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.