Finding Bottom

I used to let all my air out and sink to the bottom of the pool when I was a kid.  I pretended I was a shark, not a minnow, and lurked about.  Other times I sat recumbent as if in a lounge chair with my hands clasped over my belly.  I did some of my earliest meditating underwater, deafened by it and isolated, until I had to come up for air.  The moments were brief but I'd string enough together and was satisfied.

Or if we were at the lake I'd wear a mask and dive in the murky green, and position my face inches from the bottom to see the shells.  I brought them up, brown, ugly, caked with pond muck and the stench of sulfur.  I collected them on rafts and sand castles and pretended I was Jacques Cousteau.  I dreamed in a world of my own making under the water where it was quiet and I was alone.  I had some of my biggest adventures at the bottom of Lake Lucerne.

Two days ago I rose at five a.m., then again yesterday and today in search of the bottom of the pool, those shells in the lake and the girl that once believed she was a famous oceanographer.  I looked for her at my little desk in the office, perched in front of the computer until my right shoulder pinched.  I moved to the window seat where the light was dim and my knees ached.  In the early morning haze of half-awakedness I put thoughts on screen.  The ones that ramble and race when I run, or vaccuum, or do laundry.  The ones that won't let go of me.  The repetitiveness of the mundane and pre-dawn grogginess lulls me like water.