About Quietude

1-2-3-breathe -1-2-3-breathe. That’s the stroke-breath pattern swimmers follow. By which I mean swim-team-ish swimmers. Muscle memory is strong. I sneak a peek at a man with grey chest hair and gut spilling over speedo. He executes a perfect kick flip in his lane. He is too bald to require a swim cap. I’m envious of his perfect breaths. I never participated in swim team. My breathing in this public YMCA pool is syncopated. They can all do this stroke-breath pattern, these aged swimmers. I watch YouTube videos instructing on correct breathing technique. I lower myself into the pool to stutter along. 1-2-breathe-and-2-3 –breathe-4-and-breathe. Sleek porpoises stitch the lanes beside me while I churn like a dolphin suffering from an inner ear infection.

There are black swimsuits.  There are goggles. Ear plugs. Swim caps. Toes grip the tiled grout and push off into another glide. 1-2-3-choke. A teaspoon of water sloshes in one of my goggles. It’s a valid excuse to tread water mid-lane. The lifeguard calls out, “Lap swim isn’t finished yet.” She means to be helpful, misjudging me as a porpoise who has lost track of time rather than a dolphin in need of resuscitation. Shamed, I cartwheel down my lane like a sea star with an amputation.

Week after week, I’m drawn to the this non-native element of water.  I am a much more impressive creature in sessile environments. Just watch me turn the pages of a book. Observe the way I arrange a blanket on a couch and position a coffee mug in easy reach. Look at the coordination I display between pages and sips. Books mute the real world around me like a compressing vault of water. The children bang about, finding shoes, slamming the front door. The husband interrupts to ask about dinner plans.  The dog barks at the mailman. My ears are plugged. I splash in my alternate habitat of the book.  1-2-3-breathe.

Quietude is worth the thrash required to mute the world. 

When I lower myself chilly inch by inch into the pool, I agree to 45 minutes of a thrash (1-2 –breathe-and-2-3-breathe-4-and-breathe) that envelopes a quietude. When my head is saran-wrapped in a swim cap, I cannot waste thoughts on extraneous things not of water or breath or forward propulsion.

Enough early morning laps should result in a smoother breathing pattern. I seem to make slight progress until I hit a stretch of weeks when I do not go swim. I claim other excuses, but the truth is, I am fatigued by the YMCA breed of porpoises, and I seek quietude in other places in other ways. None prove quite as quiet.

I make backward progress in my reading. Once upon a younger self’s time, I could slip through a book as easily as 1-2-3-breathe. Now the crinkle of a grocery bag sends me to an app to jot down shopping list items. The mention of dinner has me googling “best mashed potato recipe.” I set my book down to pick up the dog’s leash. The squeaky brakes of Bus 16A at the town’s corner picks up my brain, as if the wheels on the bus heading for downtown Pittsburgh could roll me to adventure as easily as the pages of the book I cannot settle into. (1-2 –breathe-and-2-3-breathe-4-and-breathe) I need a reader’s equivalent of a lap lane, swim cap, and ear plugs.

Collins dictionary defines quietude as a state of stillness, calmness, and quiet in a person or place.

Collins dictionary defines quietude as a state of stillness, calmness, and quiet in a person or place. Author Paul Lynch questioned: “Am I getting enough quietude to think and read and get the work done?”  Alexandre Dumas pondered in The Man in the Iron Mask, “You see, then, plainly, that everything conspires to give us quietude and hope.”

Though the first recorded use of quietude popped in 1590, the word hit its most frequent uses in the years 1865 and 1931. I ask, “What was happening in 1865?” Answer: The Civil War. I ask, “What was happening in 1931”? Answer: The Great Depression. Quietude was most talked about in times of great disquiet. The word is currently on a downward trajectory of popularity. I ask: Am I getting enough of quietude to get the work done? What is conspiring to give me quietude and hope?

My daughter draws a sign to hang on my office door when I am writing: “I’m writing do you really need me?” It’s a run-on sentence. My English teacher brain cringes. I’m desperate to pick up a black marker and add at least a comma splice’s pause. The sign is the writing equivalent of the erratic1-2 –breathe-and-2-3-breathe-4-and-breathe. But this is how my writing goes many days: I show up, ease into my chair, mute the world around me, and attempt to stay in my lane for 50 concentrated minutes. I want to write as easily as 1-2-3. At the bottom of my daughter’s sign, she’s sketched a monster. It wears a hat, grimaces with serrated teeth, and appears to be throwing a pencil and paper into a trash can. 1-2 –breathe-and-2-3-breathe-4-and-breathe. Trash the words throw the pencil ignore punctuation begin again.

When will I master the swimmer’s breath? The reader’s attention? The written word? I query the experts. Keep trying, keep pulling, keep breathing, all answer. No one guarantees me when, but they offer hope of an eventual arrival. No one asks the more helpful question: Why?

I’ll ask myself. Why is mastery my goal? Swimming, reading, writing. Mastery in some may be achievable. Maybe not. Instead of mastery, why not make quietude my goal? Quietude is possible in the middle of thrash. Perhaps quietude even happens because of the thrash. I do not edit my daughter’s sign. Rather, every day I set up shop, hang up my sign, and add words to a manuscript. I ask the beguiling world around me to simmer down and respect my effort: “I’m writing do you really need me?” A quietude monster guards my holy exercise. Hope is the monster I employ when I swim and read and write. Hope not of achieving the 1-2-3-breathe—although wouldn’t such progress in any area be delightful?—but hope of finding quietude in the erratic breathing. Flip (the lane, the page, the words) and thrash it out to try again in quietude.