The Same Pool Twice

I am back in Amarillo again, visiting family with my daughter.

Amarillo is a strange place, to say the least. It is the epitome of America I think, encapsulating nearly every quirk, every good thing, and every questionable thing about my country, all rolled up into one, neat and tidy little ball.

As such, I have had a love/hate relationship with Amarillo over the years, as with America herself. Amarillo was the source of inspiration for the town "Yellow Sands" (Amarillo means "yellow" in Spanish and was thought to describe the dry soil here) that appears in my novel that I wrote in college, Instant Karma Koffie . Not exactly a flattering portrait, but honest to a degree. I would be more forgiving if I were to write it into a novel today, which I will with my current project,  Theodditty , but I wrote what I was feeling at the time.

Heraclitus is known for a parcel of fragments that have come down through the ages and are collected and mulled over by philosophers and scholars of ancient greek alike.

Perhaps his most famous one is: πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει” καὶ "δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης
Translated, "everything changes and nothing remains ... and ... you cannot enter the same river twice."


One of the biggest conflicts that I had with Amarillo was the topic of swimming. Moving from the verdant horse country of Louisville, Kentucky to the dry, arid High Plains desert of Amarillo, Texas was a bit of a shock. Being a very shy, and at the time, slightly pudgy young kid, it was a tough transition. Because of a serious of mutual acquaintances, I joined the swim team.


Now, joining the swim team in a small, conservative town in Texas is about the biggest, blatant kabosh one can put on his or her social life and is more or less dooming you as a softy, queer, or whimp, or...pick your redneck pariah designation. Add to that that I was in the honors program in a mixed school and that I was morbidly shy, well, you probably are getting the picture. For some reason, can't imagine why, Goonies was one of my favorite movies...

Well, things progressed rather rapidly with swimming. Within two years, I went from the new kid on the block to the fastest kid in Texas, and rapidly in the country within two more years. We practiced at the Amarillo Town Club with the Amarillo Aquatic Club, AAC, of which I still have a large monogrammed towel from. It is a very, very bad pool with regards to swimming dynamics. Horrible gutter system that causes major splashback, no real deep end, and had massive concrete starting blocks, now removed. But, training in the worst (nearly, Pampa's is by far the worst) pool in Texas gave us an advantage. Basically, any pool was better, and faster. The University of Texas at Austin has one of the "fastest" pools in Texas and it was nothing short of hearing the angels sing walking into that building as an impressionable, shy kid from Amarillo.


However, rising up to the ranks in swimming to now the international level, being ranked in the Top Ten in the World in a few events didn't matter. I didn't play football. By this point, the pudge was gone and I was able to bench press more than any of the football players except for a couple truly neanderthal-looking guys, and the coaches were doing their best to get me to play football. 


Sure, so I could give up international recognition to beat--Lubbock? I think not. 
Kabosh.

Lots more on the swimming, for later, but the point is that I am now back in Amarillo, having also lived on international level as well, and swimming at the pool at, guess where--the Amarillo Town Club. Now, the entire building has been renovated, except for the pool. I went back there last summer as I had not been there for nearly 25 years because of the memories of the place and I was somewhat speechless. It was like walking back in time. Except for the concrete blocks being removed, a couple of doorways sealed off and an observation window gone, and a very, very curious large psychedelic mural of swimming elephants on the wall, nothing seemed to have changed, except me.


I was happy to be back. 


I swam there last summer and this summer as well while I am in town. It is a trip. I can almost here the swim meets from old in there, see my old coaches on the deck, see the old octagon-shaped pace clock that was to be my best friend in Amarillo for many years, but it was all different as well. 


Swimming has given me the opportunity to make friends in all the countries I have lived in or travelled to in various ways, it has been the one constant in my life. I love the water. I swam with a Master's team while I lived in Italy and plan to once back in Belgium after India (already located a pool in Madurai as well). 


There is another conundrum in ancient greek philosophy about a boat (sometimes a pen knife is used as an example). If you have a boat and you replace each part of it, separately, over time, piece by piece, plank by plank, until eventually no piece is original, but the boat looks the same, is it the same boat?


I thought of this while swimming the other day. What if all the tiles had been replaced, one by one, the pool repainted, the water is obviously different, was it the same? Was my body the same, with all of my cells changing over time, leaving only my memory of that shy kid swimming here 25 years ago?


When I checked out, the "kid" (probably nearly 30), who checked me out at the desk saw my name and asked, "Are you the Robert Fulton? You still have almost every record in town!" I think I know how Bono from U2 feels now...


But, good question, am I?