Swim at Dawn

In August I took a holiday to Santorini and spent a great deal of my time sea swimming. On the last morning, I got up early enough to see, and swim with the dawn. That morning I was neither very sad nor very happy, but here’s a piece I have written in response to the swim.

You wait for the dawn. You watch the darkness, watch where you’re sure the horizon should be, while shadows which exist only inside you swim before your eyes. Then a hint, a slow leach, almost fearful, spreads before you as day begins to insinuate itself into the darkness that has concealed you. The longer you wait, the more the lightness emerges, it’s increase barely discernable yet all too fast. Every moment is nearly the most exquisite you’ve known. But you want to turn away. you understand beauty in a different way now, as this sky and sea begin to swirl with colours beyond any describing they stab at you, and you, small and dark and brittle cringe. There’s no one here but you, blood like bitter molasses, and the drum of your heart’s labour echoing in your ears. You squint at the irresistible display before you, it burns your eyes and your familiar hot tears find their tracks and you sigh. And cry again. And this vision before you becomes part of you as the sky and the sea and the lightening earth blur and repeat themselves inside of you.

You stand and pick your way gingerly across pebbles to the shoreline, the land which divides you from the water and the land whose hardness has refused to absorb you. It’s not so long since you were happy, but this morning you can’t recall a time you weren’t simply trying to avoid hurting. Your heavy head finds no respite on the pillow, your arms are mere flailing limbs with nothing to reach to. You’ve nowhere to walk to anymore. All you can think of is to tear at the earth to bury yourself or to swim.

And so your nature leads you into the water, to step out into the dark tides, your toes gripping at the slippery stones, waves drawing you further until you’re chest deep and finally your arms find rest on the ocean’s swells. You turn to the land, which finally has it’s morning and you see nothing there that you know or want to know so you kick out. Facing the sky you swim away, your arms and legs finding their rhythm and leading you further from where you were, and to where you don’t know.
Held in these amniotic waters, your ears and head now beat to the waves’ rhythm, and with each breath you take you taste sea or tears. When you can’t swim anymore you stop and tread water a last moment and look, and remember what you did love, still do, but can no longer bear, and you raise your arms, an almost prayer and submerge.

Folkestone

My last sea swim was on a September evening in Folkestone. We travelled from London by car, and though the day was still warm when we left, we kept one eye on the clouds that rush ahead of us, hoping we’d dare to get in the water. Arriving at a deserted town centre, the last sun of the day picked out the tops of buildings – revealing a grandeur not evident at eye level, where off licence and charity shop windows said ‘closed’.  The wind launched itself at us, grabbing loose clothing and drawing it away from the shore and we exchanged a familiar look – challenging the other to stay any qualms. I’m never the first to say no to the sea.

Sea swimming in September. The pleasure of the water made more acute by the chill of the air, when the land seems prematurely cool and the waves more temperate.  There’s a tension between land and sea, where each year the earth warms early, has it’s head turned by May sunshine, while the sea gives up the coolness of winter with more reluctance.  Only the attentions of  a long summer will thaw the sea, and when it has, a fickle land has already turned it’s head to autumn. So,  you learn to love the sea in whatever mood you find it, and you swim at every chance you’re given.
We walked towards the edge of the land – the first sight of distant blue becoming grey green and moody as we drew closer. From Folkestone town we walked down steep, uneven stone steps dank with a mix of dying leaves and recent rain. But the sea was alive, animated with shadows. What had seemed benevolent from above revealed itself as something other when at the shoreline, where the waves crested large and exciting and risky. We changed quickly, so there was less time to change our minds, facing out to sea for modesty, though the beach was deserted.  Then walked in, me first, striding forward through the first shock of contact and diving in as soon as I was deep enough. His progress more slow, with each step a grimace in the exquisite chill, but eventually he makes it in and so we swim.

We swim out, as far as we dare, further than if we’d been alone. We’ve swum together often and know each other well. The sea was grey, and hid us from ourselves and from each other, our bodies quickly consumed by darkening water. I lay back, arms spread, feet towards the land and we talk. Sometimes the waves lift me and I look at him from above, other times it was he that rose while I fell. The sea linked us, and moved us in unison but we stayed separated.

While swimming, it’s always been me who looks out further, who wishes to go on, whose head turns less towards home.  The same is not true of me on land. We paddle and splash and stroke and talk, and then he dives away from me towards the shore, and I don’t see him anymore.

Favourite Swims

Sometimes, when in libraries or charity shops, staring at stuffed bookshelves I feel a familiar feeling rise – an ache, for what I’ll never read and never know. All the words, the labour, the experience which pass me by while I spend my days shopping and shitting and repeating myself. And the same ache with swimming, when each time I return to a known waterhole, I’m not exploring, not eye level with new waters meeting sky. On trains, in cars, on foot, I’m always drawn to a glimpse, a flirt of blue. The possibility of cool, new plunges, of new gravel or mud underfoot, new birds to spot while drifting alongside the roots of new trees. But so often I go back to where I know I can swim, where I know I can scramble or jump and submerge with ease.  There’s comfort in the experience of swimming the same waters, of familiarity with an environment, a safety which relaxes my body and allows it to divine the subtle differences of seasons and days, of morning and evening, that lets me enjoy the brush of mystery fish and reeds. I want to swim the world, I want to see the land from out at sea, but more, I want to swim, to rise and fall with waves that match my heart and my breath. The shore is always at its most beautiful when viewed from afar, but within the reach of simple strokes towards home.

The Last of Summer

The final days of summer have been hot, a mixture of sticky skin and scorched, already dying leaves. It gives the opportunity for swims in lakes that have begun their autumn chill without a reluctance to emerge and expose damp, dimpled skin to the wind. I swam the Serpentine at the end of the day, feeling overhot, overtired and underhappy, my mind on water. Walked to the park, through crowds milling Exhibition Road, squinting in the sun after a day in temperature and light controlled rooms. Through the grass, where the crunch of leaves underfoot flushed squirrels and wood pigeons from beneath trees. The light turned swarms of gnats to shimmer. There were no clouds.

It seems that the summer has offered too little of this, London outside has mirrored me, with dark often outweighing light, though there’s been sunshine too. It seems strange that the heat of the day made me melancholic and needing to swim. Perhaps it’s natural, just the last days of summer.

So, I reached the lake, passed bikinis that never meet water and kids in sunhats with ice creamed faces. Saw my first swan of the day, idling, unmoved by the exertion of nearby oarsmen. It was busy on the bankside but only one other swims. I changed quickly and entered the water. Colder than I expected but as the chill envelopes me I feel it’s customary relief, the coolness leach into my busy head. So I swim, arms stretch out, cleave through dark waters and the already dead of this year’s summer. Swim towards that which makes me sad, but through what’s become my solution.