Charles Petzold

It’s in the Bible: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten.” And athough the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible ain’t necessarily so, approaching that ominous milestone age might be a good time to start thinking about one’s bucket list. Because… who knows?

As I started accumulating my bucket list, it turned out to be rather sparse. Sure there are some more books I’d like to write, but that’s more a matter of hard work. There are certainly a few more books I’d like to read (Proust, Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart novels) but that’s just a matter of finding the time to read them. Some decades ago I wanted to go to Bali to hear some gamelan music, but I’ve heard live gamelan music in New York City, and travelling outside the greatest city in the world just doesn’t appeal to me any more.

My completed bucket list had a total of just two items, which is either a sign of an extraordinarily fulfilled life or a dismal failure of imagination.

The second item on my bucket list was trying out a sensory-deprivation tank, also known as an isolation tank, or a float tank. I’ve been curious about doing this ever since seeing a documentary (or something) many decades ago about their inventor, John C. Lilly. Cutting off all sensory input seems to have different effects on different people, but hallucinations are not uncommon.

Sensory-deprivation tanks became quite famous after Ken Russell’s film Altered States and they’ve shown up more recently in episodes of Fringe, Stranger Things, Big Bang Theory, and apparently some other shows.

I mentioned this desire to my wife Deirdre, and she put it into motion. Apparently there are zillions of places (many of them spas) that have isolation tanks around the city, and she promptly arranged an appointment for us to immerse ourselves in separate tanks for one hour, which happened today.

We went to a spa in midtown, and the process was fairly straightforward: They put you in a room where you undress and take a brief shower, and then get into a shallow tub with water at body temperature and plenty of Epsom salts.

Earplugs prevent the salt water from getting into your ears. Lie down, the lights go out, and there you float in total darkness and quiet except for the sounds that you yourself make. Never have I realized that my breathing was so loud. Fortunately, however, my breathing drowned out the creepy sound of my beating heart.

After a few minutes, my neck was in pain, and I had to put the lights back on and get a rubber “halo” for supporting my head. That relieved much of the pain, but not all of it. Then I scratched my nose and splashed some salt water in my eye, so I had to turn the lights back on and get the spray bottle they supply for the sole purpose of rinsing your eyes out.

Then I was finally ready for whatever entertainment my central nervous system could cook up. I would have preferred auditory hallucinations in the form of music, but visual hallucinations were certainly acceptable. What I got instead, however, was a tactile hallucination. In a sudden switch of perspective, I was no longer floating in water but suspended in space, an illusion only temporarily suspended when I periodically floated to the side of the tub and had to push myself away.

After decades of anticipation, the entire experience was rather anti-climactic, but it did provide a nice buzz of relaxation. Deirdre and I walked back home rather than taking the subway, and we decided to sit in quiet for a while.

Scratch that one off my bucket list, which is now down to just a single item.