Speak to me as an earth scientist who, at the end of his life, worries he never knew ecstasy. And that it is indeed possible to press your face up against the slippery skins of earth and not know it. Or look at the molecular miracle of stardust growing our carrots and not remember what the priest says about dust on Ash Wednesday and not once think: My God, we are so beautiful and also nothing. Then cry for a very long time.

From this perspective, tell me what I saw the July evening we went to our city pool for family movie night—the entry fee was only $3 but snow-cones were extra—and we all entered the pool as we were comfortable, which means some of us did not at all. Others of us armored ourselves in T-shirts and carefully lowered our ballooning jellyfish bodies into the water. In the shallow end, dozens of parents with babies and kids splashed and squealed while a solemn crew of teen lifeguards waded back and forth, their task of watchfulness becoming murkier with the setting of the sun. A few of us drifted into the deep end, the place I love to be, less crowded. We kicked with egg beater legs like we were making a cake. 

Here in the Valley, I learned to be careful about which fights you choose because almost everyone will be a better fighter than you. Tattooed bodies and faces tell hard stories above the water line and I know again this place makes good fighters. A car on the street keeps driving back and forth honking—we do not think they are only saying hello. But below the water line, we cannot hear the horn. Our bodies transform from tense and awkward strangers into a quiet ballet of bodies. Pool lights send clear beams through dusk-colored water, backlit limbs move like lovers: there are no fighters here, not below the water line, not where gravity stops mattering. We are all fish and mermaids and children again. Below the water line, I am in love with the whole lot of life as if I were becoming someone who did know ecstasy—if only for a moment. 

Speak to me about this moment but before you do, please wait. Sit with the feeling before you find words. Wait as long as you can—how long can you wait? Can you wait as long as we do? The ones wading here in a crowded city pool? I do not mean to shame you for not knowing. But perhaps the ocean of data you exist in and consume also means you believe you are water and what does water feel like to itself? How can I explain what it feels like to float on your back, your weight unburdened as though you are walking on the moon, a feeling you believe so completely you almost forget this is a place most certainly mixed with other people’s pee. I want you to wait before you tell me anything because how can I trust you if you have never had to wait one minute for an answer? If you have never had to fight knowing you were the lesser fighter? If you never lost sleep or screamed alone in a car or waited for a biopsy result or cried yourself into exhaustion by the effort of waiting? Please wait before you respond. Let the answer burn itself into you like the sun on the water or a scientist with his face faithfully pressed against the earth waiting for ecstasy to show itself, participating in it with each breath. Tell me what you know only then. Snow-cones extra.