The underbelly of the sky

There is one shot I have always wanted to capture, and that is the surface of the water as seen from below. It offers a negative of what we usually see, the trough of waves more salient than their crests, and reflections capturing the world beneath rather than the heavens above: tiles in this case. And who is to say that what I think of as the water's surface is not the underbelly of the sky, bearing its breath downwards as I myself come up for air? 

From this angle, the water looks like a hammock sagging under the weight of air
and fraying where I break surface.

My fingers still sheathed in air.

Abstract patterns the naked eye is too slow to capture,
but which may translate into watercolours - Hil!

A first and rather furtive excursion into the pool with my GoPro (the lifeguards had to be persuaded and the pool empty), but I'm happy - I finally get to capture some of the sensuality I find under water, and this is only a beginning...

Whitstable, Kent

Whitstable: oyster-trove since Roman times

A very happy weekend in the Garden of England, spent with AC-friends in Canterbury and topped off with a swim and some local oysters in "the meeting place of the white post": Whitstable was recorded as "Witenestaple" in the Domesday book.

Oyster-talk

Crab-walk

As the tide was out, the sea exceedingly shallow and the rough-pebble beach harsh underfoot, the swim was so-so but everything else made up for it, not least the etymology of the word 'swim' as divulged to me on the road: PIE root *swem- 'to be in motion'. Cognate terms in Old Irish and Lithuanian mean 'to hunt' and 'to chase'. The non-Germanic languages opted for PIE *sna- 'to swim' which gave rise to the 'nare', 'nager', 'nuotare' > N: 'natation' variants.

Ulf in foot-sore motion: did the verb 'swimming' narrow to its current meaning
because of jagged stone-beaches such as Whitstable's?!

A first outing for my new GoPro: I clearly didn't crack it, but then
it didn't drown either, which means there's hope.
I just need a bigger, clearer, nobler sea...

Icarus has the answer!

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky

To the question "why do we adults never seem to vanquish our shadows," Sindre's answer is "Because the sun always shines on us!" - not such a far cry from Auden's "the sun shone / as it had to,": you sparky young skald!

After a week of restlessly pacing the Munchian cage of swimming pools where, rather dismayingly, no cameras are allowed, I'm reverting to my favourite shot of our Villa Lucia watering spot (taken by Sindre's Dad), to which I add the full text of Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts (thus escaping FB's enforced bittiness):

About suffering they were never wrong,


The old Masters: how well they understood


Its human position: how it takes place


While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;


How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting


For the miraculous birth, there always must be


Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating


On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot


That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course


Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot


Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse


Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away


Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may


Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,


But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone


As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green


Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen


Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,


Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Buscot Weir, Oxfordshire

A change of colour and mood from Tuscany! Solace in a swan and signet more interested in bread than butterfly, a weir that begs to be photographed with a waterproof camera (still to be procured), and a friend who cheered me up immeasurably, first, by accompanying me on the outing, and second by mentioning that she would like to paint the Brighton photo, or similar water-based photos. As Hilary's watercolours are the best I have ever come across (no exaggeration), I now have a mission: to shoot iconic buildings from the back of turbulent waves, turning townscapes into toy-towns atop a tossing sea.

Several destinations come to mind, but perhaps most tempting is Copenhagen, not least because my swimsuit has been out on various jaunts with Ægir's daughters there! I have been receiving taunting photos of my speedo, like Amelie's postcards of her father's garden gnome, from various waters round Denmark: a crucified skin on wood and nails; a disembodied Ophelia floating among piranha petals; a sagging flag waving forlornly from a weeping willow... how restless I find myself since my return, and how lonely with it!

Never fear, heels and provisional speedo in hand, I shall find my way back into my skin some time, no doubt, I dare say...
Thanks again, Hil, apologies for getting us locked in on the wrong side of the hooligan-barrier, and a special thanks to GT for being such a gentleman: not to complain at 90, despite the weather and worry, wins him all my admiration and the status of honorary towel-bearer ;)

Sindre, the spray of sparks

Sindre, from Old Norse 'sindr' meaning 'spark' (from which we get 'cinder'), named after the inspired blacksmith who crafted Thor's famous hammer, was the live spark of the reunion: an indefatigable swimmer, an inextinguishable light, an electrifyingly clever kid. If the whole Villa Lucia experience was about reconnecting with our teenage selves, racing endlessly up and down the pool with Sindre was to reconnect with my tadpole years, when I still swam faster and freer below water than above.

Cat, dog, frog, butterfly, kangaroo - the challenge was to get to the other side first in as varied a menagerie of strokes as possible, first being the operative word. Though words were few between us, as Sindre is an expert in Norwegian and Russian, which I, alas, am not. To the many animal names he has learnt in English, I have learnt only one word in Norwegian: 'uavgjort', which literally means 'undecided', but is used in a photo-finish or dead-heat. Funnily enough, I suspect this young conqueror  doesn't know its meaning in his own language: the concept of sharing victory when on a mission to vanquish being far too alien and quite irrelevant!

So here, my little man, the undisputed champion of Villa Lucia's paddling pool, is a poem about a man whom I know you look up to. Can you, bright spark and clean-lined water dart, explain to us adults why we never seem to vanquish our shadows?

Uavgjort 

Harald takes on his shadow

mid-afternoon in Montevettolini.

The sun leans forward

smiles indulgently;  

sweat sparkles on Harald's brow.

Harald takes on his shadow

mid-afternoon, against the city wall.

The sun throws back his head

laughs uproariously; 

sweat flies from Harald's brow.

Harald takes on his shadow, 

back and forth, back and forth to victory.

Now he wins by a hair's breadth

now he loses by even less –

despite the sweat that streams from his decided brow. 

The Muse awoken

La séduction suprême n'est pas d'exprimer ses sentiments. C'est de les faire soupçonner. 

(Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly). Whereas Aurevilly's words may fall smile-inducingly short of his own admonition, this photograph...

And what does any of this have to do with swimming? Try: drifts, currents, contours, or the 'billow maidens' of the Old Norse kenning for 'waves' -  'Ægir's daughters'. And if the pursuit of tactile  associations doesn't do it for you, then how about temporal ones: dips in the pool at either end of the night, summer heat, Tuscan light, a moment of respite. Or even literary ones: the Unbearable Lightness of Being.

And here's a linguistic association: the phrase 'the Muse awoken' is awash with currents from older stages of the language (the strong verb vowel-change, the a- prefix meaning 'at, 'in the state of'), and then there are cross currents between the a- prefix which suggests the present participle and the -en suffix denoting the past participle. And as if that were not enough, the word is awash with further meanings: aspectual in the difference between 'awoken' (state) and 'awakened' (recent event), and ergative in that 'awoken' can connote 'unleashed' - something that empowers the artist in whom she has awoken, whereas 'awakened' only refers to the Muse herself. 

We are sensitive to all these meanings, even if only in some linguistic equivalent of muscle-memory. It is as if the currents of past Englishes still  wash up on the shores of current usage, suggested rather than expressed.

Villa Lucia, Monsummano, Tuscany

Villa Lucia, and jumping seems to be the order of the day (no, not at my command, why would anybody think that). We only had an Emperor-size paddling pool to play with, but my goodness did we play!

For wild immersion (rather than swimming), you need to see the photos of dripping chefs and drooling diners, to eavesdrop on the clatter and chatter of companionship (though judging by the empties, bread was not all we shared), and to tune your mind to the hum of time-travel: 35 years since many of us last saw each other at Atlantic College, yet we picked up seamlessly where we'd left off, the intervening years an optional scenic detour.

And for the benefit of those of us who felt they might have changed in looks, if not in spirit, we had the beautiful youths of the next generation to refract time's mirror and give us hope! This is an ode to them. (Harald, budge out of shot or you'll get another broken nose!)