Chapter 3 of my 2004 PhD thesis ‘A Journey of Integration’ is live at Medium.
3. Overwhelming physicality 1992–1995
Water operates the mind beyond the constraints of the known physical world, and does so without either machines or prosthetics. It is a book of darkness, floods, sex and ecstasy, addressing the sublime and accessing the dreaming self to visit the recesses of the body.
Writing Correspondence had been a highly cerebral experience, supported by a great deal of reading and research, but Water came out of nowhere and literally caused me nightmares. I even stopped writing it for six months in order to retrieve my unbroken nights. My research consisted of the natural history of the ocean and the lives of fish; the physiology of salt-water and fresh-water drowning, and true accounts of shipwrecks and survival.
For more see Introduction | Ch 1 |Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6
Sue Thomas 