The Joy of Swimming

Saturday, November 23, 2013

As it is on a typical Saturday, I went swimming with Mom and Inge this evening. However, we left home late and got stuck in the traffic jam. When we finally arrived at the sports center, it was 6.30 already and the place was almost empty. There was only one kid with his mom in the children's pool and another guy in the cold-water one. So when the three of us got into the warm-water pool, it was like our private place! It was so nice not having to fight for your space in a crowded pool or to defend it against unruly kids. And the water was unusually clear today – bad things turning good!

I had a bad experience with swimming when I was a kid. It happened when I was about 4 and hadn't learned how to swim. I was playing on the side of the big public pool without any lifebuoy, and suddenly I got caught in the current. All I remember was that I swallowed what felt like a litter of water and nearly drowned. Luckily, my sister was there to save me. And better, I'm not even traumatic with water, because swimming turns out to be my favorite sport. Having spent the following 10 years having fun simply playing with water every time I went to the public pool, I finally started to learn how to swim when I was around 14, and I have always loved swimming since then.

Swimming to me is the activity that gives the sense of freedom as well as so much fun. It's a contentment to be able to move my body however I like it as if there was no boundary – it's probably the closest thing to flying – and It's such a joy to feel the water surrounding my body. It's fun to see the reflection of my hands from underwear, and how, when I stretch them out, it looks like I'm parting the water, a little bit like Moses. What's more fun is to breathe underwater and hear the gurgling of the bubbles, which I can also see, as if being inside a soda can and watching the fizz going up. And apart from the fact that it's healthy and that I don't have to sweat in the process, swimming is also relaxing. Every time I perform a backstroke, I swear that if I close my eyes for more than just one minute, I can simply fall asleep, there, lying on the pool. It's so quiet underwater, so peaceful that it feels like the world is all mine. And when the weather is warm as it was this evening, falling asleep with my arms leaning on the poolside was a serious temptation!

I'm only sorry that I didn't take my phone with me to capture the view. With the night lamps and pots of firs around, the pool looked beautifully tempting!

Maybe next time!

Hanging Out with the Conventional Duo

Thursday, November 21, 2013

After what it seems like ages, I took my journal book again tonight, and I had a great time! This is what I wrote...

 
Hi, paper! I’ve missed you!
You and pens used to be my confidant … until the arrival of the laptop and its soft glazed keyboard. Yea, that’s on me. You didn't do anything wrong. If it makes you feel any better, I confided much in you than in that snobbish shiny brown gadget (please don’t tell it that). And in my defense, we human race have been engaged in a go-green campaign for the last few years, which means we’ve been trying to use less of your kind in order to protect the earth and the trees and your grand kids. So please no hard feeling. And yes, the internet and blogging services have offered a more convenient way of writing instead of the conventional you-and-pen duo. Let’s face it, your smooth and delicate body IS prone to being burnt…and wet, as well… and if you get stolen, it’ll be really hard to trace you and to recover what’s lost with you. The internet, on the other hand, guarantees us eternal service with unlimited storage and fireproof–waterproof–anti-theft protection. It simply outshines you.

However, – now I understand why so many people love ‘but’ and its kind – no matter how sophisticated the internet is, there’s still one thing about you that it can never match up to: your texture and your presence – okay, that’s two instead of just one. And yes, your weakness also turns out to be your greatest strength. You know, it just feels sooooo good to hold you in my arms, to feel each page on my fingertips, to experience the intimacy we share…. The world simply feels better and friendlier with your presence. Somehow, you have become a representative of nature in this technological era. I guess that’s why, despite the advanced Kindle and e-books, a lot of people still opt for physical books – myself included. This reminds me of an article encouraging the idea of ‘long live prints’ that I read a while ago, by the way. And while we’re still on ‘by the way’, hash tags (#) is apparently another of your flaws.

Anyway, it feels so good to hang out with you again. I’m planning to do this more often. So, I’ll see you soon!

Retrying to manage a personal writing project,

Leap of Heart

Sunday, November 17, 2013

It’s interesting how Jeanette Winterson explains how falling in love is like jumping off your own private planet to visit someone else’s. In every single way I agree with this seemingly brilliant author.

After each fall, I realize it more and more that I want to take everything I love about my own private planet to that new planet I will visit; that if I should take the jump, I want to carry my big backpack where I put my music and Friends and TV series collection, my philosophy and articles and Paulo Coelho novels and The Little Prince, my poems and enthusiasm for photography, my invisible badge of earth and animal defender, AND Kayla; and I want to share all those things with this person. It’s fun to think that this person may also be interested in everything I have in my backpack. But it’s also tough, knowing that there is a possibility that we meet halfway and I show him what’s in my backpack and he shows me what’s in his and we find out that we love different things, and that I will have to pack up and defy gravity to find my way back to my own private planet, which then will seem so small and lonely.

It’s never easy falling in love – Winterson even mentioned in postscript that we have to be really really brave to take the jump to the other planet. But if there’s another thing I realize after each fall, is the fact that I’ve always been able to finally find my way back to my own private planet, and that it’s not small and lonely at all– in fact, I bring back some poems and more enthusiasm for life as souvenir – and even better, that I’m just one jump closer to get to the right planet.

So, to falling in love and this new jump I’m taking,

PS: here's the link to the inspiring article: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/05/big-questions-from-little-people/

Creativity vs. Technology Advancement

Monday, November 16, 2013

I wonder if creativity works in inversion with internet access and technology advancement. I surely was more creative before I owned a laptop and a smartphone with full internet access.

Internet access and technology advancement themselves have without a doubt improved the quality of people’s life – for me personally, I can’t be more grateful for millions of free great online articles and amazing photographs and (illegal) music and applications AND youtube videos, not forgetting social networking services through which I connect with my best friends. They have, however, also sucked up my creativity, it seems. Back when I was 15 and all I had was a regular phone without internet access – and quite expensive SMS fee – I would spend the evenings feeling the breeze and writing poems or finishing my novel or writing diaries, and ideas seemed to easily and abundantly flood in. Now, with all kinds of information available online, I more often than not find it hard to tap into my creativity and write, instead.

I guess muses really do reside in nature, which, by the way, reminds me of an episode in Charmed – the one where Phoebe or Paige found stray muses in the park, all barefooted and wore leaf-crowns, and they had to help them in a way that I don’t remember how. Anyway, those muses – a few of them were probably overjoyed with the invention of blogs and Instagram, but most of them, I suppose, still prefer to hide behind raindrops and sunsets, or sing with the wind that blows through excited leaves and flowers. Or at least, that’s where my muse seems to dwell.

This also reminds me about the downside of multitasking – there have been some scientifically proven facts that it is actually inefficient. With internet and technology, people nowadays are more prone to multitasking, including all my students and me. The result? Not so good. I’ve been trying to reduce multitasking, mostly when it comes to online activities, but I guess I still need to reduce the actual amount of time that I spend being online.

To less internet access and more creativity – cheers!

On My Way to the Bluebell Castle

Remember when you were a kid and your imagination always ran wild?

Out of nostalgia, I took my favorite bedtime-stories collection – Enid Blyton’s More Goodnight Stories – from the bookshelf yesterday and started rereading a few chapters. The book itself, which turned out to be published in this country in the same year when I was born (wow!), was already worn out – the edges of the paper had wrinkled and the glue keeping the pages together had dried. But it was really exciting to see the colorful illustration again. And during those moments, I remembered exactly how fun it was to be a kid!

There were stories about a boy whose act of kindness came back to him, about little fairies from the Bluebell Castle who fell into the pool and got soaked, about a music box that helped save a goldfish’s life, about a panicky plump lady who lost her head, and about toys catching the evil dwarf who stole the children’s sweets… among many others. My favorites, though, were one about the Fatty-Shorty’s party on page 77 and that about a toy oven on page 90… and not because of the story.

There on page 77 was an illustration of the Fatty-Shorty’s party – a room with happy dwarfs and pretty fairies dancing together, and a BIG table full of mouth-watering jelly cakes and cookies shaped like hearts and clouds! On the top right of the page, a skinny thief dwarf was stealing a pink jelly cake, trying to sneak it into his giant hat. When I was a kid, I could hear the ‘dunk’ sound in my head every time I saw that picture, imagining that pink jelly cake plunging into the hat. And following the sound was my own imaginary jelly-cake party, complete with the confetti and guests in colorful dresses. Almost twenty years later, when I stumbled on that page yesterday, I swear that sound came back! The only thing missing was the imagination that followed.

The same thing happened when I stumbled on page 90. There it was, the illustration of Angela’s toy oven with some gifts from the fairy – a piece of yellow Tippy Pudding with melting orange sauce on top, three pieces of red-and-blue gugle raisin cookies, and another piece of green bubbly cake that left me drooling. Back when I was 8, encountering that page would soon lead to me baking such delicious cakes using my own toy oven. And fake as the paper cakes were, I would have SO much fun! And yet when I looked at that picture yesterday, I had lost the excitement of going where imagination would take me. I guess the process of growing up really does involve cutting our imagination down, to the point where everything has to seem realistic in order to be considered right. What a pity, right?

Anyhow, they say better late than never. So, I guess I’ll start exercising my imagination again. Not too far, though – maybe only till the point where the now-dry little fairies are halfway back to the Bluebell Castle and quickly turn around.

Renaissance

Sunday, November 10, 2013

November 10 is not the best date to start a diary, I admit. It would be perfect to start it on January 1, right on the very first day of New Year. But, meh – who am I kidding? You know it too, I’ve never been a good journalist. I’ll keep the writing track perfectly until probably February or March, and then I’ll start skipping some days because I’m busy – okay, lazy – and before I realize it, I’ll have skipped the whole month of May and continue writing again on June 8, simply because it’s my birthday, and then I’ll skip writing again till Christmas.

So, rather than forcing myself to make a perfect start, which by the way doesn’t always end as perfectly, I’ve decided to just start writing now. It’s November, the National Writing Month – in America, at least – and I think 10 is a quite pretty number, so welcome to the diary weekly journal of Jennie Rusli!

PS: I planned to write my first entry with more than what I’ve written above, including the classic sentence, “it’s 4 in the morning and I still don’t feel like sleeping”. But the truth is, it’s 4 in the morning and I’m sleepy. So I’ll see you again next week. And trust me, I'm really trying keep my writing track well this time.

Ciao!