Place Entry Six

Carpe Diem

March 12, 2010
Today it’s pouring. This is the rain of tropical storms where nine inches can fall in one day. The campus is getting ready for spring break. Most students have gone. I’m looking down the hill at the lake as I often do lately. My pants are already soaked from my ankles to my knees. I imagine what I’ll feel like the rest of the day if my blouse were also soaked, so I bend my umbrella to block the rain pellets that are shooting sideways from the wind. A retention pond obstructs the view of the lake. It was built to serve residence halls four years ago. The large, ugly, brown ditch was carved out of the long, green field that used to introduce the lake like a long, lush carpet. At times, the ditch makes me feel like someone pulled the doors shut to the lake.

Today the ditch is full- it looks like a pond in front of the larger Lake Jovita. It filled up in no time. In Florida, only an inch or two of rain can fill an entire area with several inches of water. Florida averages 4-½ feet of rain a year. Out of this rainfall, only one inch soaks into the ground and stays. All this rain I see will either run off or return to the sky.

Three male students run toward the man-made pond and dive in. Two of the guys bob in the water, and just their heads appear as they float around like the American coots in the lake. The third guy scrambles out of the side of the ditch on hands and knees. As he gets to his feet, he turns his body around toward the ditch, jumps, and grabs one of his bent knees-- a half-cannon ball dive back into the water. All is blurry and wet and gray as if we were standing in the middle of a cloud with plummeting rain ensuring the thick, moist air would hang on. The students’ clothes and bodies are darkened. Like birds, they look the same and play the same within the new pond.

I’m reminded of night-swimming as a teen before my fear of feeding sharks or beer-buzz lack of judgment. Growing up in Maryland, I used to walk around Washington, D.C. at night with friends. The city was dark and quiet, and the memorials were lit with floodlights. Like a postcard. One night we sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while a solitary man played saxophone beside the large, stone president. Mike was missing from the stairs, and when we looked down into the large, rectangular pool in the center of the mall, we found him swimming and diving within the water. Backstroking and backflipping within the Washington pool. I’m sure this was illegal.

I wonder how long I’ve been concerned with where I submerge myself in water. I learned in Florida that sharks feed at night near the shoreline. I also learned that amoebas in warm lake water can cause encephalitis and death in small children. A friend died jet skiing in a lake, slow judgment from drinking.

The sky is gray water. Falling fast and thick. If I leaned my head back, I could drink, and I long to quench more than my thirst in water without intimate knowledge of what’s underneath.