You want to try it, but aren’t sure how it’s going to go. Anything athletic isn’t your strong suit, which includes swimming. But you’re here on the lake with your family and it looks fun. Terrifying, but fun. You feel compressed in your life vest, which you suppose means safety. You tug it away from your chest as you consider what you just agreed to. Tubing. It seems simple enough. All you have to do is hang on as the boat drags you along. No big thing. Looking at the bright red and grey circle of bobbing plastic in the water you decide it’s fine because you’re not going to last long. You jump into the water, let it envelop you, cool you. But the life jacket brings you to the surface quickly and you push the hair from your eyes. 

You make your way to the tube, passing the coarse rope that snakes through the water, and start the hardest part of the whole experience: getting onto the wide plastic-ish tube. It’s slippery and bends under your knees as you try to climb on top of it. You try to pull yourself up, but you’ve always lacked upper body strength. You can’t seem to get all of you out of the water and onto the floating tube. They’re trying to tell you how to do it, but your arms just can’t work that way. They’re weak.  Those on the boat pull the tube to the edge so you can climb on that way. It’s embarrassing, shameful, your lack of strength always is, and doesn’t speak well for how the rest of this tubing is going to go. You’re not having fun, after that, but in silence, you grip the gray handles as you balance your weight on the circle and wait for this experience to be over with. They tell you the hand signals to give and ask if you’re good. You flash an unenthused thumb’s up and the rope starts to coil away from the tube as the boat begins to plow across the lake. When the soaked rope reaches its end, it jerks the tube and you’re off. The wind rushes past you and you can’t help but smile. 

You tighten your grip on the gray fabric of the handles and laugh despite yourself. The bumps of the waves, the wakes send you off the tube a little bit and bring you bouncing down, knocking the air from your lungs. It’s a definite thud and thump, but as long as you hang on for the ride, it’s incredible. Legs splayed out and moving with the boat. It lasts a lot longer than you thought, but you could do this forever. You hold on so long that those on the boat decide to kick it up a notch. They go faster and throw some zigs and zags into the path, which makes more bumps and more wind. It’s like you’re flying while being tossed around by a bull, but at the same time being dried by the wind and sprayed by the water. You don’t let go for a long time, so your hands start to hurt and you wonder how much longer you can hold on. 

Eventually, you’ll hit a wave one way and it’ll send you too high up in the air that you lose your grip or you’ll let go, like you did that first time, so that the tube goes on but you’re left hanging in the air for a few moments before crashing into the water. It’ll rush over you, try to fill you, to welcome you into its depths. But then you bob to the surface as the boat comes around to pick you up and the people aboard cheer because you outlasted a lot of them and for an uncle or two they just found a new challenge. You just smile and take the towel offered and ask: “Who’s next?” 

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From rivers to rains, snowbanks to streams 

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The water is almost unnaturally blue. It draws you in. You sit on the edge of the fountain and watch the white spurts shoot out in their circle, like the spikes of a crown. You know you shouldn’t stop and stare at the eternal rise, fall, crash, and ripple of the water. You have places to be, work to do inside the museum, histories to heighten, to hone. You envy the Jefferson statue. He gets to stay on his stone throne and watch forever the constant water, the passing world. And you? You have to leave it for now. You cannot stay forever by the manmade beauty. Eventually, one of you will be killed by the coming chill.

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Such an uncontainable, malleable thing 

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Looking back, that summer went in a haze of words, history, and heat, although I spent most of my time sheltered under the great dome. The Library and Research Center used to be a synagogue, but now it holds worshipers of a different kind. The glimmering gold and blue Star of David still resides on the ceiling and hanging bright bulbs, wrapped in bronze metal, form the same star. The pews are gone though. Replaced by tables of dark wood and shelves filled with books. There’s a plaque on the wall telling us that once upon a time Martin Luther King Jr. spoke here. 

There’s so much history in the building, in the books, in the objects and images tucked away in the winding halls beyond the front room. We spend so much time in the front room at the dark tables with books on our laps or boxes of photos stacked up on our cart, it feels like I’m living in a movie montage set in slow motion as we dig into the history of Saint Louis high schools. It’s surreal working in the chill of the library under its high dome and among the whispers. Especially when it rains and the three high windows darken to trick the mind into thinking it’s the middle of the night. It makes the world outside of the dome to fade away to gray. It makes it easier to get absorbed by the past, to imagine the tensions, the drama, the pains, to focus on our project. The rain meets the dome-like a heartbeat, water floods the streets, and we are lulled by the past and by what the future will hold.

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It’ll shiver with a drop of a stone 

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 There’s a pressing quiet, a stillness to the water, to the wind that feels as if the world’s floated away. The wind picks up and the water morphs, becoming like the scales of a fish. The approaching sun shines glimmering paths onto the pool. But no one else is around, not another soul to see the beautiful way the water sways in the breeze. No one else to feel it against their skin, cooling overheated bodies. I can’t help but wonder if this is what solitude, what loneliness feels like? What it means to truly be alone? What would it be like to live your whole life among this quiet? But then a car honk and the church bells ring and I go back to turning a tube of water pink and then clear again.

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Lights blur on the darkened pool

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