Good form

I was taking extra long strokes for my swim today. Just concentrating on form. I’ve always done that. I’ve always swum my best when I just think about form and don’t think about the importance of trying hard and going fast. That stuff will fall in place if you let it. I was thinking that’s all there is to it, to writing, staying on the inside of the form of your experience, being creative with that.

If you were a caveman you might be the one in your group to tell the stories for the clan. It would be okay for you to have a need to express yourself creatively. It wouldn’t be purposeless. Like, when I was in grade two some of the other kids were reading so fast. Denise Pillon, who liked to put a section of her hair in her mouth and suck it making me wish I had long hair and could do that too, read so fast. The words coming out of her sounded so sharp, so articulate. What was important to me, what I felt not only distinguished me from the rest of the class but was a value I would uphold even if it meant I was only going to get to be in group two for the average readers and not group one for good readers, was reading with expression!

So there would be a purpose for my stories in that small caveman group, for my need to be the way I was. But then the world got bigger.

About half way through my swim workout my lane got eliminated. There’s this water aerobics group that comes in and I think the way it works is if it’s a large group they put them in the big pool where us swimmers swim our lengths, squeezing us into less lane space. And when it’s a smaller group they go in the training pool with the adjustable bottom.

I didn’t like how the water aerobics group pressed up against our lane, the mass of their bodies causing the lane rope to push in, giving us even less room within our more crowded lane to accommodate each others’ strokes. Even though the windows of the pool are to the south and the water aerobics people are to the east, they still feel like a heavy cloud, blocking out the light. Like a dark cloud of locusts from a story of a far away land.