2. We lived in that house for three years. The one with the pool. I was four years old when we moved in and seven years old when we moved out. I did not know how to swim. But I crept outside at night, after everyone else was asleep. I taught myself to sleep, without drowning, at the bottom of the pool. This practice made my dreams more dream-like. I relied on dreams to teach me about the world--albeit in a distorted way. I quit sleeping underwater, once I realized it hampered my ability to listen. I learned more about the world by just sitting out on the grass and listening to the sky. And my family stopped complaining that I smelled like chlorine at the breakfast table.