Miscellaneous Thoughts & Ramblings...

Swimming

The sun’s daily journey across the Tucson sky is moving closer to the southern horizon. As a consequence of the longer nights and cooler temperatures, the pool is cooling. By 3:00 PM it is about 97% in the shade of the house and it will not be long until the shade will be covering it by 2:00 PM. So, in these waning days, we are enjoying the last swims of the season. 

The pool is a freeing place. It is without gravity and that is why we like the pool. To heave my carcass from my chair and up onto the edge of the pool is to anticipate the impending freedom of movement that will come once I’m in. To weigh nothing, to move without effort, to float in the literal sense. It is to be disentangled from the ever present restraints of incapacity. The pool is a 12,000 gallon equalizer. I fly like a giant, pale, featherless bird when I’m in there. I swim every day I can during the summer season, it is a daily priority.

I never wanted a pool. It is a huge front-loaded expense and contains further ongoing maintenance costs. There are chemicals to be managed and tested, there are expensive pumps and filter equipment to maintain and we easily lose 100 gallons a week to evaporation (not to mention all the water I splash out on a regular basis). Pools are giant wet money holes.

As this season comes to an end and I reflect on my second full season as a pool owner I have but only one thought: I like my pool.

Equinox

The fall equinox is upon us. I think I’ve talked in the past about my loathing of this event. I tolerate the summer solstice, and even though I know the days aren’t noticeably shorter I still lean to repugnance upon its passing. It is the fall equinox I execrate. I make no bones of my dislike for its ever lengthening nights and the cold it brings upon me. Not until late February will I be happy again about this, the length of the days.

So, get used to it!

The Blather

I was watching a national financial news show the other morning. I always watch their pre-market show over breakfast, before I head off to work. They too, however, are falling victim to the weak minded tact of talking and shouting over one another in some lame effort to make a point. This seems to have become the modus-preferred in recent years, in news, in politics, in life. That’s too bad. 

It seems that deporting oneself with decorum and civility is out of vogue. Society seems to have deduced that if one can shout loud enough and long enough, they win. Sadly too, it appears to work, as it leverages the ever shortening attention span of the majority of our citizenry. No longer do we need to remember whom had the facts straight, or whose reasoned argument stood strong on its merits. Now all we need remember is who the loud one that got the last word in was. It’s made things so much easier.

I believe that when the over-talk stops, if it ever does, we will be the poorer for it. Deep thought and a well-reasoned factually supported argument will be dismissed as unexciting and uninteresting and the vitiated public debate will be in the hands of carnival barkers. Maybe it already is. The shouters never seem to have an argument; if they did it would stand of its own, without need for the props of audacity.

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