Swimming
2020 10 10
When I was little, my dad used to take my brother and me swimming in the summer after dusk.
Behind a large fence lined with plants was a pool in my grandmother's backyard. There was a fountain — a boy, holding an ice cream cone, climbing to reach the stream of water, his open-mouthed expression forever frozen in stone. Backed up against an awning with a boat I never once saw in a body of water, there was a pool house. It was more like a small shed, with its front exposed and opening onto the cement connected to the edge of a rectangular swimming pool. It housed various knickknacks, a croquet set, horseshoes, and cabinets for storing towels, sunscreen, snorkels, flippers, and masks. In the corner was a tiny room smelling faintly of chlorine and cedar, with exposed 2x4s surrounding a portable toilet and hooks where we hung our suits to dry.
To turn on the light, I had to pull a chain overhead, illuminating a single exposed bulb. It always took a few grasps in the air before I located it. Surrounded by the din of cicadas and voices from the pool, I was still afraid of the dark, worried about startling a water bug with the sudden light, anticipating it would fly at my face. Aside from night swimming, the pool was also the center of daytime cookouts, holidays, family reunions, and birthdays. It was where my photo was taken on Easter and where I danced to Tiffany, singing into the video camera lyrics I couldn't have possibly understood the meaning of. The emerald glow of the water as I returned from the dark looms the largest in my memory, ambient light attached to a warm and consistent feeling.
I continued to swim into my teenage years, and summer days were often passed by the public pool, oddly named Fountain Park, which didn't have any fountains, just a high-dive I was sometimes brave enough to attempt as I held tightly to my swim top. The adult swim was at the top of every hour and I would sit with the other kids along the edge of the pool, patiently waiting for the whistle when I could enter the water again. To be truthful, I was actually ill-equipped at swimming. I couldn't freestyle or even float on my back, but I managed to pass hours in the water — climbing out only when the tips of my fingers were shriveled.
I eventually moved 115 miles from home and managed to continue the ritual of spending summer days by the water. Sometimes this involved a friend willing to share a pool code or a key. For a few years, I lived in an apartment that had a pool that was so crowded and obnoxious, I could only bring one guest at a time. There were day trips to a lake where I jumped off large, craggy rocks into murky, quite possibly unsafe water. I was less inclined to swim in chilly weather. Once when I was hiking with a dear friend, we came to a small stream. She stripped to her underwear and jumped in, gliding serenely through the icy, crystalline water as I stood on the shore, watching in amusement. In Charles Sprawson's cult swimming classic, Haunts of the Black Masseur, he recalls a passage from a Greek Anthology: "There is no greater expression of simplicity, security, and being at home in the world than two friends going down to bathe." Although I didn't jump in, I was delighted in this moment of independence.
There were a few public pools in my summer rotation, each one in a different neighborhood, offering paid swim hours for those without a yearly pass. The Candler Park pool was where I went if I wanted to avoid a crowd or meet a friend. It doesn't have lap lanes or a concession stand — underwhelming in the scheme of pools — but I could always find an empty chair or two even on a Saturday in the height of summer. The Grant Park pool is large in comparison. To reach it, I would walk through a hot and sticky bathhouse, my sandals making a squish, squish sound across the wet floor as I passed through women and children changing in and out of suits. Exiting onto a sprawling concrete pool deck with a fifty-meter pool, four and a half feet from end to end, with several roped-off lap lanes and a splash pad, shrieks of laughter, synonymous with joy, punctuating the air.
My favorite pool is in Piedmont Park, aptly titled the Piedmont Park Aquatic Center, and nestled along the edge of Clara Meer Lake. Its lounge chairs back up against a fence overlooking the water, giving the impression it sits on an island. I would park my car on a side street and walk the shaded path above a large stretch of lawn, passing the view of Midtown highrises framing the lake, crossing the bridge and the gazebo with its large white columns and people fishing and feeding ducks. The contemporary setting of the pool enclosure is an eyesore. The constant blow of whistles is mildly offensive as lifeguards call attention to anyone who impedes traffic in the current channel. Those are my only complaints. I appreciate the no-entry pool design allowing me to walk into the water as if I am walking into the ocean. It has four swimming lanes and a concession stand that speaks to the part of me content to eat a sun-warmed pork sandwich slathered with Pimento cheese while sweating in the hot, summer sun. I could quench my thirst with a blackberry tea poured over the good ice — the tiny pebble kind that completes a fountain coke and reminds me of little league baseball.
I am 450 miles from my favorite pools. It's likely none of them opened at all this year due to the Pandemic. Instead, I am in direct proximity to a private pool, at the tip of 20 miles of undeveloped beach along the Atlantic Ocean. If I drive until the road ends, I'll encounter mostly nude bathers. I imagine their desire to swim nude is classical in nature. I pretend they are seekers of the mystical, devoted to the connection of the water and the sun; a romantic kind of love. I've ascribed entirely too much to them.
Ambient lights and diving boards are not a part of my new, profound obsession for water. This intense dedication is fueled by learning to float underneath a rotating sky of palm trees and seagulls. When I was little, I was never able to float on my back without sinking. I now consider it an oversight on my behalf to have always treated swimming as nothing more than recreational — faffing about with hand-stands, cannonballs, flips, and breath-holding contests.
These days, the end of a swim is punctuated by a need to go weightless, ears submerged, serene, and face up, observing the clouds. Sometimes they are fast-moving, overlapping, and create a gauze, sometimes the sky is clear and blue, a big expanse with no edges, and in my weightlessness, minutes pass that feel like hours. My body floats now with ease, requiring no forethought — a single toe protruding from the water with my hands turned to the sky as my body recalibrates, keeping itself suspended.
There is a physicality in swimming that separates me from whatever might exist. If I do the breaststroke for at least 30 minutes, relying on muscle-memory, I process whatever is on my mind. A freestyle swim keeps me hyper-focused on my movements, often completely extinguishing anxious thoughts. And I'm enamored with the math — dividing laps into less daunting segments or an impending challenge. To swim a little over a mile in a 30-yard pool it takes roughly 60 laps. Sometimes I divide this into 6 sets of 10 laps, with each interval made of 4 backstroke laps, 2 breaststroke laps, and 4 freestyle laps. On another day, it might be 10 sets of 6 different strokes, with each interval made of 2 backstroke laps, 2 breaststroke laps, and 2 freestyle laps. When I am alert and spirited, it might be 3 sets of 20 with each interval breaking down to 6 backstroke laps, 8 breaststroke laps, and 6 freestyle laps. I count and count as I use my body to cut a line through the water, reaching to pull and perfect a formation, breathing out underneath, and inhaling as I sweep my face to the left — an antidote — swimming is a ritual for self-possession.
My grandmother recently sent me a letter in the mail. In her distinguished cursive, she writes that the pool in her yard is gone. She opted out of maintaining it, filling it with dirt as if it were never there. My grandfather, who enjoyed keeping a careful eye on the chemicals and regularly cleaning it with pride, passed away eight years ago. I can't put my finger on her reason. She loved the water, and her mother, my great-grandmother, did too. We were three generations of aquatics, content to sit for hours, half-submerged on a hot day, to wade in and pass the most mundane and banal of moments, buoyant.
If a pool is a symbol of control, I’ll take it. Fractured, I have been plunged into the unknown. I am learning to float, lost to the world.
Behind a large fence lined with plants was a pool in my grandmother's backyard. There was a fountain — a boy, holding an ice cream cone, climbing to reach the stream of water, his open-mouthed expression forever frozen in stone. Backed up against an awning with a boat I never once saw in a body of water, there was a pool house. It was more like a small shed, with its front exposed and opening onto the cement connected to the edge of a rectangular swimming pool. It housed various knickknacks, a croquet set, horseshoes, and cabinets for storing towels, sunscreen, snorkels, flippers, and masks. In the corner was a tiny room smelling faintly of chlorine and cedar, with exposed 2x4s surrounding a portable toilet and hooks where we hung our suits to dry.
To turn on the light, I had to pull a chain overhead, illuminating a single exposed bulb. It always took a few grasps in the air before I located it. Surrounded by the din of cicadas and voices from the pool, I was still afraid of the dark, worried about startling a water bug with the sudden light, anticipating it would fly at my face. Aside from night swimming, the pool was also the center of daytime cookouts, holidays, family reunions, and birthdays. It was where my photo was taken on Easter and where I danced to Tiffany, singing into the video camera lyrics I couldn't have possibly understood the meaning of. The emerald glow of the water as I returned from the dark looms the largest in my memory, ambient light attached to a warm and consistent feeling.
I continued to swim into my teenage years, and summer days were often passed by the public pool, oddly named Fountain Park, which didn't have any fountains, just a high-dive I was sometimes brave enough to attempt as I held tightly to my swim top. The adult swim was at the top of every hour and I would sit with the other kids along the edge of the pool, patiently waiting for the whistle when I could enter the water again. To be truthful, I was actually ill-equipped at swimming. I couldn't freestyle or even float on my back, but I managed to pass hours in the water — climbing out only when the tips of my fingers were shriveled.
I eventually moved 115 miles from home and managed to continue the ritual of spending summer days by the water. Sometimes this involved a friend willing to share a pool code or a key. For a few years, I lived in an apartment that had a pool that was so crowded and obnoxious, I could only bring one guest at a time. There were day trips to a lake where I jumped off large, craggy rocks into murky, quite possibly unsafe water. I was less inclined to swim in chilly weather. Once when I was hiking with a dear friend, we came to a small stream. She stripped to her underwear and jumped in, gliding serenely through the icy, crystalline water as I stood on the shore, watching in amusement. In Charles Sprawson's cult swimming classic, Haunts of the Black Masseur, he recalls a passage from a Greek Anthology: "There is no greater expression of simplicity, security, and being at home in the world than two friends going down to bathe." Although I didn't jump in, I was delighted in this moment of independence.
There were a few public pools in my summer rotation, each one in a different neighborhood, offering paid swim hours for those without a yearly pass. The Candler Park pool was where I went if I wanted to avoid a crowd or meet a friend. It doesn't have lap lanes or a concession stand — underwhelming in the scheme of pools — but I could always find an empty chair or two even on a Saturday in the height of summer. The Grant Park pool is large in comparison. To reach it, I would walk through a hot and sticky bathhouse, my sandals making a squish, squish sound across the wet floor as I passed through women and children changing in and out of suits. Exiting onto a sprawling concrete pool deck with a fifty-meter pool, four and a half feet from end to end, with several roped-off lap lanes and a splash pad, shrieks of laughter, synonymous with joy, punctuating the air.
My favorite pool is in Piedmont Park, aptly titled the Piedmont Park Aquatic Center, and nestled along the edge of Clara Meer Lake. Its lounge chairs back up against a fence overlooking the water, giving the impression it sits on an island. I would park my car on a side street and walk the shaded path above a large stretch of lawn, passing the view of Midtown highrises framing the lake, crossing the bridge and the gazebo with its large white columns and people fishing and feeding ducks. The contemporary setting of the pool enclosure is an eyesore. The constant blow of whistles is mildly offensive as lifeguards call attention to anyone who impedes traffic in the current channel. Those are my only complaints. I appreciate the no-entry pool design allowing me to walk into the water as if I am walking into the ocean. It has four swimming lanes and a concession stand that speaks to the part of me content to eat a sun-warmed pork sandwich slathered with Pimento cheese while sweating in the hot, summer sun. I could quench my thirst with a blackberry tea poured over the good ice — the tiny pebble kind that completes a fountain coke and reminds me of little league baseball.
I am 450 miles from my favorite pools. It's likely none of them opened at all this year due to the Pandemic. Instead, I am in direct proximity to a private pool, at the tip of 20 miles of undeveloped beach along the Atlantic Ocean. If I drive until the road ends, I'll encounter mostly nude bathers. I imagine their desire to swim nude is classical in nature. I pretend they are seekers of the mystical, devoted to the connection of the water and the sun; a romantic kind of love. I've ascribed entirely too much to them.
Ambient lights and diving boards are not a part of my new, profound obsession for water. This intense dedication is fueled by learning to float underneath a rotating sky of palm trees and seagulls. When I was little, I was never able to float on my back without sinking. I now consider it an oversight on my behalf to have always treated swimming as nothing more than recreational — faffing about with hand-stands, cannonballs, flips, and breath-holding contests.
These days, the end of a swim is punctuated by a need to go weightless, ears submerged, serene, and face up, observing the clouds. Sometimes they are fast-moving, overlapping, and create a gauze, sometimes the sky is clear and blue, a big expanse with no edges, and in my weightlessness, minutes pass that feel like hours. My body floats now with ease, requiring no forethought — a single toe protruding from the water with my hands turned to the sky as my body recalibrates, keeping itself suspended.
There is a physicality in swimming that separates me from whatever might exist. If I do the breaststroke for at least 30 minutes, relying on muscle-memory, I process whatever is on my mind. A freestyle swim keeps me hyper-focused on my movements, often completely extinguishing anxious thoughts. And I'm enamored with the math — dividing laps into less daunting segments or an impending challenge. To swim a little over a mile in a 30-yard pool it takes roughly 60 laps. Sometimes I divide this into 6 sets of 10 laps, with each interval made of 4 backstroke laps, 2 breaststroke laps, and 4 freestyle laps. On another day, it might be 10 sets of 6 different strokes, with each interval made of 2 backstroke laps, 2 breaststroke laps, and 2 freestyle laps. When I am alert and spirited, it might be 3 sets of 20 with each interval breaking down to 6 backstroke laps, 8 breaststroke laps, and 6 freestyle laps. I count and count as I use my body to cut a line through the water, reaching to pull and perfect a formation, breathing out underneath, and inhaling as I sweep my face to the left — an antidote — swimming is a ritual for self-possession.
My grandmother recently sent me a letter in the mail. In her distinguished cursive, she writes that the pool in her yard is gone. She opted out of maintaining it, filling it with dirt as if it were never there. My grandfather, who enjoyed keeping a careful eye on the chemicals and regularly cleaning it with pride, passed away eight years ago. I can't put my finger on her reason. She loved the water, and her mother, my great-grandmother, did too. We were three generations of aquatics, content to sit for hours, half-submerged on a hot day, to wade in and pass the most mundane and banal of moments, buoyant.
If a pool is a symbol of control, I’ll take it. Fractured, I have been plunged into the unknown. I am learning to float, lost to the world.