Swimming in Y'all
When I get up I drink a glass
of water and take a bath. As I drink I look to see if the water
has been boiled or not. As I bathe I inhale carefully to discern
whether these trickles of water smell good or bad.
As I do these things I like to wonder which ideas arise from
them and influence my work throughout the rest of the day, and
"enjoying an endless meditation" I let the water flow,
like a tributary that forks at my body and connects me to the
rest of the world, as if words ran through my memory and escaped
with my sweat through my throat:
"…… the pleasant voice of water, the water
came down a stairway, my words spread along the keel of the
calm waters, to the lukewarm water's bed, black waters of unknown
purpose, though the waters are always very clear and the bottom
is visible, stone star tossed into eternal waters, like the
fog on the water, blinking water, eye that you guard, steps
of water support its eyes, careless water and fire, found waters
that shall never form an isthmus, they wash their feet with
gaseous water….."
When I place my diving boards in the middle of the street I'll
picture all the people passing beneath them like a great torrent
that can receive me, like the historic waters that flow through
the city into which I have at times wanted to plunge. Perhaps
they, at some moment of their day, as engrossed as the fluid
that springs from this idea, will dream of themselves as rebels,
as distracted or utopian as I.
-René Francisco
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