The Lore of Swimming

Get into the swim of things

Summer’s coming, and by the time you’ve finished reading this article, you’re going to want to swim in a pool. There, I’ve warned you.

I know what you’re thinking. Swimming is a bit of a misnomer, right? In fact, swimming is as natural for us as it is for otters. We start life as sparks swimming in a see-through soup. And in this amniotic soup we grow and multiply until we burst into the world covered in bloody slime. Then we slurp up some white liquid. Meanwhile our bodies are 70% water and waitaminute, the body of our planet is 70% water too. What’s with that?

If you’re still not convinced, let’s go into the folklore. Let’s look at the terms we use: Sink or swim. ‘Swim’ is an epithet for living.
Going against the flow. ‘Flow’ is the flow of life, the forces of nature.
The Ocean of truth. The ocean symbolizes the immensity of subconscious, and that we can swim in it, and that it can swim through us.
Born again. This implies, well, when you think about it literally at any rate, that we are re-liquidised into amniotic fluid and birthed back into the world, simple and fresh, shining and new.
Fishers of men. This implies that men must be ‘fished out’ the ocean of their truth.
Drowning in work. This is a negative epithet, but we’re only drowning if we haven’t mastered the skills to stay afloat, to surf the waves.
Surfing the internet. It implies an effortless motion along the leading edge of information (and technology), driven by the rising tides and truths of the ocean-universe.
Walking on water. The implication that one has achieved mastery over all things.
People are also capable of the following:
Making waves. Gushing. Storming off. Wet kisses.

We notice that something is:
A drop in the ocean.
Or someone is:
Wet behind the ears
Or something has:
A ripple effect.

This is because life is fluid. DH Lawrence captures the essence of this by writing about the fluid relationships that we see in life. Some of it washes and mixes, and some of it spreads over dry sand and dries.

The psychology in swimming training is powerful for our era. There is plenty of monotony in the sterile bathroom environment. We can easily be dazzled death by the bouncing arrays swining and swooping around us. There is the crash of arms in the water. If our motion is unconscious, and for every single wingbeat, every kick done in ignorance, we catch our wingtips and our toes on a sharp triangular edge of water. It slows us down, it wears us down. But if we’re conscious of our technique, aware of the angle of our elbows, the entry of our fingers, the pull of the wrist, and feel of the water, we begin to move effortlessly and powerfully. We can feel the pressure of the water over skin – a signal that we are moving fast through the water.

In the process of doing endless sets, the body yearns to be dry and warm. And yet the dedicated swimmer completes each session, endures each session with all its discomforts, and emerges, through grit and discipline and determination, when the job is done. The swimmer doesn’t react to each impulse to escape his discomfort, his loneliness, his cold environment. And herein lies the secret: the swimmer has an incredible workethic, and tends to outlast all those around him because he knows how to do the work, and knows he can simply work harder and longer and those around him. Outwork, outlast.

And after all this time in the water, the subtleties emerge. The flow through the water is perfected. The body grows lighter and the skin tighter. The body is able to whip quickly through the silver. Sometimes there are flashes of flying, or bright skies filling the eyes, crashing childhood recollections suddenly into place. In the end, the water carves the body: Softly making it hard, quietly making it tough, and brown and strong.

The breathing is primeval. The movements might be from a dream, or inklings from time in utero. The light and arms and waves and water come together to produce a music of motion. Practise makes the crashing cacophony into music and much later, after hundreds of hours, after the hundred cold shower, the body moves as a symphony of light through a silver sea.

The Lore of Swimming, in the end then, is about having the resilience and temperance of steel. To swim means to thrive in the clear sparkling waters that crawl and dance under the sun.