On This the 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic We Reconsider the Buoyancy of the Human Heart.
Whatās wrong? Titanic asked me this morning, when she found me lying on the ocean floor with all my suitcases strewn open.
Oh, I dunno, I moaned, I was looking through National Geographic and saw some pictures of you, and thought I might come and chat. you looked great, by the way, in the pictures.
Me? No. Titanic smiled. If anything I seem to have become a Picasso. and I have a beard.
It was true; she looked more like a collage of a ship. Strangely two dimensional, in a crater of her own making:
French doors, boilers, railings every which way. And she did have a bit of a beard-rust icicles hanging in red strands from her iron engines.
sitting up in my own little crater, I sort of blushed.
To be honest, i told Titanic, My honeyās leaving town soon and Iām afraid itās gonna wreck me, so i dove down here.
Well come on in, Titanic said, but Iām not sure Iāve got what youāre looking for.
So in I climbed between, through a window between two rust stalactites, and began to pace her great promenade. (which would have been awesome, by the way -walking by the ghosts of all those waving handkerchiefs - except that I was in that feeling-sorry-for-yourself state where very hallway is the hallway of your own wretched mind, every ghost your own ghost, so I didnāt take a good look around.)
When I got to the turkish baths, I sat on the edge of a barnacled tub and watched weird crabs scrabble at my feet.
I was hoping youād teach me how to sink, I said. You, who have spent a century underwater with 1500 skeletons in your chest.
I donāt know, said Titanic, Iām kind of a wreck.
Exactly! I said, Me too! Iām here to apprentice myself to wreckage. Iām here to apprentice myself to you! Great bearded lady, gargantuan ark, you floating hotel. With enough ballrooms in you to dance with everyone Iāve ever loved.
My heart has an iceberg with its name on it, I told Titanic, so i need some advice. Tell me, did you see the iceberg coming?
And you sailed right into it?
It was love, Titanic said.
And the band just kept playing? And the captain stayed at the wheel? What did it feel like to swallow seawater? Tell me, Titanic, how did it feel?
It felt like a hole in my side and then it felt like plummeting face first into the ice-cold ocean.
Sheās a straight talked, the Titanic.
Alright, I said. Now letās talk about rust. When my love leaves, Iām planning to weep stalactites from my chin. I will wear my sadness in longs strands. Like you, I will be bearder by it.
Then I made a terrible noise.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrkkkkkkkkkkk! Iāve been practicing the sound of wrenching metal, I told her, for when my love leaves.
But you arenāt made of metal. Titanic said to me.
Iām a writer, I said, I could be made of anything.
Well then, be a writer. She said.
Be a writer? I paused, anemones between my toes. Okay. When my love leaves iāll start with SOS. I will Morse code odes as the whole world goes vertical. Iāll write nosedives as my torso splits in two.
And the next day iāll write the stunned headlines,
and the next day iāll write the obituaries, and the next day I will write furious accusations, and the next day I will write lawsuits, and the next day I will write confessions of my wrongdoing, and the next day I will write pardons, but i wonāt really mean it, and the next day iāll write sonnets, but they wonāt fit the schema, and the next day iāll write pleas, please, please come back. The next day I will write epitaphs, navigation maps, warning for future generations about the hubris of human love. I will write quotas and queries and quizzes, I will write nonsense, I will write nonesense, I will write nonsense all the way down and no diving teams will find me, no robot arms will retrieve me in pieces. never will i be reassembled and played air. No, I will remain whole, two miles down, with my suitcases strewn open, and in 100 years i will still be writing about this feeling, though my heart be a Picasso, though my heart be bearded at the bottom of the sea.
The Titanic let me cry for a while, my sobs echoing off her moldy mosaics.
Then she said: Girl, youāre too young for a beard like this. Youāre never gonna get some if you rust over now.
I sniffled a little and scratched my name into the green slime of the tub.
The trouble with you humans is that you are so concerned with staying afloat. Go ahead, be gouged open by love. Gulp that saltwater, sink beneath the waves. Youāre not a boat, you can go under and come up again, with those big ol lungs of yours, those hard kicking legs.
And your heart, she said, that gargantuan ark, that floating hotel. Call it unsinkable, though it is sinkable.
Embark, embark.
There are enough ballrooms in you to dance with everyone youāll ever love.
Thatās what the Titanic told me this morning, me, lying next to her on the ocean floor.
There are enough ballrooms in you.
- Laura Lamb Brown-Lavoie
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