Immersed
Postcards of Memory (7) August
"The boy who was always reading War and Peace in the swimming-pool" appeared in a favourite novel of mine when I was a student. I coudn't forget that image, the image of utmost luxury: summer by a water, and all the peace you need to read a huge novel.
I can hear screams of kids playing with balls, jumping into the pool and chasing each other; happy screams of little ones holding on to their father's neck or swaying on life belts. I have to look up from my book to see that it isn't the swimming-pool of my childhood but the one in Wadabori park. The wooden barrack of the locker room is painted blue, the ground is covered not with grass but green plastic, and Eifuku family houses appear above the fence, and the reddish building of a shrine.
At sunset, watching the colours of the sky while swimming in backstroke, it's just like floating about in an Eden of long ago.
"The boy who was always reading War and Peace in the swimming-pool" appeared in a favourite novel of mine when I was a student. I coudn't forget that image, the image of utmost luxury: summer by a water, and all the peace you need to read a huge novel.
I can hear screams of kids playing with balls, jumping into the pool and chasing each other; happy screams of little ones holding on to their father's neck or swaying on life belts. I have to look up from my book to see that it isn't the swimming-pool of my childhood but the one in Wadabori park. The wooden barrack of the locker room is painted blue, the ground is covered not with grass but green plastic, and Eifuku family houses appear above the fence, and the reddish building of a shrine.
At sunset, watching the colours of the sky while swimming in backstroke, it's just like floating about in an Eden of long ago.
posted by bm at 10:06 AM
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