Taming What is Wild: What is a pool if not a domesticated ocean?

I present below a scene and three bits of context for which without I cannot begin to write about this notion of taming what is wild, which came to me as a result of said scene and context(s).

Scene:

I am sitting by myself on a balcony of an all inclusive resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. My feet are propped up on a small table and I am slightly reclined in a patio chair with a pillow on my lap and a laptop on the pillow. Surrounding the 12 inch screen I have a beautiful view.

I face west toward the water, mimicking the city itself. In front of me, Bahía Banderas, and beyond, the Pacific Ocean.

If I squint hard enough I should see Hawaii.

As it turns out, I cannot squint hard enough.

But it is there, directly in front of me, just the tiniest molecular spec.

What I can see which is not a spec is the pool of the resort below the edge of my balcony and just beyond the pool the strip of beach in front of the resort. The tide is high presently and from my viewpoint when the waves come in the crash of the tide looks to be only an inch or so away from the edge of the pool. It’s the distance of my thumb nail from this angle. From ground level the wave stops merely 10 feet from the edge of the pool on the sand below the supporting wall.

Context:

The world is odd and in the short term sometimes does not feel like it’s working in our favor. I used to be very comfortable with the feeling of believing that “things happen for a reason”.

My first iteration of the previous sentence stated that “I believe that things happen for a reason”. After I typed it I had to pause to reflect if that was even true. Honestly, I think that things just happen and it’s easier to ascribe to a belief that some reason is behind it.

Perhaps the truth is that things happen and believing that they happen for a reason is a mechanism to cope or to make sense of the world.

Anyhow, due to a series of events including my husband having already been committed to a business trip and a friend having a scary incident in route, I find myself in Mexico alone (ish - there are actually about 30 coworkers and their guests also here, but it’s up to me at what frequency I want to interact with them).

Second Context:

I haven’t written in a long time but yesterday I had a really lovely conversation with a former colleague - Hi Arley! She shared a written piece yesterday which I really enjoyed. I enjoyed it because I 1) really like her voice 2) like that she put the piece into the either to start a conversation 3) it lit a little fire under me.

She didn’t ask me to start writing, but I told her I would start writing more. Sometimes I like to enroll myself in little invisible clubs that keep me accountable. So here’s to another little invisible club.

Third Context:

Yesterday morning I woke up and did 15 minutes of stretching and an hour of yoga in the gym at the hotel. Though I’ve been consistent with my yoga practice in the past months, I have been lax on doing cardio.

I had also been at this beachside resort already for 2 days and had been basking in the sun but had not yet entered either the pool or the ocean.

It seemed most appropriate that I should go swim in the strip of water that spans the width of the resort. In the past days the water has been extremely calm. The tide breaks at the edge but ahead of the sand there were almost no discernable waves or even ripples from the incoming tide.

There are two sections of rock about 50 years out from the beach itself, roughly the same in length with a break in between of a similar length… a dotted line in the water.

The water is warm and comfortable and when you swim in parallel with the dotted line of rock and ocean and approach the point where the rocks are not present, the water is noticeably colder. The cool ocean water flows in directly and warms the shallow bay. The water protected by the rocks maintain its warmth, at least with today’s tide.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in a natural body of water. I forgot how much I really enjoy just floating on my back and listening to the sound. With my ears submerged I heard the sound of oil crackling in a frying pan.

I don’t remember hearing this sound in the water before.

I swam back and forth. I floated. I tread water. It was 7 AM. The sun was barely peeking into the sky. No other guests were around. It was so nice.

Today when I woke up, I saw the sunrise from my balcony.

The ocean is strong today. There are visible waves coming in from multiple directions. There are waves breaking over the dotted line of rocks. The tide breaks are much stronger and I sense it would best still be a fine time to enjoy the water, but seemed a bit more dangerous to swim.

It was at this point I thought to myself —

“What is a swimming pool if not a domesticated ocean?”

Perhaps this is not a novel understanding, but it was a novel way for my brain to have articulated the existence of a swimming pool in this particular way.

In creating swimming pools we’ve opened larger access to participation in the water, we’re reduced the risk represented in a body of water controlled by nature (and our destructive forms of nurture), removed the variables associated with this risk, and have adulterated pool water with chemicals to ensure it remains usable. We don’t like when our pools grow algae, we want them reflective of the clean white plaster we paid good money to coat them with. We do not want the seaweed and the creatures, we want a curated, controllable, aesthetically neutral version.

From here my second thought to myself —

“Is a swimming pool analogous to a domesticated dog?”

Is the ocean the wolf?

Wolves are beautiful, wild, unpredictable, representative of variables and risk. We took the wild nature out of the wolf through domestication and and created dog breeds and cross breeds. We’ve tinkered and modified their genetics to avoid giving us allergies, creating teacup breeds with bones so small and brittle they could break with a bark. Their immune systems have changed and like pools we pump them full of chemicals to keep them clean and healthy in a modern day world. We want trained and well behaved dogs.

We keep domesticating. We domesticated ourselves and each other.

“What are we modern humans? Domesticator of the dogs, builders of the pools.”

We are alive at a very interesting time. We lead digital lives and are on the precipice of the unknown when it comes to the capabilities of technology. Though much of it is invented to help improve our quality of life, I don’t think we will be better off for it.

I did not wake up anticipating writing this post and when I sat down I thought it might have been as short as “What is a swimming pool if not a domesticated ocean?” but now I think it might be my formulation of a thought that I would prefer to the ocean, prefer to be the wolf.

Note: As I’ve reached the end of this post the tide is now SO FAR IN, that from this vantage point the water of the ocean came right up to the edge of the pool. The connection is like a light tap on the shoulder or peck on the cheek - it’s there for the briefest moment before the ocean retreats away, out of shyness, out of routine. The ocean comes to meet the pool as a wolf may want to peer into the life of a dog only to trot away again.