save the point

I found the perfect beach yesterday.

I rank this beach up in my Top Ten Beaches - not that I'm a real beach afficionado, and not that I have a Top Ten Beaches. But this one had everything a good beach needs. Completely smooth, sandy bottom. Very deep within fifty ft of shore, for optimal swimming. Lovely view of downtown. And... barely any people.

I found this beach not on the well-dressed shores of the North Side, but rather in my very own Hyde Park, out at the Point. People, myself included, have made the mistake of colonizing the sand of the 57th Street Beach due to what must be lack of knowledge. That beach is loud about its beachiness. It features a long expanse of sand, and a building for changing and showers. It also features, on any beautiful summer day, a miserably large crowd of Hyde Parkers desperate for heat relief slash tan skin.

Nameless Amazing Beach, on the other hand, is discreet. It doesn't advertise itself with sand, or showers, or its own changing building (clearly, just use the old Point building... where on any given day one can walk into a wedding reception and change in a stall with a giant purple bow wrapped around it and wash one's hands with lavender-scented soap provided by said reception's decorator.) In fact, the only way you can tell NAB is a beach is due to the four or five No-Boating buoys anchored a considerable distance from shore, and the four or five quiet college students who figured it out before you (but don't worry, there's plenty of room.)

My swim yesterday with H. was so good it gave me a bit of an epiphany: this is summer. It can be easy to forget when you're paid to spend 7.5 hours a day in a building so air-conditioned it gives you goosebumps. And when you wake up at 7AM in order to do that. And when things consequently are somehow even more routine than they were during the school year. Swimming, though, is like campfire--something very simple with a profoundly blissful effect.

Last week, in my dark room and with brilliant aim, I stepped on my laptop, cracking an enormous spiderweb into the screen and rendering it not usable. I was overcome with panic, and with something worse than panic, something really heavy and frightening and big. It was as though, damaging my computer and witnessing my resulting fear, I felt that my life was sort of small and meaningless. Even to myself. It took me a while to figure out what that feeling was.

People can be so silly.