redux: zuihitsu, playlist in an empty pool

Note: this was posted 3 years ago. I’d still choose these songs. And the dark is moving in.

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1.

I was the only swimmer in the blue pool, my strokes slow, my thoughts elsewhere, fabric piled on a trunk, before the cutting, before the piecing, before the hours of stitching. The quilt. A playlist from the 1970s when I was young. When my head came up out of the water, 2 lengths of the back crawl, Neil was singing, and I was a teenager, drifting down to the beach at lunch, taking one of the two possible trails. In my black bathing suit and my cap, my strokes slow, my thoughts elsewhere.

I’ve been in my mind, it’s such a fine line
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old.

2.

The lifeguards laughed at something. Outside the leaves were falling. I turned at the deep end and pushed my way through the blue water. Each song a palimpsest, the empty pool a reminder.

Like a heartbeat drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost
And what you had
And what you lost

3.

Black bathing suit, blue cap, alone in the water. When I woke this morning, I knew I’d dreamed something wild and unsettling, packing for somewhere I’d never arrive at, nothing quite fitting, the train late, my ticket lost. I swam my slow kilometre in 38 minutes, no one else in the pool, never leaving my lane.

Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves

Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in.

Note: this morning’s swimming music courtesy of Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seger