Harray Loch, Orkney

Wave's eye view

Surprisingly, on waking up to rain, I didn't feel the slightest temptation to return to the sun and warmth which has been bathing the rest of the country this last fortnight. The day cleared up by lunchtime, however, and Mary and I headed for Harray where Rae was fishing. I now have a towel-bearer and a towel-hoader, 'hoad' being horsey dialect for 'hold' in the Borders. I also have the distinct impression, from all the ribbing I received, that I'm being humoured. Thank God for that ;)

I swam across the loch then half way back. It seems that when swimming into the waves, my head creates enough of a water-break for me to inhale. Am always surprised at how narrow a breathing window we need: a mouth half-full of water, the smallest of all arcs involved in butterfly, this brief air-gap between crown and mouth as we plough through a wave... and how readily that opportunity may go awry. After some 50 minutes, I finished the swim with a rope-tow - some speed at last! I was sorry not to be able to take a photo of the view seen through a shower of diamond droplets.

Merged levels. One day, maybe, I'll get hold of
cameras and lights to capture spilt-level shots.

My favourite underwater photographer is David Doubilet, and of his photos the most mesmerising are those which show the world above and below the water in a single shot, with the waterline seen in cross section. Here is Doubilet on his work: “You’re after a feeling, a moment, almost a wistfulness. You have to think poetically.” To capture wistfulness - what a wonderful aim!

Yet Doubilet does more than that: he offers two perspectives at once, parallel worlds in juxtaposition, and leaves it up to us to interpret whether the relationship between them is paradoxical, complementary, symbiotic or other. And the poetry of his work, to my mind, is contained in this "ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind, at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”, as Scott Fitzgerald defined a first-rate intelligence. Keat's negative capability is also relevant here: "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" - an attribute which Keats sees as central to poetic sensibility.

A double perspective seems to defy our wiring: how can we be both here and there unless we are in an altered mind-state? Yet Doubilet makes it not just possible but evocative. M. C. Escher, in his way, does so too. As do zeugma (he took his hat and his leave) and oxymora (bright smoke, cold fire, sick health). But are we holding both variants simultaneously in mind, or flip-flopping between them as in the case of narrow ambiguities such as homophones, or the duck-rabbit illusion? Certainly, one of the thrill so swimming is that sense of embracing two world views at once.