What you Can't See Isn't There

When I swim in the pool, my eyes are open with the random blink, as if you're not even swimming. There is no effort one way or the other because the goggles are a barrier. I stare straight down at that black line and follow course. There is the occasional hairball or fuzzy that floats by me and I may give a scowl or an underwater ewww, but it's quite pleasant. It's familiar. It's everything you expect. No surprises.

Swimming outside in the open water, be it the reservoir or another lake or the salt water, I do not open my eyes. I don't want to know what's in there. There are surprises.

This morning a group of us met in Old Lyme and the water was beautiful. Cold at first and then quite pleasant even with a sleeveless wetsuit. The tide was on it's way out so even quite a ways off shore, you could stand and the water was up to our chests. We swam quite a distance, maybe a little more than half a mile, and we all popped our heads out and discussed the swim and how much further we'd go. The junkie amongst us, the one who shows up to swim in a thunder storm waiting on the beach for anyone else to appear, mentions all the cr@p she's seeing in the water.

That one thing might have been a rock, but whatever it was, let's move this way.

Someone else chimes in, There's a lot of stuff in this water today... the fish are . . Stop right there.

Let's not discuss what we see and what might be in the water we're currently sharing with others' natural environment. Let's not shoot the sh*t about critters and stuff on the bottom and things we're feeling moving past us and next to us. Let's not even discuss the water temperature changes because why is that spot warm right there?

I don't want to know. I don't want to know any of it. I want to think that if I feel a bump or a nudge from below, it's a bubble in my wetsuit, caused by me. If my toe skims something, it's just a piece of seaweed. If I spot a fin in the distance, shucks, it's only a rock.

Let's go with that. Let's not discuss it further. Cause I don't want to know. If I can't see it, it isn't there.

This is me when I'm swimming, and this is the water I see when I swim: