Today we went with our retinal photographer to take turns floating in a sensory isolation tank.
I've been looking forward to this for years and am so psyched to have made friends with some folks who have one in their house. When it was my turn, I showered and then opened the closet door in the bathroom that reveals the hatch to the tank, looking like a cross between the Apollo Space Capsule they had the science museum when I was a kid and the doorway to Narnia. Inside is like a roomy, waterlogged coffin: tall enough to sit up in and long/wide enough to lie down in without touching any sides. The air and water are heated to body temp with enough salinity to support a supine person.
As I shut the hatch, lay down and turned out the light, my first concern was not touching sides. Then I realized I was holding my head up, so I let it go, further and further back, much further than I thought I could go until my trapezius could really relax. As I began to lose sensory perception of the difference between the air above and saltwater below, internal sensations crept in: the rhythm of breath and heartbeat, an itch on my face, my belly, in my ear, and most prominently, all the light I see all the time in my eyes.
The tank is totally dark, so dark it doesn't matter if eyes are open or closed. But for me it looks like the Milky Way: a haze of shimmering stars everywhere I look. It's so bright that at first I wondered if I'd left the light on, but those lights are always there, even in the background when my eyes are open. This is my biggest impediment to seeing, even more than myopia or astigmatism.
This first float was a project of noticing: What do I see when there's nothing to see? A future float might be the project of seeing no stars, only dark.
I've been looking forward to this for years and am so psyched to have made friends with some folks who have one in their house. When it was my turn, I showered and then opened the closet door in the bathroom that reveals the hatch to the tank, looking like a cross between the Apollo Space Capsule they had the science museum when I was a kid and the doorway to Narnia. Inside is like a roomy, waterlogged coffin: tall enough to sit up in and long/wide enough to lie down in without touching any sides. The air and water are heated to body temp with enough salinity to support a supine person.
As I shut the hatch, lay down and turned out the light, my first concern was not touching sides. Then I realized I was holding my head up, so I let it go, further and further back, much further than I thought I could go until my trapezius could really relax. As I began to lose sensory perception of the difference between the air above and saltwater below, internal sensations crept in: the rhythm of breath and heartbeat, an itch on my face, my belly, in my ear, and most prominently, all the light I see all the time in my eyes.
The tank is totally dark, so dark it doesn't matter if eyes are open or closed. But for me it looks like the Milky Way: a haze of shimmering stars everywhere I look. It's so bright that at first I wondered if I'd left the light on, but those lights are always there, even in the background when my eyes are open. This is my biggest impediment to seeing, even more than myopia or astigmatism.
This first float was a project of noticing: What do I see when there's nothing to see? A future float might be the project of seeing no stars, only dark.
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