Pools

Every summer, we all witness that mad dash of sweaty, cloistered bodies stripped of their cumbersome winter apparel streaming towards a sanctuary from Apollo’s wrath; some cool body of water. The frozen plains of reflective glass only months earlier give way to a rebirth of the solar god, whose throne is once again reclaimed. And so, a gentle breeze cuts through the reticulated landscape to have its way with the ponds, lakes, and puddles we all like to splash in. And pools once again attract us to their buoyantly delicious fluid we all love to swim in. The young and the old find their common ground in either splashing about or fixed lacily prostate in its dense, but spacious, wetness.

One can’t help but think of the Roman bath houses, the banks of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, or Syrinx’s reeds in an Arcadian lake awaiting the musical lips of Pan to blow. Historically, mankind has sought out pools as not only a way to cool themselves off, but also as a means of congregation. For as we all know, there is nothing more appealing to Man as Society itself; and in particular socializing. The greatest achievements of civilization are civility. And it requires a collective to produce a civil act; for one cannot be civil to one’s self alone.

The pool, therefore, like the aggregate of men and women, is the result of millions upon millions of drops of water coming together. The rain carelessly falls with each bead and one never knows where the individual drop will fall. But, the kinetics of the pool we can safely and confidently predict. The arm glides over the surface and slices through it and we immediately know the direction of the swell. The Northwind blows traversing the skim and we perceive its ambulation and which way it is going.

Jesus once said in a conversation to the genuinely inquisitive and open Nicodemus that the spirit was like the wind and that one could never know its direction (whether it went this way or that). But can we say anything different about the rain in contrast to the pools? Consider a game such as football. For if one of the members of The New England Patriots has possession of the ball, are we not convinced of the direction the rest of the team and the opposing team will rush to? Contrariwise, can we equally say with the same degree of certainty what Prometheus would chiefly do with his time if he were unchained? John Paul Sartre, the existential philosopher, pointed out that his own free will terrified him, for it was possible that he could perform any act at any given time, marvelous or dreadful. The individual, while cursory, unpredictable, and monstrously god-like at times, is our highest expression of existence. The group, the herd, Nature herself, are superficial in contrast; and monotonously predictable. And while I can see why we find pools so relaxing and rejuvenating on a hot summer day, they are hardly the right places to find relief from the heated, vexing light of our own inner souls and spirits, where purpose drowns out the chaos of our humdrum lives.