Municipal pools are often quite loud. The acoustics in those tiled spaces can be quite piercing when so many people are breathing at once. I passed one near the office yesterday on my way to the deli. It was crowded. It seemed a very inefficient use of public space, though it was quite clean.
It's the humidity that gets to me, really, that heavy, damp feeling that lingers on your skin long after you've left the place, making everything feel somewhat suffocating. That pool you mentioned, the one near the office—I assume you mean the one on 4th, since the one near my apartment is far too much of a trek after a shift—is a cavernous thing, and yes, the noise is relentless. People shouldn't congregate in such a way, though suppose there isn't much choice when the alternative is sitting in a cramped living room. It’s a lot of effort just to move from one side of a room to the other, isn't it? Some people find the sensory overload quite invigorating, but personally, I find it all a bit much. It’s a lot of noise for a bit of exercise.
It is not on 4th. The one on 4th is far too old to be properly maintained. This one is on Birch Street, so it is closer to my flat. I don't understand the need for people to find it invigorating. If one wants to move, one should move without the constant clatter of other people's presence. It makes the entire endeavor feel rather pointless.
The one on Birch Street, then—it's much too bright, with those glass panels that let in too much glare, though I suppose that's better than the gloom of the 4th Street facility. If you aren't talking about that, the whole conversation is off, but there's really no other pool that fits. You might as well be running through a crowded market if you can't find a moment of quiet, but then, most people seem to crave that friction, that sense of being swallowed by a crowd to prove they actually exist. It’s a strange impulse, wanting to be seen while you're trying to be alone in your own head. I’ve always felt that if you have to share the air, the movement loses its purpose. It’s just a distraction from the task at hand, really.
It is on Birch. The glass is quite unnecessary, but it serves to illuminate the space. I do not think people go there to be seen; they go there because they lack the discipline to be alone. If a person requires an audience for a simple swim, they are likely wasting their time. There is a certain vanity in needing the presence of strangers to validate one's own exertion.
That’s a rather grim way to look at it, though perhaps not entirely wrong, especially if one considers that most people seem to exist in a state of perpetual performance. There is something quite hollow about it, the idea that a physical act becomes more meaningful simply because someone else might witness it, but then, you can't exactly blame people for being weak-willed. If they were all disciplined enough to stay at home, the city would be empty, and we'd all be left to our own devices without the slightest distraction from the silence. It was quite a mess at the deli yesterday—the clerk was arguing with a regular over something trivial, something about a sourdough loaf—and it made me think of that, the constant, buzzing need for human interaction to fill the gaps. It’s a heavy cost to pay for a bit of validation.
The sourdough issue was a matter of the crust being too soft, which is quite a valid grievance. People often mistake noise for importance. My work at the archives is quiet enough to make such outbursts feel quite loud, even from three blocks away. It is not grim to observe the truth. If a person cannot exist without a witness, they are merely performing a hollow version of themselves.
The archives can be remarkably still, which makes the idea of a soft crust seem almost trivial by comparison, though one would think after three blocks the sound of a shouting match wouldn't carry so clearly. If you spend your days surrounded by old papers and the dust of things long settled, the suddenness of a voice can certainly feel like an assault. It is a lopsided trade, really, to sacrifice peace for the sake of being part of a crowd. People call it living, but it feels more like a frantic attempt to avoid the stillness. There was a man last week, a regular at the café near my place, who would practically shout his order just to ensure the entire room heard him. It’s as if the silence is a void they are terrified of falling into. If you aren't being witnessed, are you even exerting yourself? It's a tiresome thought.
The archives do not have windows facing the street, so the noise does not travel as easily as you suggest. The stillness is not a void; it is simply the absence of uselessness. This man at the café—the one you mention—is likely just making an effort to be heard because he has nothing else of substance to say. It is a taxing sort of theater.
The lack of windows would certainly help, though it sounds rather like working in a vault, which might be fine for some, but one can almost feel the weight of the walls pressing in after a few hours. If the stillness is merely the absence of uselessness, then it’s a rather bleak metric to live by, as though everything with a pulse is inherently a distraction from some higher, quiet purpose. That man at the café, he was nothing more than a loud man with a loud voice, but he was a constant, a fixture of the morning. People use these personalities to anchor themselves, don't they? To have something to predict. It’s not theater if there isn't a stage, but then, most people do seem to act as if the sidewalk were a particularly narrow one. It’s exhausting, really, to consider the amount of energy spent simply being noticed.
To call it a bleak metric suggests you find something to value in the clutter. If an anchor is merely a loud man's voice, then it is a heavy, unreliable thing to hold onto. The walls in the archives do not press; they contain. It is better to have a defined boundary than to drift in an endless, noisy expanse. Most people confuse being busy with being purposeful.
To call a defined boundary a virtue is a curious thing, though I suppose one can see the logic in it, much like how one might prefer a narrow, well-kept garden to a sprawling, unkempt field. If the walls in the archives contain rather than press, then you have carved out a world where the noise of the street can be kept at a distance, which is a luxury many would envy, even if it is a lonely one. It’s easy to mistake the structure for the substance, but then, without that structure, everything would just bleed together until the distinction between a person and their surroundings is lost entirely. That is the danger of the unbridled life, isn't it? But there is a fine line between being contained and being trapped. If you spend all your time refining the boundaries, you might find you have very little room left for anything else to actually happen.
It is not lonely to be precise. You speak of the danger of losing distinction, yet people who lack boundaries often lose themselves entirely in the service of others' opinions. If there is too much room, there is nothing to hold the structure together. The archives are not a trap; they are a place where things are kept in their proper order. To be unbridled is often just to be messy.
The idea that precision is the antidote to loneliness is a comforting thought, but it might also be a way to avoid the messiness that comes with actual existence. If one spends all their time ensuring everything is in its proper place, one might end up merely tending to a museum of one's own making, where nothing new can grow because the order is too perfect to be disturbed. The archives may keep things in order, but order isn't the same as life, and if you aren't careful, the distinction you're so keen to protect becomes a wall that keeps the world out as much as it keeps you in. There was a sudden downpour on the way home from the office a few days ago, and the streets were a chaotic, muddy mess, yet there was a certain vitality in the scramble to find cover. It was messy, yes, but it was certainly not pointless.
The rain was quite an inconvenience for my shoes. It was not a display of vitality; it was simply people getting wet. To suggest that order and life are in competition is to misunderstand how things function. A museum is not empty because it has order; it is preserved because of it. Most people's chaos is not a sign of life, but a lack of preparation.
To suggest that the chaos of a sudden downpour is merely a lack of preparation is to overlook the fact that one cannot always plan for the sky to open up, regardless of how carefully one chooses their footwear. If you view everything through the lens of preparation, then life becomes a perpetual state of being slightly behind, waiting for the next variable to disrupt the neatness of your routines. It is a rather exhausting way to exist, constantly measuring the world against the capacity of your own ability to organize it. You might find comfort in the preservation of the archives, but there is a difference between a thing being kept and a thing being lived. If the goal of life is to avoid the inconvenience of getting wet, one might find themselves staying indoors until the very end, perfectly dry and perfectly still. It is the structure that keeps the museum from crumbling, but the museum itself is often quite silent.
The silence is not an end in itself; it is the condition under which one can think. If a person must be constantly reacting to the elements to feel alive, then their life is dictated by weather, not by will. A dry shoe is a matter of foresight, not a rejection of existence. One can certainly inhabit a structured life without being a statue. It is a matter of discipline.
It is a matter of discipline, or so it is argued, but there is a certain arrogance in thinking that the will can entirely supersede the caprice of the world. If one's life is entirely dictated by foresight, one might find that the most significant moments are the ones that were entirely unplannable, the ones that catch you when you are most vulnerable. To exist solely within the parameters of what one can prepare for is to live in a very small, very controlled environment. You might keep your shoes dry and your archives orderly, but there is a risk that you will eventually find the air in there becomes quite thin. It is a fine line to walk, between being a person of discipline and being a person who is merely waiting for the next scheduled event to occur. It makes one wonder if the structure is serving you, or if you are serving the structure.
It is not arrogance to acknowledge the weather. It is simply practical. One does not need to be soaked to appreciate the rain, nor does one need a crisis to feel significant. If a person requires the unexpected to feel they have truly lived, they are certainly living a precarious existence. I do not serve the structure; the structure allows the work to proceed without the constant, tiresome interruptions of human whim.
The constant, tiresome interruptions of human whim, you say—as if the people who inhabit the world are merely glitches in an otherwise perfect system of work. It is a very efficient way to view the world, really, to treat the unpredictable nature of a human being as a mere nuisance to be managed or filed away. If one's life is organized so that the work can proceed without the interference of the unpredictable, one might find that the work becomes the only thing left. It's a question of whether the structure is there to support the man, or if the man has become the scaffolding for the structure. It is quite a heavy thing to carry, the need to remain so perfectly poised against the whims of everything else. One might wonder, if the structure were to fall, whether there would be enough of the person left to stand there in the rain.
If the structure falls, one simply builds a new one. It is not a tragedy; it is a necessity. To suggest that human whim is anything more than a variable to be managed is to invite unnecessary chaos. The work is not a replacement for a person; it is a means of engaging with the world in a manner that is not entirely frivolous. Most people's whims are quite predictable, really.
The predictability of human whim is a bold claim to make, especially since most people spend half their lives acting in ways that defy their own logic or the logic of everyone around them. If you view the world as a series of variables to be managed, you are essentially saying that the truly spontaneous—the truly raw parts of being alive—are merely inconveniences to be smoothed over. It's a very tidy perspective, to be sure, but it assumes that we are the masters of our own unfolding, rather than just participants in it. If one is always building a new structure to replace the old, one spends a great deal of time hauling timber and laying bricks, leaving very little time to actually live inside the houses one creates. It is an industrious way to spend a life, but there is a question of whether the work is actually the engagement, or just the thing that keeps you from having to face the void of a quiet afternoon.
If the work is a way to avoid the void, then many people's lives are nothing but a frantic, desperate distraction. I find the idea of "the raw parts of being alive" to be quite much of a romanticism. Most of what people call spontaneity is just a lack of intention. It is much easier to be unpredictable than it is to be consistent. Consistency requires a certain level of effort.
The romanticism, as you call it, is often just the name we give to the things that cannot be neatly filed into a cabinet or a ledger. If consistency is the true measure of effort, then we have turned existence into a perpetual test of endurance, where the winner is simply the person who can remain most remarkably unchanging. It is a heavy burden to place on a human life, to suggest that spontaneity is merely a failure of intent, as if the very essence of a person's character isn't found in those moments where they lose their footing. One could argue that the most disciplined among us are often the ones who have learned exactly how to be consistent to satisfy the observers. It’s a curious thing, the energy spent on maintaining such a precise facade. If you are always so careful to be consistent, do you ever wonder if you are merely becoming a very well-maintained habit?
A habit is a reliable thing. If one becomes a well-maintained habit, one is at least predictable to oneself. To lose one's footing is not a revelation of character; it is merely an accident. It seems to me that you are quite preoccupied with the idea of people being watched, as if we were all constantly under a microscope. It is an exhausting way to think about one's neighbors.
To be predictable to oneself is a curious goal, though one wonders if it is truly a goal or merely a way to ensure there are no surprises to deal with during the quiet hours. If an accident is just an accident, then the distinction between a person and a machine becomes increasingly thin, unless we are meant to view every stumbling step as a failure of the soul. You mention the microscope, but you are the one who brought up the need for an audience at the pool, so one must wonder if you aren't, in your own way, observing the performance of those around you to ensure they are meeting the expected standards of order. It isn't that we are all under a microscope, but rather that we are all aware of the space we occupy in relation to others. If you are so careful to keep your own footing, it is only natural to notice when the ground shifts for everyone else.