Insane Asylum

The gym environment is a bit like an insane asylum for those of us not accustomed to it. Each room at my gym has a different activity. In one room there are bicycles assembled like a herd, driving nowhere. There's the room of stairway-to-nowhere devices, there's playing tennis with a wall, there's lifting heavy things for fun, playing with giant rubber balls, and a room with an enormous tractor tire for some reason.

I like to swim in the pool because swimming is a peaceful and poetic joy for me, and swimming to nowhere is still somewhere. A lovely somewhere.

I feel as though I am reborn every dawn I swim. The room is a womb, a tiny pool with windows. The turquoise water is my amniotic fluid. The water dreams me to life.

All of my chakras open, and my lungs and brain are oxygenated. This is my yoga, my church, my union with the divine. My skin dances. I feel sexy. I feel calm and happy. My body speaks wisdom and I hear her in the water.

In the pool I need not worry about motor boats, sharks, undertows, sand bars, tsunamis, or things grabbing me from below. I do worry about school buses and trucks driving into the door to the pool from this urban intersection. It has happened so many times across the street that they have reinforced their building with brick.