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Swimming


Percy

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blog-0426026001385358198.jpgSunday afternoons are for swimming. I’ve been swimming ever since I can remember. When I was 18 months old, my father went to Vietnam and my mother moved back in with her parents, taking me with her. They had just relocated to Florida and their home backed up onto the intracoastal waterway. They docked their boat at the back of their house along a floating dock that would rise and fall with the tides.

 

All this was, of course, blocked off to me, a curious toddler with an uneven walk but a wicked fast crawl. Mom wanted to give me every chance of survival in the event I should accidentally end up in the water. She decided to teach me some basic water survival skills. She figured it I fell in the water, I needed to know how to come up and float on my back and be able to grab the side of the dock. From there we moved on to the crawl stroke with the end result being that I am nearly as comfortable in the water as I am on land.

 

Sometimes I’m more comfortable in the water than on land. Today was one of those days. The pool at my gym, where I usually swim, is closed for maintenance so I made my way up to the aquatic center in the next town. I’ve swam there before—it’s state of the art—and they rope the lanes for 50 meter long course swimming on Sundays. It was a typical late fall day here. Weak sun and mild temperatures. There weren’t many people in the pool so I had a lane to myself.

 

Today’s workout called for some long sets and a constant, not too strenuous, rate of perceived effort. A long, easy swim which wouldn’t require a great deal of focus or mental engagement. It seemed almost no warm-up was needed. I was relaxed and loose from the first lap. A little over halfway down the length of the pool, the bottom drops sharply to a depth of 15 feet. The buoyancy from that deep mass of water under you can’t be beat. I love that feeling of something lush and dense holding me up as I skim the surface. It’s hard to explain, but as I cross over the deep waters, there’s this sense of synergy. It’s as if the water itself is supporting you, helping you stay afloat.

 

I relaxed more into a comfortable pace for the swim and let my mind drift. There were no distractions at all. No other swimmers. No wind. No current. No glare from the sun. No need to focus on any one aspect of my stroke. Just swimming – easy pulls to make my body glide over the water. The thought drifted through of how much I enjoy my body now. Even so many years after chest surgery and literally thousands of laps, I love the feeling of a flat chest, water flowing over a bare torso. It still feels liberating. It’s not that I hated my body before. I swam lots as a girl. I wore one piece suits and two piece suits. I wasn't shy or weirded out by my body. It’s just that I consciously revel in the way my body feels in the water now. All the contours, its movement in the water. The feeling is glorious.

 

This joy infused every movement as I swam today. There was nothing else. I wasn’t following the black line at the bottom, wasn’t counting my strokes or laps or the beat of my kick. For a while I wasn’t thinking at all. It’s hard to explain how perfect those moments were. Like there was no delineation between my body and my environment. Everything was in perfect harmony and there was a profound sense of tranquility. Not fatigue. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t energized – it wasn’t like a runner’s high. Even as my arms continued their reach and pull, I was more deeply relaxed than I can ever remember being.

 

I sat on the pool bleachers after my swim and dripped dry, having forgotten my towel in the car. I was balanced between cold and warm and thinking that life should always be like those moments in the water. I think that’s what great music or literature or art is driving towards. It’s a conveyance of inspiration; it’s a road sign to finding a peace with oneself that’s so powerful it does away with self-limitation, erases the boundaries of the body. Somehow my swim today broke the script in my head. I wasn’t actively thinking as I swam. Art has the same power. It breaks into the internal monologue. It interrupts it and in that moment of interruption, we get the glimmer of perfection. Not the master artist’s perfection…our own perfection. The realization, however momentary, of the perfect universe and our central place in it and our unique relationship to it.

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