On the Turn

Barton Springs Early Morning Swim Report ,10/19/2023

This morning, after my first length, I swam into a mass of vegetation & smashed it to rubble, like an asteroid in Asteroids; I couldn’t really see it happen but it felt that way to me. Later, I told a predawn backstroker to watch out. He couldn’t, not literally nor constitutionally.

I keep starting entries here and not finishing them because I am busy with other things, some delightful (students), some less (academic administrative work). I’m not sure how I became trusted with administrative work. I don’t like it. I’m untidy and I don’t take academia itself very seriously. Teaching, yes.

But I have been swimming. A few days ago, it was 50 degrees when I arrived and in the forties when I left, my favorite conditions. Lots of seasonal milestones in the past week: first day when, standing in the water, I was as cold aboveboard as below; first mist off the water because it’s warmer than the air; first day I lingered in the chilly springs at the end of the swim because I knew I’d be colder getting out. The pool is emptier and emptier, at least of human beings. Until the time change my weekday swims will be entirely in the dark. Maybe on Sunday I’ll swim through sunrise.

Photo from a million years ago, by which I mean late August

I did meet a raccoon, in the parking lot. We maintained some serious, wary eye contact, the kind I complain about when my students put it in fiction.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that I was going to do an event at BookWoman here in Austin, the bookstore that got me through the pandemic, because it never closed. Not even for a day, I don’t think. Back then, I was unsure of what to do. I’d thought about some dumb joke with my ventriloquial figure—I was going to learn ventriloquism as research for a story, once upon a time, but never did—and then I couldn’t find the little dickens. I was so certain I knew where he was! I mean, he didn’t get up and walk away. Probably.

Perhaps I should have proposed my musical alter ego, Li’l Dickens.

Then the event got postponed to last night. What did I do? I was low on sleep—blame academic administration—and I believe I mostly talked about Barton Springs and what an absolute hero I am for doing it most mornings before dawn. I was quite insufferable on the subject.

BookWoman & Barton Springs: they saw me through the dullest days of the pandemic. I love them so.