Swimmer

When I decided to write about swimming, I thought it would be great to paint a historical context of how the ability to swim developed in different societies. But it would be more of a digression, a trick of the mind to impede myself from starting to write. As with anything, I try to account for the knowledge built before my time. The inherent discomfort of writing lies in our attempt to solidify what will continuously change. Or that when you bend down to pick a word from the floor, you might split the sewing of your jeans, exposing a big portion of your vulnerabilities. However, we know that under every pair of jeans there are at least a dozen vulnerabilities, regardless of how well sewn they are. In the same way, we know swimming clothes and underwear differ mainly in their material selection, but they make us shiver differently.

As of now, it seems that medieval Europeans were quite bad at swimming. They learned a lot after having contact with West African kingdoms. I read somewhere that swimming could be considered part of witchcraft activities, not widely respected at the time. The ancient Greeks considered swimming a fundamental skill, not a sport. They passed it on to the Romans, who obviously took it too far. They once flooded the Colosseum. Had Jesus died swimming, we might be wearing little golden swimming pools around our necks. Mao Zedong swam China’s largest river to display readiness for the Cultural Revolution.

I have tried writing about swimming a few times since last year. I had a draft and everything. It captured a moment when I was less invested in lying. But I would either get distracted or convinced that there was no point in telling people how to swim. Or that my own experience with swimming was not worth reading about. That’s why I decided to call it a poem. A secular tradition to deal with the incompatibility between words and time. A practical excuse for being pointless. I was groping the surface of what could be real within my fantasies.

I grew up playing in the water. I have no clear memory of not knowing how to swim. However, I remember thinking of swimming across the river, from margin to margin, as a sort of boyhood milestone. As if the development of my independence was tied to how far away from adult supervision I could swim. And I did stretch the boundaries. Climbing up trees to jump back into the river, skipping stones, and trapping the smaller fish in bottles. When I layed in bed in the evening, I could still feel the water current waving my sun-drained body.

Once I was past the age of twenty, life became more about knowing which rivers I can cross and which rivers I may never touch. Though I was mostly a floater. Which is probably why I was interested in the ocean. A river that was never close to me, one I would never attempt to cross. I once fell in love with a book called “Shima No Ama.” It portrays female divers on the Pacific Coast of Japan. For whatever reason, the tradition in this area was that men were responsible for staying in the boat and pulling the divers back through a rope. Women were trained to endure long periods underwater, searching for abalone, seashells, or seaweed. The beauty and wildness of the ocean contrasted in black and white with the delicacy of the swimmers in white robes. For that matter, the samurai were also good swimmers. The water is not a place where one can escape violence.

By the time I was close to turning thirty, I lost count of all the rivers I crossed. I know it was December because it was right before Christmas. I was playing Disco Elysium non-stop, feeding myself poorly, up until I started hallucinating. At some point, I sat outside to smoke a cigarette and was convinced I was being haunted. Immediately started crying. I called a friend, who called another friend, who picked me up at my place and took me to theirs.

When the new year came, I had decided to take better care of myself. I thought of which type of physical activity I could likely engage in. Swimming came to mind partially because of my childhood and partially because I wouldn’t have to deal with sweaty clothes. I figured I could go to one of the oldest public swimming pools in Munich right after work. I had to stay on the same train, but get out around six stops later.

I remember being confused by the ritual of getting a card and exchanging it for a wristband-key that opened the locker upstairs. Then I had to find the actual swimming pool downstairs. Müller’sches Volksbad is an Art Nouveau building from the beginning of the 20th century. A place one can easily get lost in. I had been there some years before, which made me think of how different life was now and the sacrality in the goofiest steps.

I was not conscious of my swimming technique at this point. I felt overwhelmed trying to swim the entire odd thirty-one meters of the pool. Once you start swimming with certain goals, it is easy to lose the joy of it. The main pool is divided so that two lanes are designated for lap swimming, and the other half of the pool is for free swimming. I would sometimes give up on doing laps and escape to the free area, where I could dive in slowly, feel the water. Then I would go back to learning proper freestyle.

After each pool length, I felt breathless. Swimming continuously was out of reach. I preferred to rest between laps so that each time I could avoid reaching desperate mode. Because I felt like this would benefit my technique development. During breaks, I would try to control my breathing until I felt more relaxed, while focusing on what I wanted to improve in the next lap.

My breathing was a mess. Not only due to the amount of cigarettes I smoke daily. Well, in fact, pretty much everything was a mess; I had just started. Anyways, I tried breathing every two strokes, but it felt really hard to coordinate. I noticed that I could focus more on the head position and arms if I only breathed every four strokes. This was likely a result of my arm strokes being ineffective. Later, I started breathing bilaterally, every three strokes. I thought it would be a good practice to understand imbalances. A few days later, I tried breathing every two strokes again, and it made more sense. What I am saying is that I tried to choose certain inadequate habits to keep as they were while I was working on something else.

I never practiced swimming drills and never took lessons. I would sometimes watch videos and incorporate advice into my practice. I wasn’t using any gear other than an old casio watch, goggles, and a cap. My only goal was to swim for more than half an hour, then I could go home and play music. More than anything else, I wanted swimming to feel familiar. I somehow managed to keep going. Spring came, then summer came. I was exploring the city to find new places to swim. The long sunny days made me want to swim outdoors. I found out that Dantebad was also accessible to go right after work. At this point, I was swimming six times a week. The way the water and stainless steel would reflect the sunlight, all the trees surrounding it as green as ever. I could stay endlessly in those days forever if the nights were half as sweet.

Swimming is indeed a solitary activity. The longest conversation I’ve had in the pool was when I was approached by a man in his sixties. I thought his English was good for about a minute before he told me he was American. He said my kicks should be softer and shorter. Then, he also told me to listen to one of George Harrison’s songs in which — he explained — nearly a hundred guitars were used in the recording. I tried my best to remember his name and the song’s name. He also said he preferred the cold pool to the heated one. Because of the pretentiousness of the triathletes. Those are indeed proof that neoliberalism can manifest in water.

There are still plenty of silent interactions in the pool. Circle swimming in a lane with six or seven other swimmers can be crushing. The decision to overtake someone must be well thought out to avoid colliding with others coming from the opposite direction. I had to slow down many times and learned how to accept it as part of the dance.

It isn’t rare to find a muscular dude who thinks nothing can slow them down and who will actively disrupt everyone else’s session by constantly overtaking, and when they are not skilled enough to do it quickly, they end up blocking the way. I think goggles hide facial expressions in a way that makes me think people look like they’re assholes more than I would normally think. The remaining portion of their faces is always somewhat blurry since I leave my glasses in the lockers, ignoring my three different eye diseases. All this to say that I have more than a few times pictured myself holding someone’s head in water until they die. Still, I recognize the beauty of all characters sharing this space.

I went back to Brazil to visit friends and family. Three different people said I was taller. Which was probably a result of my better posture. I was getting stronger without recognizing. The issues I left on hold when I started swimming were also changing, while I was distracted thinking about how to achieve a high elbow catch. I felt once again capable of things. Can you believe some people attach a parachute to themselves so they can swim harder?

A friend of mine granted me access to a sports club. A benefit of being a tourist in your own hometown. From all possible pools, I chose the indoors. It was mostly empty until a kids class started. But I could keep my lane. They had a routine written on a board and the coach tried to keep them motivated. I must admit, mentally competing against eight-year-olds is refreshing. Those kids had no chance against a thirty-year-old on a seven day streak of insobriety.

Once I came back, I bought myself paddles and fins. I would do a few laps with either one or the other. They feel like magnifying glasses on parts of your body. Once you use paddles, you get a better sense of having to catch water ahead of you and pull it behind you in a straight line. Fins helped my ankle mobility and to better synchronize kicks and arm strokes. Still, they often triggered calf cramps, a recurring issue in my practice. But they made swimming smoother over time.

Winter came, and I was getting lost in other muscles. My swimming routine eventually reached once a week at best. I had sugar spikes in my bloodstream, and it was time to flourish, sing along, fly away, whatever.. My excitement was painted on every dinner table. But unlike water, most things tend to sink when frozen. Although spring came, things were getting colder.

If you heat up a gas until it breaks into a more fragmented version of itself, it starts conducting electricity. As if all we’re going to do for eternity is sit around fire. It was time to go swimming more often. Now better acquainted with all the rituals. Why do you think fish keep thrashing around when caught? Because they are very stupid. If they pretended to be dead, they could wait for the best moment to escape. Or else they need sharp teeth to scare those who want to touch them.

Some people say swimming can be similar to meditation. Maybe because of breathing in a pattern. And, yes, sometimes you can really just focus on moving. But my swimming sessions aren’t all peaceful. They are more like a slaughterhouse of emotions. There are Bad Brains days when I sprint and channel violence through. But it can be smooth and easy. I thought about writing ambient music for swimming already in the first summer. I think Carlos Niño said he likes swimming in open water.

There is an age when you start searching for a sense of secularity. But we break ourselves along the way, so that we can talk about something else in the evening. Driving from the backseat until the wheels turn suddenly. It makes you miss falling out of trees. Some have compared swimming with dancing, so that you understand you must find a rhythm. Yes, there is some truth to that. They share the strange coexistence of tense and relaxed.

I found one of your souvenirs at my place. I’ve been inhabiting the ruins of what we could have been. It still smells like hot butter and coffee. It’s not as much of a ruin actually; it’s more like an abandoned factory hall that has been taken over by a group of artists and anarchists. For a moment, it felt like the ground had been whisked away from my feet again. But it’s an old new trick, and we all know the glass will stay mostly intact once the tablecloth is pulled. The songs and poems will stay because we brought them to the world as our offspring. However, I miss the delicacy of the flowers embroidered in the cloth. The glass might slip out of my hand once I try to take a sip after the show, when everyone else has gone home. People will sleep to sweet dreams or sweat in bed or steal plums from the icebox, not knowing the glass was proven to be real.

I must admit my technique has gotten a lot better. I have also developed a decent backstroke, which serves as good active rest. Though my enthusiasm flickers. Which, to some extent, I appreciate as recognition that swimming is becoming more of a habit than a passion. I celebrate days going by without thinking much about swimming or setting new goals. Maybe a need for horizontality or to weaken my forwardness. When there is no future, we embrace repetition. Though sunsets at nine o’clock and margaritas do god knows what to your body. That makes us all fall prey again. At some point in life, you stop inflating balloons but rather throw darts up to see what pops. As if for every age there is a new type of loneliness. Hands on my stupid hair.

I want to take advantage of the Bavarian lakes this Summer. Well, I did that last summer; I just hadn’t mentioned it yet. If I am to be broken again, I hope it always happens at the beginning of spring. I have been watching the sun drift into later hours. That’s where it enters my window, on the west side. Your crystal spreads the light in colors in the living room. While the bars on Blumenstrasse start swarming. At some point, if I leave work early on Friday, there will be enough heat left to take a train to Lake Starnberg.

My first impression of Starnberger was that it looked eerie. No matter where I would sit to look at it. It looked eerie. And people at seven o’clock looked merrier and brighter. But that was Autumn or maybe even Winter. Summer is certainly somewhat democratic. At least we all look at it from inside and dive into the buzz of motor boats.

The past is less static than it seems. Mine is dancing around all the time. It won’t stop dancing. But I can finish this today, so that it can dance in different rooms. Because I entered the church and recited a fifteen-second-prayer. Then I worked and smoked cigarettes. Went swimming by the end of the afternoon. Until time starts painting another picture or until I choose better words or better drafts. Just as you and I did not choose to share this moment. We came to look at what else swims in a sea, from Mark Spitz to the smallest Seahorse.