Allen organizes his day around swimming, as far as I can tell.
I don't know what he does when he's at home (I could ask Ollie, but haven't), but when he's here...at least in the summer, his hair is often wet.
He comes in by bike on Tuesday morning. He doesn't have to attend breakfast on Tuesday, because the rule is you have to go to breakfast if you spent the night before, and in the winter he often comes in only at the end, just in time to hear announcements. If he's running late, he'll still be wearing his cycling clothes, carrying his helmet. But in the summer, if Ollie and I go for a run in the morning, we'll often see him coming in when we come back to the Mansion to shower before breakfast--that's around seven. I don't know if he's trying to beat the heat of the day, or if he just likes getting up before dawn, as he must do summer and winter, to maintain that schedule.
Usually, he'll have Alexis with him, if she's not in camp. A lot of the Sprouts spend most of the summer on campus, whether they're in camp or not (Charlie used to have a pile. This year he has only Julius, because Janus and James are still toddlers and the others aged out of Sproutdom). When I was a novice, Allen would come in with Julie and David behind him on their own bikes and Alexis in a carrier. Now Alexis has her own bike and follows her father alone. David is in college. Julie is working a summer job. The carrier isn't even on Allen's bike, anymore. Instead, he has pannier bags.
Anyway, at lunch, Allen disappears from campus again. I see him coming in to eat just before classes are due to start, his black hair wet, his shirt--always a professional-looking short-sleeved button-down, never a t-shirt--damp from being put on just after he got out of the lake. This year I've gone with him a few times. It's just a short bike-ride away. The cool water feels good. I splash around a bit, swim a few laps along the shore. Allen disappears. From the minute he steps in the lake, he spends as much time under water as he can, hyperventilating before he submerges so he can stay down even longer. He surfaces like a seal, to breathe, when he has to.
He stays the week on campus, but I still see him bike in before breakfast, because he goes for a swim first thing, while the air is still chilly. But he doesn't feel the cold.
Every day, it's his ritual. He even goes when it's raining. "Why wouldn't I swim when it's raining?" he asks. "I'm going to get wet, anyway." And he has a point.
I once asked him why he likes swimming so much.
"Why does anybody like anything?" he answered, and I waited for him to give me a real answer. We were eating lunch, just after he'd gotten back. He does look happier, more energized and more relaxed, after he has come from the water. "I feel calmer under there," he said. "I feel at home."
"Water is the emotional element," said Kit, who was eating with us. "You are a psychologist."
"I'm not sure I feel at home in emotions, though," he said. "That's why I'm a psychologist."
"Nobody is totally at home in water," she replied. "We can't breathe in it. To stay fully immersed, we have to bring some air down with us." Metaphysically, as you may know, water is associated with emotions, air with the intellect.
"Intellectually, I agree with you," said Allen. "I am a psychologist--I study emotions intellectually. I have snorkled and SCUBA-dived, and I like both. But what I like best is going down, just me, and exhaling to make myself less buoyant, and just exist down there, wholly of the water, not breathing. I like to get away from air, when I can."
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