I begin with a memory of that wild sea scape that we met in Margate last weekend.
It looked and felt so different on Saturday to how it was on Sunday. From morning to night-time. Water is so vast and unaffected by us. Water in swimming pools feels relatively friendly, indulgent in letting us play and immerse, but it’s just a cousin of the ocean, which on the other end of the spectrum feels menacing, threatening, like it could squash us in a second and it wouldn’t even realise. It feels strange even using ‘it’ to pronoun the ocean, like that’s inadequate for something with so much power and personality.
I enter the sea rarely but when I do I think I experience the immersion that you spoke of with a kind of intensity that takes all my embodied concentration to stay in and to quell the fear that comes with the vastness of it. Pat’s comments that the water I swim in is the same water that our grandmothers and children drink feels super helpful.
And with an anticipatory thought that I will go to the pool and sauna this lunch time - it is a women only session. I am looking forward to the sauna and to the water.
Image Credit: Genevieve Reeves