Filed under: tidbit
The past couple of nights I’ve gone swimming with friends in my neighborhood pool. I’d almost forgotten how serene and relaxing it could be.
This picture shows one of my favorite things – to go turn on the pool light while the water is perfectly still and just have the whole thing glow like one giant jewel. It becomes this vat of intense aqua liquid and I feel that if I stuck my toe in it would come out glowing, like the water itself is infused with the light. I could splash it around and paint the entire neighborhood.
But I never want to stick my toe in. I never want to be the first one to disturb the perfect surface. It’s worse than freshly fallen snow in some ways. You know you have to go out in the snow, you know you have to make those tracks. But do you really have to get in the pool? What if everyone comes over and you all end up just wanting to admire your giant jewel?
But of course no one does, not even me, and I end up jumping in. Soon everyone’s there and it’s a little party, but everything feels kind of off. Sure, there are the treading water contests, and the throwing of pool toys and frisbees, diving, splashing, laughing, floating, relaxing – everything you would do during the day.
But as soon as everyone’s quiet for a second it starts to sink in that it’s night. There’re no lights around aside from the pool itself and a feeble street light several yards away. Voices seem to carry so much farther once everyone outside the pool is asleep. Our conversations echo. The pool becomes all the light, all the activity, and all the life. You can lay on your back and stare at the stars overhead and feel assured that there’s nothing else out there because everything that’s going on is right here in the water with you.
2 Comments so far
Leave a comment
i haven’t been nightswimming in years. it makes me so sleepy to think about how relaxing it was to listen to the water slap against the edges of the pool.
Comment by mary August 4, 2006 @ 1:29 pmi stumbled across this entry…. but love it so much i had to comment… i agree with mary… just reading your description made so so relaxed and sleepy…. man… thanks for helping me remember
Comment by Kyla June 29, 2007 @ 1:15 pm