?Interrobang! · Track 98 · middle
The Happiest Days, Draining Away
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a hard drive of thousands of photos and home videos. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Dry Land Derek — water-slide tester from the resort waterparks; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Chevé Cave, in the Mexican jungle karst. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: How did Dry Land Derek's a hard drive of thousands of photos and home videos come to rest in Chevé Cave, in the Mexican jungle karst? Some year Sisukiro will never name. The irony of Dry Land Derek the water-slide tester is the whole question — and there is no easy answer.
Lyrics
You were cold in my hand. Colder than the limestone. A black plastic rectangle, wedged in the calcite flow. Here in the deep dark of Oaxaca. Here in Chevè Cave. A hard drive. Sealed tight against the ninety-five percent humidity. Scratched on the corner, a little history of friction. How many vertical feet? How many rope-lengths down? Did you fall? Or were you placed? A deliberate offering to the sump, to the endless dark water that carves this mountain from the inside out. They called him Dry Land Derek. He tested the water slides. The engineered joy, the screaming descent, the splashdown. Day after day, the bright sun on chlorinated water. So why bring the happiest days of a life down here? To the place where everything drains away? I charged you. You woke up. And there they were. Thousands of them. First birthdays and lost teeth. Vacations. The overexposed glare of a resort pool. Home videos, shaky and loud with laughter. A whole childhood, a whole marriage, clicking by. Every pixel a sunbeam, trapped in your dark body. They called him Dry Land Derek. He tested the water slides. The engineered joy, the screaming descent, the splashdown. Day after day, the bright sun on chlorinated water. So why bring the happiest days of a life down here? To the place where everything drains away? Maybe he came this far just to stand at the edge. The Mother of All Sumps. That place you have to dive to pass, where the water wins. Maybe he held you over that black surface. All that light. All that sound. And just… let go. A trade. The manufactured fun for the real deep. The bright surface for the silent truth. I have you now. The laughter is silent. The drive is sleeping again. But the question is still breathing in the wet air. What do you do… When the water you play in… Is not the water you need to drown something in?