Dullness, with mystery to follow

Early morning Barton Spring swim report, 8/30/2023

On the drive to the pool, I saw the low-hanging tangerine moon and thought, “Oh! It’s been ages since I’ve seen the moon.” I know nothing about the rotation of the earth, but it felt true. Outside the dressing room, a baby raccoon stood on a wall; my subconscious responded as thought it were a tabby cat, and I wanted to pet its humped back. I didn’t.

I’ve been thinking a lot about dullness. Dullness in fiction, for one: in years past I would have said I was categorically against it. This week in my graduate seminar we discussed one of my favorite small novels, Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls, and I was struck by its purposefully dull opening. Sometimes some flatness can be a screen upon which to project brightness.

Swimming too? Maybe. Every now and then I swim in an outdoor pool at the YMCA. At Barton Springs, I swim in the dark, two or three laps. I’m invisible, right up till the time somebody nearly runs into me. The Y pool is lit up even before sunrise, with lifeguards, and it’s a relatively small pool. I swim back and forth and I lose count and I stare at the big clock till I’m done and I’m bored witless. It’s like writing on lined paper. I can do it, I’m probably better behaved, but I feel confined. At the YMCA (I am not Y, not M, not C) I think, I’m swimming I’m swimming I’m swimming.

But at Barton Springs, I never do (apart my from my occasional Dustin Hoffmanesque moments of wanting to knock on somebody’s snorkel to say, “I’m swimming here!”). It is true that my senses are dulled: I can’t see, can’t hear. I have no aerial view. I can think of bright and irksome things.

When I got out of the pool, the baby raccoon was gone, the moon was gone, the sunrise tangerine, as though answering the same question as the moon, but later.