Swimming pool water. It is iconic. Los Angeles. David Hockney. Cool blue pool water undulates and creates seductive patterns.

This summer of heat was all about liquid: cold showers, ice water, the Atlantic Ocean, public swimming pools, kiddie pools in Third Street yards, Corona Beer, lemonade.

In other ways too: we learned that liquids can create explosive cocktails on-board jet liners. We are forced to expand our notion of evil: those who want to end life at any cost. Unthinkable, unfathomable.

Here in rural California (lush roses, eucalyptus trees, blossoms abounding), we are seemingly far from the world (though we listen constantly to NPR, check the Internet hourly).

The new swimming pool beckons and gives us time for refreshment, frivolity, exercise, water fights, naked swimming, even calm moments for staring at its bewitching patterns; floating.

For two summers in the heat of this hot valley, we went without a pool. The old pool changed hands with the house. There are new owners and the old pool doesn’t belong to us anymore. The are going to turn it into  basketball court (a basketball court?) Now an empty hull, its floor is cracked, paint peeling and filled with putrid green water.

The formely great: not in such good shape anymore.

He can barely walk over there without feeling pain (a house, a pool, old cars, objects: they are people, memories, more than just things.

At night, there’s an underwater light in the new, modern lap pool. Water illumination. Fifty feet long, twelve feet wide.

Sometimes change brings…

We swim in the new pool: splashing around, floating underwater through the past in order to discover something new.