not realize what I was doing.

Every once in a while, you have one of those "aha" moments in life.  I had not yet realized my condition of virtue, as I said, that did not come until after it was gone.  I had not yet figured out the whole narcissism thing which would be only after I had fallen from virtue and realized it.  However, I was still capable of insights which I had never had  before.

I remember sitting in an eye doctor's office, considering my upcoming blindness and the limitations that would impose on snow-skiing, also bemoaning my economic status as I felt the soles peeling off the 10 year old running shoes that had passed the falling apart stage and were held together my little more than gravity.  Huge sections of the soles flapping in as I moved my feet like so many flags in a breeze.

I had other things bothering me.  The 3 hour delay waiting to see the doctor among them.  Then there was the pig-headedness of those who feel that by attaching a label to you they can get rid of you.  I thought about the foolishness of power in a relationship.  There is no fixed power, it is only what one person gives up for another.  There is a quote in the book, the last part of which I won't use since I don't like to be overly spiritual.  There is a fixed amount of spirituality beyond which I don't travel without a champagne bottle full of holy water and at least a 38 caliber with silver bullets.

The quote, however was this, ‘power said to the world you are mine; love said to the world i am yours.’

That is what power is about in relationships.  Relationships about understanding, take in everything and evaluating it 3 times, three different ways not just once.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty beat up with my blindness and my rotting shoes, and then,  someone was seated next to me.  He had scars which were so disfiguring, it was hard look at him.  We were stuck waiting forever, and so eventually I told him that I had not yet determined whether I would survive the economic disaster that followed the deep horizon disaster.

He in turn told me his story of what had happened which I will try to relate to you, the night of the explosion of the Deep Horizon Oil Rig on April 20, 2010.

It was night time.  Nelson was a deck hand without much to do.  He made sure lines were tight, he oiled, he hauled and he watch television.  He assisted in maintaining the most complex and costly drilling rig in the world.  The well was being closed in, concrete was being incorrectly set, a disaster was forming, but he was blissfully unaware of what went on around him.  His work would start soon enough. 

The rig was losing close to a million dollars a day and large oil leases would be lost if it did not get on its next station.  To make things worse, BP had created a dangerous condition by drilling too deeply into the structure to be mined and was cutting corners to save a few dollars and precious time.

As crews raced to limit the fines based on missing deadlines imposed based on over-scheduling the rig and not safety, he was being lectured on how to pull up anchor and move the rig to the next location as soon as the well was capped.  In the interim, he sat on his bunk and worked a crossword puzzle.  Eight letters, begins with a d and ends with an r, what happens when you rush something dangerous.

The first clue that something was wrong was when the motors pumping cement began to race ominously, sounding out of control to the trained ear.  Nelson, for that was his name, was inside on his bunk but instinctively leapt to his feet.  He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew something was wrong and with the reflexes of a sailor whose ship was in peril he was on his way before he fully knew where he was going.  “I’m going to the deck to see what’s going on.”

The other two men in the bunk looked up, but neither had picked up on the sound and in the way of sailors who live their lives in danger, they said nothing.  One went back to writing a letter, the other to reading.  Nelson reached hallway to the deck.  Before he could open the door it seemed to open itself from the top and he found himself flying backwards.  In his recollection it seemed like it was happening in slow motion, he saw the two other deckhands looking up their eyes wide as he flew back through the doorway into their bunk room.  He hit the back wall and lost his breath, but was otherwise unhurt.  The other two were on their feet and after a quick check to make sure he was alright, something he could only show with his hands as his breath had not come back.  Nervously but quickly, they went onto the deck together.

In place of the well ordered drilling platform that was the main deck of the deep horizon, there was a junk yard of debris.  The power on the ship failed after they only had a glimpse of this and then everything went dark except for the light from the fires at the stern where the drilling equipment was supposed to be finishing the closing of the well.  There was a single light visible in the other direction at the bow of the ship and the two others started towards it, but Nelson pulled away from them, waving them on.  He climbed up a ladder to get a better view of the bridge.  The captain was surrounded by five to 10 gesturing figures, each seeming to be completely independent of the others in a ritual dance to get the captain’s attention.  One of the other officers was calmly looking through a large book Nelson believed to be a book on the ship systems.  Debris, some large enough to kill a man, was falling from the large cranes overhead and fires climbed some of the cranes.  The ship was taking on a list that was impossible to mistake.  The deep horizon was sinking.   This did not sink in at first, but became obvious before long. People were scrambling in all directions, there were cries of pain, screams for help.  Nelson's job was maintaining the ship, but that job was gone, so he went to help and quickly found himself enlisted as a stretcher bearer carrying a survivor too badly hurt to walk over the wreckage and around the fires to the lifeboat station where the one remaining light on the deck continued working.

There were conflicting orders, launch the boats, don’t launch the boat, launch the boats.  He decided someone had to determine what was happening and he said, “I’m headed to the bridge, don’t wait for me if you have to leave.  Nelson, it seemed, was a fellow swimmer and had confidence in his ability.  Despite having the breath knocked out of him, he was fine now and healthy and wanted to do whatever he could before the ship went down.  He made his way to the bridge, but it was dark and he got lost.  The ship was beginning to list further and was slipping into the water.  He was perhaps 75 feet above the water when a smaller explosion, but close by, blew him off the deck, for a minute he tottered on the edge and then he fell, flailing his arms into the water below the drilling deck.  When he hit, it was not like falling into the water but into mud.  Again the breath was knocked out of him, but he didn’t sink. He was in a thick pool of oil floating on the water.  It wasn’t easy, but he began a half crawl, half swim through the muck of crude, he was at the edge, when it caught fire.

He did not remember clearly being pulled by a rescue boat from the oily water or being transferred to the rescue ship.  He did remember getting lifted by a basket into a coast guard helicopter and flown to Mobile where he waited several hours before being transferred to a hospital.  After he told me this story, I was embarrassed, but I didn’t know why, to have told him the troubles I had.  His face was deeply scarred and he walked away with a limp.  He said he had a rash, whether from exposure to fire or the oil he was uncertain, and his voice was raspy for the same reasons.  With the scaring he looked much older.

After that story, something began to form in my mind, but it was not complete.  I wandered and I found myself in a grocery store and a middle aged thalidomide survivor, was happily talking to me while filling my grocery bag with hands attached to his shoulders like flappers so that he has to drop things into the bag because he has no arms with which to lower them and I think, "ok, got it.  Quit whining about my problems," I thought.

I often sang the litany of the hazards that befell me like biblical plagues.

Any one of these things, any two of these things, would not have crushed me, but all of these things, one after the other.  

I was crushed, I was burned out, but a light was shining on me, or perhaps it was shining from me.  She saw the spark of life and she blew on it till in burst into flames, and I rose from the ashes.