Swims and small things

The water is where I have mostly been and the water is what holds me balanced. This week there has been so much water. My hands have pruned with elephant wrinkles and my skin has smelt of chlorine, or mud, of deep green depths. In the water, so many small moments of noticing.

First I swam at the lake. Blue green turquoise water cupped in sandy terracotta mud. Cloudy below the surface, buddleia bursting purple over the banks, coots kicking by, the rotate rate of their white capped heads, the beady eye watching me me as I move, ungainly compared to them, through the water. The trees reflected upside down, the sky torn to uneven shards, dancing on the brown green surface. Trees growing in clusters in the middle of this, once an abandoned quarry. No leaves left, no branches, only paper skinned pale trucks. I dip my head below the surface, strain to see. The water is clouded, but when Im close I see one trunk, thin as an arm, pale white against the clouded sediment. Silver birch still standing. I dive, dip below the water, warm now after so much sun, and the obligatory tow float catches me, tethers me to the surface, pulls me back up to the gaping sky and the gentle fringing of reeds at the edge.

And then I went to the ponds. Delicious dark green water, the vegetal smell of the colour itself, the tremble of the static surface as I climb down metal steps, right to the bottom rung, hold on, look out, then let myself sink, fall away from the steps to where the water alone will hold me. Arms striking circles through the silt. Clouds of it, tiny specks of mud and weed, billowing below the surface at my movement. The edges of the water dotted with water lilies. On the bank, wild raspberries, a small burst of red pink, above a log that last week held the last duckling and its watching mother. The light of the early sun thrown to the water, thrown back, dancing in disco dots on the trees, the underside of leaves, the ordinary brown trunks, the mud.

A duck, following the rope line that keeps swimmers from the very edge, swims with me from one end of the pond to the other. Openly, I keep my eyes on her. She flicks her eyes to me only from time to time, nibbling at the bluebird, freeing it of weed, of whatever gathers in the thickness of the water there that I could have no hope of understanding. Round then, round the top, the sun bright enough to shield my eyes, then curtained by the taller trees. The bubbles of the fountains that freshen the water, tingly on my skin. The lapping of my moving hands. The conversation of other women as they move through this silly liquid, black, so black, so beautiful. Another duck building a nest of twigs on a float. And there - the duckling and its mother on a rubber ring. The baby sleeping, leg tucked, a grey twist of sinew against the tufted yellow brown feathers, mother stood attentive, looking out. The baby, big now, a late baby, opens one eye, watches me, a swimmer sharing this watery marvel of a place.

And then the lido, kids kicked out for the last hour, water that impossible turquoise blue. Dive down, down to the bottom, where white tiles brush my belly, where the perfect painterly lines of refracted sun break the underwater world into fragments. A pair of goggles left on the side, the water washing over the edge, down through the gaps of the filters, rising and disappearing. The sky streaked white against postcard blue, crossed with contrails. My arms, reaching, reflected in the surface above when I go under, glance up. I swim down, turn to look, but never can I see more than my arms in reflection, never my face. Instead, the above world peers down, bubbled at the edges, a watery window that denies its last distortion. We can see things, sometimes, only from a certain angle. Swimming not as exercise, not as a number of lengths, but as play, as joy, as noticing.

These swims have been fitted around long working days and other demands and they have held me, helped me keep going, helped me feel sane. The water is always there and it cares little for day by day concerns. I have been working on a Selkie story. Though it mostly takes place on land, the call of the sea is a current through it, as I myself am pulled to the coast. I have not swum in the sea recently, but soon. Soon I will go to the sea and I will take the time to notice the way the light strikes the water, the way the salt smells, the sound of waves on the shore. It is the noticing that returns me to myself - to a place where myself no longer matters, where all there is is the sweet sing of stretching in my muscles, the wet of my skin, the movement of waves, the shifting thousand colours of all the washing water.

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