Pool Party

I had a nice time in the pool yesterday. First, and most importantly, there were not many people there when I arrived. Maybe five.

I was able to turn off two of the three speakers that blast 105.5 WDUV THE DOVE! TAMPA’S LITE FAVORITES!

And I had remembered to bring ear plugs.

So I had some time (alone) in the hot tub, which is kept at 104F / 40C and has nice big bubbles you can turn on if you want. Then I was in the pool, alone, with the few others lazing on loungers.

I got out and read for a while, and when I looked up everyone was gone. I walked to the other end of the pool and turned off the last speaker. Jerry arrived. Jerry is a crusty old deeply bronzed ex-accountant or something in her 70s. She is nastier and more judgmental than I, which is saying something. She wears a blue straw fedora in the pool and paddles around.

I went back to reading and in a bit Jerry left the pool and went to the hot tub. I was alone and I got back in the pool and just floated on my back, looking at the sky. There were a few thin shredded cotton batting clouds and a tiny silver waxing crescent moon. An airplane went over, very high, with a small contrail. A bird.

With my ears underwater I could hear very little, sometimes the thrum of a truck out on the street. No cars. I thought about my breathing. I felt the inhales raise me up a little bit and the exhales drop me down.

Sometimes I dawdled my arms a bit and sometimes I didn’t and then I was just floating around the pool in slow stately being, feeling like Shesha who in Hinduism floated around the Ocean of Bliss as a big couch for Vishnu and Lakshmi.

I watched the clouds getting thicker and covering the moon. A small breeze freshened. The clouds got real righteous. In the night it rained hard.