time for a swim I think
(18:33 21/03/24)
“We are bodies of water”
Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology
People talk about feeling a pull from the ocean: its call, their response, and a splendid union. I can’t say I’ve felt the same. My pull comes from within, it is manic and obsessive. Every other thought is suffocated by my desperation for submersion. Returning to the water is a compulsion.
Deciding to go to the water must happen quickly or the impracticalities make themselves too known. Sticky, dark, itchy, cold, far-away, dangerous, unnerving. The goal is to get in the car before you change your mind. These reactionary expeditions I mostly take alone. It has become somewhat of a ritual of late: drive, journal, swim, drive.
And so, submersion is mostly required in response to a misstep. Usually, a misstep of my own. I seek out the water when there is nothing else left to do. Perhaps the grievance is over, solved, fixed, but rarely does that mean I am done with it. Halberstam writes, “failing is something queers do and have always done exceptionally well.” Our bodies are failures and our desires are failures. It is imbued in our existences. Where a failure has occurred, I tend to want to soak myself in it. Think about it, talk about it, relish in it, be repulsed by it. Nowhere is better suited for this gluttony of introspection than the water. The unbecoming parts of this introspective indulgence are much too visible without the water. The water seems to drown out my self-criticisms of banality long enough for me to take Very Seriously that which has driven me to the shore. Besides, I am nothing if not dramatic, and nothing says theatre more than the lure of the tides.
Now I am lonely but I have the water
(20:18 11/02/2024)
Eventually I finish writing and it’s time to get in. As a child I was very clear with my boundaries, no-one was allowed to splash me as I swayed at the corners of the water. The first few times, of course, they would. In response, I would turn around and walk straight out. I was a stubborn child. It’s different approaching the water alone. There is no-one else to temper or exacerbate any hesitation in jumping. You can simply not get in. Yet, standing at the edge I feel an obligation to the ocean. I’m not sure that it cares, but I am sure that I cannot turn around. Perhaps as a child the taunts of my cousins over-powered the taunts of the water.
Submersion is a reprieve through spectacular sensory overload. It is in the distortion and dysregulation that my thoughts go sublimely quiet. The unnaturalness of our togetherness is hard to ignore. I cannot perceive as I do on land, my vision is blurry and my hearing distorted. To dip below is an act of persistence and surrender. In falling below we subvert our nature, exerting our body to its limits — pushing and pulling — to experience the subterranean world we are not made for. Submerged, I can answer only to it. Surges force my movement and I do as it says. Underwater my body is no longer mine. Rather, I become part of theirs. Neimanis writes that, “we are bodies of water”. We leak and ooze and gush and drip. We consume each other’s liquid selves incessantly. It just happens faster in the water. I leak into it and it will enter into me. We are co-created.
it’s getting colder now and I know our time is wearing thin
(18:23 21/03/24)
The days are getting shorter now. I love autumn evenings. The threat of being too cold. Nightfall will soak up the residual heat from the day and the chill will embrace me with an unnerving familiarity. It feels so long since it’s been cold.
my legs are cold — I’d like a jacket and my [ex] girlfriend.
(04:07 3/3/24)
This week Dawn Fraser Baths will close for the season. Things have changed a lot since the season started in October. I feel like I’ve neglected her this summer, gone other places and met new baths. But I’m still sad she will be closing for the season. I’m nervous I won’t swim as much now that it’s colder, perhaps the pull won’t feel so strong when the water is just so chilly. I swam a couple times last winter, but I wouldn’t call it swimming through. Here and there but mostly spur of the moment and mostly when the water is right in front of me. Getting in the car in a cozzie isn’t so enticing when it’s ten degrees.
I’m nervous about what I will do without the comfort of our companionship. The bliss in giving up my body and giving into ours. How loud it is underwater and the desperation in trying to stay submerged for just one more second. Floating with my eyes closed, being only peripherally aware of where we are going. Chatting with strangers and ignoring acquaintances.
It’ll be darker soon and there will be less people around but I hope I will still find myself at the water. I’m thinking swim by swim. It is cold now but at least the water is still warm. The currents have not realised the season has turned and for that I am grateful. If I keep swimming, then perhaps I won’t notice my discomfort when the water temperature drops. Perhaps the allure of explaining to people that I’m swimming through the winter will be enough to keep me going. Probably I will just need the water more this winter than I did the last.
“Swimming through the winter, it helped us get through.
It helped us cope”
Helen Wagner, Swimming Through (2022, dir Samantha Sanders)
