The Pool of Paradise

"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." - Hunter S. Thompson

The swimming pool ties us to our earliest memories in life. Most of us. Whether that childhood film playing through our heads shows the pool of our own family home or that of a friend, the school pool, the pool at the holiday house in the country or the public pool at the beach that kids from all over the city swarmed to, joyously, on weekends.

They're memories that are imbued with the unselfconscious freedom of youth, with water-wings and pool noodles and lilos and suntan lotion and dogs barking and water splashing. They're times of happiness. We might become more self-conscious as time goes on, step elegantly, cautiously, into the pool instead of dive bomb. We might choose to sip tea beside the pool, at a table under the shade, no longer gulp down sweet milkshakes, lying in the hot midday sun on towels.

It will always be, as far as its concerned, a place of merriment as well as serenity. It's different things to us on different days, depending on which way we're looking at it, from inside or out, but it's always a reminder, as we move about our lives, about our home on the one side and the garden on the other, that life needn't be so serious. It need not be filled with fewer milkshakes and lilos just because our bodies decided to grow. 

So jump in! 

This is our pool of paradise. Or at least, Paradiso.