Drowning The Fish

My brain is fantastic. It has taken me on an extensive roundtrip through certain parts of the evolution, which has allowed me to demystify my epilepsy. To confirm the essens of my experiences during the last 40 years I want to give an example of the advice, of the inventor of “Evolution In Reverse”, “to lay back and allow the stab of anxiety to overtake us”.

It is Saturday and my daughter is spending the weekend at home, and we have had a friendly, straight and positive communication about almost everything from money, sex education at school, politics, human shortcomings, how to dress, how to learn from your mistakes etc. to where we would bury our dog, Puskas, if he dies. These discussions took place while both of us did whatever we had to do. Isabel carried out weekly cleaning routines while for vanity’s sake, she had put a mudpack to enhance her skin’s already high quality. I was on the internet, stretched, went off and bought strawberries and cooked dinner. Life felt good, and we were pretty much on the same wavelength.

Late in the afternoon, after dinner I took a nap. After an hour or so I woke up with a slight tension over my mouth and eyes, and with the house in full piece, I decided to allow the stab of tension to overtake me. It developed into a wordless process over two hours. Slowly, the pressure intensified over my face and developed into my mouth, my throat and I felt it intensely right down to my fingers and toes as electrical impulses. Since I have been through this process during more than 40 years, there was nothing scary in this wordless re-experience of my birth. It was once again a confirmation that the wordless terror and agony, that I now after 72 years have the strength to go through, is equal to the reality, I as a fetus not endured, but via cramps and stenosis shut down in order to survive. My birth-process lasted in all 48 hours and the most dramatic of those ended in an imprint that led to my developing epilepsy. My epileptic attacks were compressed versions of the unbearable part of my birth trauma.

However, something sensational happened today. After falling deeper than usual into the anesthesia, that often surrounds me during my primals, I was suddenly violently compressed and hyper ventilated sharply, followed by no breathing at all. For a long while, I struggled frantically to get some air without success. Suddenly, I gave up and I felt like a drowned fish. I could not get enough oxygen, however, I could feel the devastating consequences instead of having an epileptic cramp. Then it took a while and the intensive feeling of being compressed released.  All of a sudden I smiled happily when I made a connection in my brain and from seemingly nowhere remembered Art’s Reflection this morning about how he spoke of: “I’m still drowning the fish...”

I was afraid that after two hours of intense wordless memories/feelings that my intellectual brain had stopped working, but now as I write, it feels as easy as a piece of cake to express myself.

Jan Johnsson


Can a fish drown?

Fish get their oxygen directly from the water. They have organs called gills that take oxygen out of the water, just as your lungs take oxygen out of the air. But water can run out of oxygen, just as air can.

So fish can suffocate in water, which means they can drown in water.

These drownings occur most often in small ponds that dry up. All the fish that live in the pond are crowded into the remaining water, where they use up all the oxygen in the water, then drown. Fish can also drown if their gills are damaged in a collision with an underwater plant or in a fight with other sea creatures.

Weather conditions also account for some drownings. For example, when some fish realize that oxygen supply in the water is getting very low, they rise to the surface and suck air into a sac-like organ called the air bladder.

The fish can then take oxygen out of this air instead of directly out of the water. But in cold weather, when the surface of the water is frozen, the fish can’t reach that air, and so they drown.

JJ