1.5 miles
ywca pool
A swim! The last time I swam was 10 days ago. How has it been that long? The water was the cloudiest I ever remember it being. Was it that cloudy, or was it my vision or my loose googles? Swam alone for 30 minutes, then my daughter joined me.
10 Things I Noticed
- the water was so cloudy I couldn’t see to the other end
- starting out, swimming just above the bottom, I heard some kicking noises and worried that I had picked a lane that someone was already swimming in (I hadn’t)
- something brown, looking suspiciously like a band-aide, was stuck to the floor as it sloped down to the deep bottom. It stared back at me every time I swam above it
- in the next lane, someone was swimming an exaggerated breast stroke, kicking their legs way out, taking up most of the lane, possibly stretching over into my lane. I was a little irritated, but more enchanted by the wide swing of their legs and their froggy look
- I could see a small circle of light in the far corner
- trying to look more closely at the band-aide, I noticed some other white things stuck to the sloped floor too. What were they?
- as I flipped at the wall and looked up at the ceiling from below the water, I noticed that at the wall closer to the windows the light was yellow, and at the wall that was farther, the light was a pinkish-orange
- my nose plug squeaked once — a high-pitched squeak
- in the next lane a swimmer waited at the wall. Right as I flipped then pushed off, he started swimming. Was he trying to race me? Probably not
- I don’t think I saw anything floating in the pool today
Another good swim. For reasons I can’t quite pinpoint, I was agitated before my swim. It took some time, but the swimming helped calm me down.
Today’s Linda Pastan poem reminds me of something I was just writing about for my week five lecture for my class: gnarled branches.
In the Orchard/ Linda Pastan
Why are these old, gnarled trees
so beautiful, while I am merely
old and gnarled?
If I had leaves, perhaps, or apples . . .
if I had bark instead
of this lined skin,
maybe the wind would wind itself
around my limbs
in its old sinuous dance.
I shall bite into an apple
and swallow the seeds.
I shall come back as a tree.
This idea of coming back as a tree also reminds me of a poem I found the other day on twitter by Czesław Miłosz:
Longing/ Czesław Miłosz
Not that I want to be a god or a hero.
Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.