Swimming With Bats

For the past two days I’ve been working the most abysmal shift, due primarily to my own stupidity. My regular work day goes from 8:30 until 5:30, and I agreed, to help a friend, to work the 6 – 10pm security shift at night. I think I’m just a sucker for people with soft pleading voices. *sigh*

So last night, after my shift was over, I decided to go swimming. We have this beautiful pool between my house and work, and it was just too tempting to bypass last night. There’s something about a pool at night – the way it glows turquoise and seems so perfectly glassine, no snot nosed kids with super soakers and water wings in sight. What there were, and what was so fantastic… were the bats. The pool would be perfectly serene, then they would take this spiralling graceful dive, skimming the surface, making the most satisfying sound as they scooped up water. I didn’t disturb them at all, they just dove around my slow and deliberate breast stroke as they pleased, coming within inches of me and swooping away.

An embassy close to ours was having some sort of celebration, shooting enormous fireworks high into the sky, a fantastic reward to having to do the backstroke. The miniature sonic booms they created were muffled underwater, it sounded as though a war was going on underneath my flutter kicking legs, and a celebration above.

There is something decidedly baptismal about taking a long, quiet swim late at night. I could feel everything melting away, my horrible no good very bad day, my tiredness, my sadness. I felt as though when I got out that while I was cleaner, stronger, calmer.. I wouldn’t want to go back into the water, it seemed a little dirtier, a little less pristine. The pool was rippled, the bats crashing without grace into little waves that weren’t there before.