Terror and tranquility

Floating in darkness

I am naked, floating on my back in a massive bath. The water is warm; my exposed feet and face are chilly. The lights are dimmed and pale blue. The room smells like shampoo and Epsom salts, with a whiff of chlorine residue from this morning’s swim.

Even through the earplugs, I can hear muffled music, slow and sparse and gentle. My tongue tastes like chicken, garlic, and pastry–a deconstructed empanada. I take a minute or two to acclimate. Then with my toe, I touch the white button at the base of the tub. A click and then the room goes black.

Literally, I’m at a “flotation therapy” spa on the ground floor of a two-story office building on the edge of a suburban strip of restaurants, delis, and a movie theater. But now, in the dark and silent void, I could be anywhere—or nowhere.

The sensory deprivation tank is supposed to be relaxing and restorative. I came here because it’s spring break and I want to de-stress and recharge before returning to work. After an intense, immersive winter, starting a new job as a Spanish teacher and swimming before sunrise, my body and mind need a break.

Now my anxious mind is on overdrive. The darkness is disorientating. The silence is scary. I imagine being ambushed and tortured, visceral fears stoked from watching La Chica de Nieve, a Spanish thriller that centers on kidnapping, assault, and murder.

Gradually, the panic subsides. Floating in drowned corpse pose, my mind cartwheels from listing mundane tasks to posing existential questions. Walk the dog. Grade papers. Shop for groceries. Who am I? What is my purpose in life? What do I need to do before I die?

This morning, I swam laps for the first time in nearly two weeks, except for last week swimming in Cuba, on a community service trip. Before I swam, I had been worried that I would be out of shape from the hiatus and feel disheartened and discouraged. To tame the anxiety, I gave myself permission to take it easy and swim only 500 yards, i.e. 20 laps. Thankfully, swimming was no big deal. Maybe a bit slower or a bit more awkward. But I had not de-trained or forgotten how to swim. So I swam another 500. And another. Then I stopped, not from exhaustion, but so as not to overdo it the first day back in the water. The gentle reacclimation strategy worked. Over the next three days, I’ll swim twice more, as if I had never stopped.

Now I float and float and float. As I drift in the water, my fingers and toes occasionally graze the tub walls. Gradually my body relaxes and my thoughts slow, though not entirely. My internal clock stops ticking. Have I been here for one minute? Five minutes? Ten minutes?

As a teenager, I learned about flotation tanks from Altered States, a hippie horror novel swiped from my parents’ bookshelf.

Edward Jessup, a young psycho-physiologist, experiments with different states of consciousness, obsessed with an addiction to truth and knowledge. He injects himself with psychedelic drugs, lies locked in an isolation tank and experiences all the stages of pre-human consciousness until finally terrible changes take place within him

Decades later, I still remember the cover image: a naked muscular man emerging from a bath with a disturbed look in his eyes. Apparently, the novel was made into a movie.

Now, after an eternity of swimming in thoughts in darkness and silence, the music resumes, then the dim blue light. I float for a few more minutes, then exit the tub, shower, and get dressed. Back in the waiting room, a young woman sits reading a magazine. The middle-aged woman at the reception desk suggests I stay for tea. Somehow this epilogue seems essential.

I make myself a mug of Brooklyn Breakfast and gaze out the window, as rain pounds the glass. I didn’t have an epiphany or eureka moment in the sensory deprivation tank or transform into a pre-human or pure energy like Dr. Jessup in Altered States. Still, something subtle has shifted. Before, I felt anxious and amped and restless. Now, I feel peaceful and still. I sit and sip tea in silence, listening to the rain.