It's the special.fish writing room hour, 11:09am. The clouds are moving fast outside but the trees in the street aren't swaying an inch.
For the last few weeks I've been getting up, packing a towel and cycling to the lake to go for a swim. I've been experiencing what some might call a "burnout" since the beginning of March but somehow the term burnout doesn't feel right to me and still sounds too abstract. However, my desire to dip myself into cold water would suggest that there is something that needs to cool off.
I find writing about it quite hard at the moment because I second guess myself more than usual. This generally leads to me not knowing how to act in a given situation because I don't know if something will cause anxiety or whether it will be fine. I suppose I'm finding it hard to trust my internal compass.
However, each morning when I get up I gravitate towards the lake almost like it has a magnetic pull on me.
There's been much said, written, recorded and published about cold water swimming and it has become a bit of a fad over the last few years. I'm currently reading a book called Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui that examines the motivation behind peoples interest in swimming, from Icelandic shipwreck survivors to swimming clubs in war-torn Baghdad. I find it admirable that someone can put words to why people do something but for me it still doesn't quite capture the magnetic force I feel each morning.
A book that I found does capture that in a somewhat more poetic manner is a book called Pondlife by Al Alvarez. It's a journal of the writers swimming habits. Through journal entries that are at times observational and at others reflective, you begin to build a picture of why the writer is drawn to the water.
I've been taking occasional photos of the lake to remember these moments.
