july 5/SWIM

1.7 miles/4 loops
cedar lake open swim
100 degrees

Two Saras, One Who Loves Cedar Lake, One Who Doesn’t

Calm water, blue sky. No problems sighting the buoys, or, when I couldn’t see them, knowing which direction the beach was. Used my trick for cedar lake: look for the break in the trees. Talked to a few people, who were very nice and happy to be there. When I turned my head to breathe–every 5 strokes, as usual–I noticed the streaks of fluffy clouds in the sky. A blanket of thin, shredded fluff. A tattered veil. Feathery streaks. These clouds (I looked it up) are high-level clouds called cirrocumulus. Underwater, I liked lifting my forehead to look at the water in front of me. I could see about 4 feet, then nothing. Noticed some silvery flashes below me–my fish friends!

Cedar Lake has loud music, people on inner tubes and rafts, smoking at the beach. I am not chill enough for it. I didn’t mind the music, but several times, rafts were blocking the buoy at the far beach. Someone’s smoke made it hard for me to breathe on shore. And half of the swimmers were swimming in one direction, and half, the other. I asked the lifeguard which way we were supposed to swim–with the buoy on our left side, or our right, but he didn’t know. I stewed as I swam, wondering why this bothered me so much. The lack of order? The greater chance of swimming into someone? The feeling of always being wrong? I long for order, and to not care when there isn’t any.

The Nude Swim/ Anne Sexton

On the southwest side of Capri
we found a little unknown grotto
where no people were and we
entered it completely
and let our bodies lose all
their loneliness.

All the fish in us
had escaped for a minute.
The real fish did not mind.
We did not disturb their personal life.
We calmly trailed over them
and under them, shedding
air bubbles, little white
balloons that drifted up
into the sun by the boat
where the Italian boatman slept
with his hat over his face.

Water so clear you could
read a book through it.
Water so buoyant you could
float on your elbow.
I lay on it as on a divan.
I lay on it just like
Matisse’s Red Odalisque.
Water was my strange flower,
one must picture a woman
without a toga or a scarf
on a couch as deep as a tomb.

The walls of that grotto
were everycolor blue and
you said, “Look! Your eyes
are seacolor.  Look!  Your eyes
are skycolor.”  And my eyes
shut down as if they were
suddenly ashamed.