The Pool With No Water

Somewhere between nowhere and the park gate stands a concrete basin painted swimming-pool blue, bone dry, a white ladder leaning in it like a museum exhibit about optimism. A reservoir for stock, probably. In the steppe light it reads as the most surreal object for a hundred kilometers, and I am incapable of driving past surreal.

So the camera went on the tripod at the bottom of the dry pool, and I got up on the rim against that enormous sky and performed the ceremony of the high board: knees bent, shirt already coming up over my ribs, face fully committed to the imminent dive. Then, obviously, nothing, because the water has been gone for years and dignity has limits, somewhere.

I laughed hard enough to nearly make the pose honest. There is no caption that improves this picture. A woman about to swim in air, in the middle of Kazakhstan, entirely sober. Research is going well, thank you for asking.