Watery

The clouds and sky continue to fascinate me, especially when storms are brewing and the clouds become full of water. They inspired me to get out my acrylics and do this fast sketch on paper the other day: brushes full of water and pigment, making marks to depict clouds and sky, which actually have no pigment at all, just light and dust and water in various forms, from vapor to droplets to ice. It's curious when you think about it.

Water has also entered my life in another way recently: I've gone back to swimming because we have a pool in our new building. During the pandemic I haven't swum at all, and even before, it was really hard for me to keep it up as a regular practice. The best routine for me at the moment seems to be settling into every other day, around 7:30 in the morning. There's seldom anyone else in the pool then, and I can swim my laps in an atmosphere that feels extremely meditative even when I'm working hard. It feels great to enter the water, and after a few laps, everything sort of melts away as the rhythm of the strokes, the breaths, and the turns takes over.

When I began to do it seriously, a month ago, I started out fairly easily, trying not to strain my shoulders or lower back, and now I'm swimming about twenty minutes straight, and will work up to thirty. A couple of times a week I've also been doing yoga, and we're walking and biking quite a bit in the new neighborhood, which, once you get away from the main streets where there's busy traffic, is much quieter and less congested for cycling than our old one.

Moving more always feels better, but I certainly don't think of myself as an athlete, and like many of us, I've sometimes tended to do something new for a while and then get out of the habit, though I've walked regularly for years and years. However, as I've considered my father's long life, there's no denying that regular exercise played a huge role in his physical and mental well-being. Being able to make swimming the central activity would be a very good fit for me. It's hard to express how happy and comfortable I've always felt when I'm in the water. Being able to swim regularly, without the obstacle of commuting to a distant pool, feels like a great privilege, as well as doing my body a lot of good. I hope I can keep it up.

Comments

[Kathleen]

I've been swimming this summer, but my Early Bird Lap Swim at the pool just ended, all the lifeguards headed back to school...

[am]

Joy is what I felt when I saw your painting of the sky and clouds.

Thank you for writing about swimming. It's been many years since I swam regularly. I do remember the meditative nature of doing laps in a pool. Back to joy -- the joy of swimming. I live near a 14-mile-long lake and know a woman in her early 70s who swims 2 miles daily early in the morning for as much of the year as possible. She wears a wet suit when it becomes too cold to swim without one. Lately I've been thinking that it would feel good to swim again. I'd have to buy a bathing suit for a starter and then maybe a wet suit to swim in the lake. My lower back is vulnerable to low back pain but with a little Googling, I see that freestyle and backstroke are good for that.