Swimming, Duly and Dully

Barton Springs Earlyish Morning Swim Report, 5/11/2024

We had lovely friends over for drinks in our backyard last night and I stayed up late gabbing, then surprised myself by waking up and springing into action and going for a swim at about 7AM: later than usual. Despite my truancy from this space, I’ve been swimming regularly—not the six times a week I would like , but three to five times a week. I’ve started a few entries, but I’m constitutionally unable to 1. revise them, or 2. be inaccurate: if I don’t post on the day of the swim I’m describing, then I don’t post.

So I haven’t reported that the Egyptian geese had goslings—many, many goslings—and that most mornings Madame Goose is on my usual ramp into the water, her goslings sleeping beneath her skirts, M. Gosling standing guard on the deck. When I get out of the water, the geese are gone, and the ramp is a riot of goose shit, which I dodge, not unsentimentally. Mostly I arrive at the pool in the dark and leave at 6:30, which this time of year is daylight.

I’m done with teaching for the semester, and the whole year. I’m on leave in the fall.

Like a lot of faculty members in the US around now, I’m flummoxed, flabbergasted, pissed-off by the decisions of the upper administration when it comes to students protesting on campus. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’ve been bad at writing here. UT called in state police when students protested on the lawns in the middle of the university; people were hit, pepper-sprayed, arrested, and now fired. The communication from the university—first signed by the president, and then by something called Internal Communications (“Sincerely, Internal Communications”) was shocking in how it did not consider the protestors, or anybody who disagreed with the administration, as part of their community. “Our campus will not be occupied” said the first email from Jay Hartzell, and I wondered who he thought “our” referred to, and how on earth outside police forces in riot gear weren’t occupation, but our beloved students and colleagues somehow were. It’s disheartening. I went to a meeting of College of Liberal Arts faculty, and it was cheering how upset and disheartened all my colleagues were. Except that one guy. He knows who he is.

I’m in my office writing with my internet off most days. I’ve been experimenting with quick showers at Barton Springs, but they’re about to remodel the locker rooms and the one thing they’ve done is remove all the shower curtains. I’m writing a book on writing. I’m not sure it makes sense. My creative writing pedagogy is most built on withering looks and illegible marginalia.

Sign outside the pool. What does this mean?

The sky was gray this morning, the pool not too crowded. I was still swimming when the lifeguards arrived at 8AM. I got out and watched the goslings drop into the water across the pool, little slapstick comedians, plop, plop, plop.

“It was a good swim,” I said aloud to myself, as sometimes I do.