I’ve started swimming again. Actually, I’ve gone once and maybe by the time you read this, I will have gone at least twice. In my world that counts for fitness. I’ve decided that I love the word slip. I slipped into the water the other day at the Koreatown Y and swam back and forth, back and forth for my entire 1/2 hour slot. The water was silk, a silk slip, and my knee didn’t ache once. Before the pandamnic, I had ordered a pair of prescription goggles, and they worked incredibly well. It was the first time I’d used them, and where before everything was blurry — so blurry that I’m rendered a kind of terrified vulnerability — I can now see the wall at the end of the lane ahead of me, and the clock too. The goggles might have been a little tight, though, because at one point I thought they were sucking my eyeballs out, and I wondered if my torn retina from last year groaned a bit at the pressure. When you’re swimming, you can have all kinds of thoughts and no thoughts at all. You swim in the slipstream of thoughts, I guess. The Y has no frills, really, and it’s cheap and clean and no one seems to be looking at anything. No scary beautiful people or Peletons or CrossFit freaks. Lots of older Korean folks (did you know that Los Angeles has the largest number of Koreans outside of Korea), a few young families splashing in the family pool, me. When I drove away I felt better and happier than I had, I think, in years.
I’ve been watching epic love story movies lately. Re-watching them, actually. The English Patient. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I plan on Doctor Zhivago next and maybe Reds. The bigger the better. If you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments. I don’t like too much action or violence unless it’s related to the history of the period. I want epic and love. That’s it.
I’m reading Ada Limon’s new collection of poetry, The Hurting Kind. I might be epically in love with her. Each morning, I write a bit, paint a bit and read a poem or two while I drink coffee. I’ve never felt more exhausted in my mind and heart, and you know why because the world is relentless and this country is terrible. But exhaustion doesn’t preclude joy and some degree of contentment.
Recipe for better seizure control: CBDV is an isolate that I’ve begun giving Sophie at the recommendation of Dr. Bonni Goldstein. We’re slowly increasing the dosage, and there’s been a dramatic reduction in Sophie’s seizures so far. I hope it holds but have no expectations. It’s ridiculously expensive, but I’m too tired to rant about how criminal it is that cannabis is still a schedule one drug. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. It occurs to me that I have a lot of new readers here. You might be wondering about cannabis medicine. I wrote hundreds of posts back on my old blog that I began this month, fourteen years ago. Happy blogaversery to me. You can go over there and check it out: a moon worn as if it had been a shell. On the right sidebar there’s a search bar. Keywords for cannabis medicine posts include marijuana. It was an epic journey.
Reader, those are some bits for you. What are you up to? What are you reading? Don’t forget to tell me about an epic love story film I might have missed or need to watch again.
As a swimming addict myself I could relate to every word you wrote about it, even the thoughts that pop up only then and the sublime "high" of afterwards. I hope you can continue with it. And here's a romance movie I just love: "Silver Linings Playbook".
I think you might like the movie Summerland. And it is heartening to know that prescription swim goggles make all the difference. Swimming must be such a wonderful way to empty yourself for a short time.