Sitting down at the edge of the indoor swimming pool the other day, I noticed the blue-and-white banners hanging above the lap lanes were reflected upside down on the water. Since I was the first swimmer to arrive, the surface was relatively calm, swayed only by the slow, repeated ripples my legs produced.

At first the upside-down banner images reminded me of a string of shimmering pine trees reaching more and more for the sky. Pines, of course, are also Christmas trees, so while my mind was drifting off somewhere along the holiday theme the images began squeezing, so that a blob of some kind began floating upward from each of the trees, which were shrinking in response. Almost melting. Or maybe dancing.

I’d definitely fallen into a mesmerizing time warp and hoped it wouldn’t be contagious, should anyone else show up. This was, quite simply, trippy. Very trippy.

Considering that era, I had to admit this was so much better than the lava lamps my recently retired eye doctor had in his exam room. He’s the one who’s beheld almost all of the world’s surviving Vermeer paintings in person – some of them in private collections, at that. So that, too, was stirred up. Hope he’s delighting in his freedom.

Well, it was over in a flash. Or should I say splash? Had to get my laps in and didn’t want the lifeguard coming over to ask if I was OK. How on earth could I answer that one?

“Do you see what I see?”

But that would revive those Christmas trees, and who knows where that would lead? I just might have to explain the whole hippie era to her, and we wouldn’t have that much time or spacey whatever.