A Bit Tired But Exceedingly Happy Sunday Night

Since starting to write my blog first in another website which I later transferred here because of the my inability to post comments in Peter's blog unless I got an address here, I have stopped another acitivty which I love: my Sunday swim. When I started, as a matter of discipline, I set myself the target of an average of a blog a day. I wanted to use the blog as my reading, lecture and concert journal. I'm pleased that whatever the quality of my blog or the lack of it, I have kept pretty close to my target. As in everything, there is a price to be paid. I have unfairly deprived myself of time to pursue one of my other loves. I find I am less healthy than I was.

After some reflection, I have decided to be less ambitious. I shall revise my target. From now on, I shall write not seven but only four blogs a week. I shall write more if I feel the need to. But I shall no longer strive for 7 any more. I hope fellow bloggers can understand. After all, no other bloggers that I have seen have produced as many as I did in the past year.  So I think they'll probably understand and forgive me for this slight slackening of my exertion or perhaps they'd even feel thankful because they can gladly skip it without feeling that they have missed anything interesting. They'd certainly need to read less. More than one blogger have complained that my blogs are too long for their taste! Perhaps the quality of my blog may improve as a result. But that is by no means certain. Who knows? ! As my favourite high school teacher once wrote, as a comment on one of my tests, only "Time will tell!"

Today is a special day. I resumed my Sunday swim! Even as I am writing, my hands feels warm: the result of better blood circulation. I feel good all over.

I went to my usual swmming place: Morrison Hill Road Swimming Pools in winter. In summer, it's Smithfield Road Swimming Pools. It's a delight to see the pool again today. Some slight changes have been made to the changing room. I noticed that they have now put in an additional compartment to the shower. In the expanded shower cubicle, they have put in additional hooks for us to hang our clothes and underclothes and an additional corner shelf for placing tiny objects like shampoo, combs, soap etc. They also changed the tap. Previously, they used a water saving type of tap which would stop running after every 10 seconds or so. It was so inconvenient. To keep the water flowing, you had to use one hand to press upon the tap continuously to keep the water running. They also changed the locks to the lockers. Now they are much tighter. The omens are good.

When I stepped on to the corridor leading to the pool, I found that they have now built in a concrete wall to separate those going out to and those coming in from the pool. You still had to go through a shower before reaching the pool. When I went out, I was surprised. I expected that my nose would be greeted by the pungent smell of chlorine. I was not! A pleasant surprise.

I donned my goggles and stepped into the water. It was not too warm but not too cold either. I started to move, slowly at first. It felt good. I found that I was back to my elements. I remember how I was once a sperm, swimming like a tadpole. I swam and swam and swam. I had competition, millions of them. They could easily have ousted me. But on that occasion, I won.  And here I was, reflecting on my state in my mother's uterus.  I was the first to hit her egg. I burrowed myself into it. I was a swimming champion. I climbed out from her when I was sufficiently strong. And now she had gone down.

I had thought of doing no more than 10 laps because it was more than a year since I last  touched pool water. But the water was so good. The force of the jets pumping out water had probably been reduced. Thus much less disturbance would be caused whenever I reached the spot above where the water spout at the bottom of the pool. So I did another two and another two and then a further two.... I ended up doing 20. At first, I found that my movements were not as smooth as I thought it should be but after I reached the middle of the first pool, suddenly all came back to me. I was so surprised. Reflecting back, I now know why. I thought of myself as a fish again. As I swam, I used to think I was no longer human. I was a fish! A fish back to his birthplace. The fish was so happy. This thought always worked magic. I would think of nothing and would just concentrate on how the water brush lightly against my skin all over my body, especially that covering my head, my face, my hands, my shoulders, my thighs and my feet. I felt the slosh of the water, the sound of the bubbles rising to the surface before they finally vanished, as I was breathing out. It was a wonderfully soothing sound because it indicated that I was moving smoothly in the water, in rhythm with the waves and the currents. I rose and fell with the particular position of my body according as I was using my hands or my feet or not using any so that I had my hands, my body and my feet forming just one streamline submarine shaped mass.

I did not fight the water. I allowed my body to sway from side to side along with the direction of the current if my body was turned slightly down one side or the other. I just ignored my slight slant as if it were natural. In fact, it was natural. It is practically impossible to always keep your body in one rigid position anyway because there would always be other swimmers pushing past you from the opposite direction, creating a small current beside you with their plunging hands or the push of their feet as they streamed or splashed past you and those transient currents would push you to one side and your body would be pushed away from its original position. It's the same in life. You just relax your mind and your emotions and adjust your postures to the current. You should never push against it too hard. You just continue to do whatever it is that you are doing and then when you meet with pressure from one side, you just allow the extra transient current to pass, by not doing anything, by keeping your body relaxed so that its muscles can do their micro-adjustments all by themselves, to keep the maladjustment to the minimum. It's called damage control. That way, you save energy and will never be out of breath! It felt so good to sense your body adapting seamlessly to the constantly changing current and continuing to move ahead as if nothing has happened.

When I was at one end of the pool, I would rest for about 5 or 10 seconds before moving again. Then I would spend the time looking at the flickering surface of the water. The light from the ceiling would cast reflections upon the tiny waves which are always moving upon the surface of the water. They never ceased to move and in the process, the wave front of one wave would combine with the wave front of one or more other waves. They might thus produce elgongated circles or pea-like ovals of different lengths and unequal radii and occasionally they'd become so slim that it would appear that there were hundreds of tiny eels of silver quickly emerging and then submerging back into the water and then they would somehow be rapidy transformed into little boats of light joined by fluctuating chains of liquid silver and in some positions, it looked as if whole parts of the pool had swimming upon its surface tens of water snakes with bodies of alternating segments of light and dark. They looked so beautiful and so full of life as they they rapidly shifted their slim and elegant bodies in never ending motions along the surface of the water. I would gaze upon them for the entire periods of my short rest. I felt so lucky to be able to see them. They were so beautiful.

It was a wonderful way to end a Sunday. On my way home, I felt my lungs so much lighter. I could breathe so much more freely. My whole body felt so light! I was wondering on my journey home, how I could have allowed myself to stop for such a long time. It's definitely on. I shall go again next week. I really like how it felt.