swimming

I was talking with two jazz musicians – both old men with blue eyes. Following the conversation, I dived into an indoor swimming pool, along with a few other people. I swam with great ease and power, circumnavigating the pool again and again, dipping and rising like a porpoise. Someone handed me a board, much like the lid of an esky, and I began to ride it around the pool, using it to propel myself up and out of the water, shooting up higher each time, until I nearly touched the extremely high ceiling, the blade of an oscillating fan brushing against my cheek. I put the board aside and swam down underneath the water to the bottom where there sat a girl of about twenty-five, with black swirling hair. I joined her, sitting on the bottom of the pool, looking around through the blue water at the legs of the other swimmers. It was peaceful and we could breathe as normal. I asked her why she wasn’t swimming on the surface with the others and she told me that she had a problem with her neck, perhaps a fracture. I tried to think of how I could help her, deciding that massage was too risky with such a problem, but felt that I could help to heal her or at least make the pain subside. I warmed my hands with my breath and placed them on the back of her neck firmly, leaving them there so that the warmth would penetrate her body. I repeated the process several times until she was well and wanted to swim to the surface. We hopped out of the pool and had to leave this part of the building by means of a series of escalators. I was worried as I had bare feet, the ridged metal escalator stairs painful under the soles of my feet and potentially dangerous. I found the process of choosing and stepping onto the escalator stairs very overwhelming. Finally, we reached a counter where everyone was lining up to collect tickets. I was handed two drink tickets and I realised that it was New Year’s Eve. I momentarily wished that I had not driven so that I could have some champagne, but then decided that I was happy to drink mineral water. I found a bar and went inside, looking for my friends.