They go into the lake, the temps in the mid seventies and they are fearless. In reality, they teach swimming lessons, work as lifeguards. Between them, they have more medals than I can count. Yet two days ago, a nineteen-year-old boy drowned, while his two friends sunbathed on the beach. One must never ever trust the lake completely. So I make arbitrary rules… "Don't go out farther than the sandbar" I tell them, though I know that the water is barely five feet deep between the shore and the sandbar, and as shallow as one foot on it. Doesn't matter… they accept the limit and turn into human dolphins diving the waves, arching tight backs while their near-man rippling muscles glisten under bronzed skin. I want to take their picture, film them the way I did the dolphins in Maui, because there is some sort of metaphor there that I've not quite got yet. Something about connections I think. Instead, I watch them and hold the photograph in my mind.
I've been having odd dreams since I came here, which means I've been sleeping. I am not sure what that means either. That the air is easy to breathe, that I get enough exercise to be tired? That I feel at peace here in a way I haven't at home for so long? Or does it have more to do with the need for the nightmares to assert themselves, get their message across? Do you believe there are other lives in your mind that have either lived before, live concurrently, or are yet to be set free? I just don't know. I know that there are words there whose origin I can't trace, so I try to honor that as much as I can.
I jot down the bits I can remember in the mornings. I am forced to in a way, because I have to connect to the internet by phone. Waiting gives me a chance to write without interruption or the addiction of email.
I've been reading, luxuriously slow reading. Savoring bits and pieces of novels to steal, as my last writing professor advised. Putting together a house leaving messages of what should be attended to for its new owner, taking off sunglasses to hear better. And this from Baxter: "If God appeared on this earth again, lawyers would sue Him."
I've started talking to people too, something I've been criticized for here. That I am aloof, lost in my head and not the friendly one. I am asking for their stories, quietly, casually, and have learned much from the two lesbians, both in their sixties and bleach blond, though different from the blonds from Texas, these two are beefy, full figured women, though I note that their legs are really quite shapely. It is from the hips up that they balloon, almost identically, and I wonder if it is what they do, or how they eat or if in fact it is heredity. They tell me about the weather and the gossip of people I'm supposed to know, but have forgotten.
There is also a nice looking man down the beach a ways, hair mostly white, with a touch of the blond it once was showing. I like him mostly for the pace at which he walks, slow, languid, as though there are things on the beach that must be found and nothing much up ahead to worry about. That seems to be the right way to walk on a beach such as this.
He likes my dog.
They all like my dog. She's well known before I arrive, a stick slut for whomever will toss whatever piece of driftwood she can hold between her teeth. Only these strangers who toss it for her, these people charmed by her intelligent eyes, don't know she has no sense. They have not put salve on her bloodied paws or given her analgesic to make the pain of getting up and lying down easier at night when the sun has gone down and she aches. I tell them, she doesn't know any better, and they simply think I'm mean, not to throw for her myself.
She knows though, and comes with me.
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