Goggling

Early Morning Barton Springs Swim Report, 1/18/2023

True enough I am absentminded at the best of times. Preoccupied in the mornings, too, dealing with the flotsam of dreams and the jetsam of the day before and the day ahead. This morning I was further distracted by the fact that my car radio was unaccountably silent. A better person than me would have used the quiet to contemplate life. Me, I contemplated why my car radio was not working. I got to the pool parking lot at 5:40, 40°, turned to my right and saw not my swim bag, but my pocketbook.

What I have in common with conspiracy theorists: when confronted with evidence of my inattention or incompetence, my first thought is, “Now, who did that? There must be a convoluted explanation involving other people.” I stared at my pocketbook a while and concluded I could only blame myself.

I didn’t have a towel or dry shoes to change into (I swim in water shoes). I did have, in the back of the car, goggles that had been there a while. I grabbed them and went to the pool.

A clear starry morning, so extra dark. The goggles, it turned out, had developed cataracts and a tendency to fog over. I was hampered. I didn’t like it. Headed east I aimed for the lights of the skyline. I saw the dim ursine humped silhouettes of two swimmers towing floats. Turning back, I could apprehend very little, but I persevered. Back again. Then, for my last length I could see nothing and put my goggles on top of my head.

I bear-paddled, doggy-paddled, frog-stroked—well, I felt like an animal but thought also of grandmothers holding their hairdos up as they swam. I have a clear memory of my own grandmother doing this at a Des Moines swimming pool, but other relatives insist that she never swam at all. Still, I thought of her as I saw the mist close up, the stars unpunctuated by my usual periodic submersion.

I’m teaching a novel workshop this semester, which I’m looking forward to immensely. One of the things about writing a novel: you may begin with strongly held beliefs of what it’s made of, how it will progress, but if you may find after a while that it’s not working—process or structure or something else—and if you cannot try a new method or approach to go forward, you’re sunk. You may even find the new method beautiful, in its way. Revealing at a time you need revelations. You may hear birdsong and see stars.

Warning: for a few months nearly everything is going to seem like metaphor for novel-writing to me. I drove home damp-bottomed and warm-hearted. My radio worked.

Still, I’m not going to make a habit of going goggless and towel-free.