ZRowing, I learned not to trust water. I was a poor swimmer and sprayed at sea on a vacation that was always on a difficult edge. The second left the fingers of the sandy floor that felt panic, for fear of sweeping it.
Things changed a few years ago on the birthday holiday in Cornwal. On the morning of February, dozens of us took a hanging picnic to the beach. She was cloudy and beating, and we got to thinness. I was supported by intimate friendship and games the night before, and I felt safe in numbers. People stripped, and he made action from the wind, and before I thought, I continued. We ran on sand and gravel and covered in the upcoming waves. It was completely perceived pregnancy. The salt filled my nose and my mouth. I heard screams and cursing, and a lot of laughter. When it appeared, there was an increase in adrenaline, and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was scary, but I was also proud, like a child who really climbed a large tree. After that, my skin was disturbed and while we participated in the tea bottle, I felt a single happiness.
I was caught wrong. I started searching for water – oceans, leaks, and rivers – in all of the pollution. I initially began nervously, like a suspicious puppy of a new game, fighting the desire to jump directly or escape. It is a feeling that I am reconsideration of my novel where the protagonist finds Ellum, a solitary man who is struggling to understand people and relationships, attracted to both the danger and the open water medicine. I think many people feel unable – on financial affairs, reproductive options, living situations, our bodies and minds. I see him at work, as a doctor in psychiatry and general practice in the areas of high social deprivation. Wild swimming will not solve structural problems and not everyone, but I wonder about the number of my patients who may benefit from a proxy feeling that comes after swimming.
It is a shameful thing that it took a long time in the ice to him, given that I would show a promise as a child in swimming lessons. I won more after the first period and sew my mother, the gold badge in my trunks, but we moved from Glasgow to Accra shortly, leaving the lessons behind it. In Ghana, we spent a lot of time next to the pool, but more as an appendix for days in hotels, not as a dangerous sport. The difference became clear when I returned to Scotland in adolescence, when she participated in the regional swimming competition as part of the post -school club. I thought I missed the race when I saw the heat crawl in the past. It turned out that I was confused about a stroke and I was in a race for a stroke that I could not do. When a 50 -meter race already started, everyone finished their sects while I was still watching my way during the first. When I went back to the final length, the audience broke out to a kind of encouragement to the chanting of the Hollywood movie. Heart, but completely mortgaged.
I played in the stereotype – a black man who could not swim – and was performed to remember him through informal cruelty that is a joke in certain groups. I am internal, too. I knew in theory that for an entire group, it was racist, but for me this was true – I He was A bad swimmer, I just “I can’t do it”, and it was. I put it on one side and the next year I participated for athletics instead – a more suitable sport for a gay person.
Then I made a real swimming attempt after years, on a university vacation to Latifa. My friends decided to swim to a platform about 100 meters from the beach. I felt the disease from thought, but I was very proud to take advantage of a group of white players, so I said I would go. They shot, while struggling along, exhausted with each kick. The platform did not approach, and I could not see my friends on it, a water cannon. I was about 20 meters old when I was sure I would drown. It became a rough respiratory, and I swallowed the salty water with all moments.
Despite my panic, I did not call it. They say the films are misleading – people do not scream when they are in trouble because they keep oxygen. That’s right, but I was calm because it was very insulting. I almost allowed myself to die from embarrassment. Fortunately, I got to the platform and trembled to the point that I could barely pulled the ladder. I lied for an hour, and demonstrated silently with solar enthusiasm when I was simply angry and swimming. When it’s time, my friend Nick saw badly hidden despair while I was giving up the peace and swimming next to me, as he trained me on the beach.
It took years to return to the water after that and before our next vacation, I spent months in carrying out local rolls in the local swimming pool at my lunch and after work, dug myself until I managed to swim four groups of 25 meters long without stopping. The driving force was not my own safety: it was the fear of more embarrassment, as he was the only person who could not swim, and who happened to be the only black person there too. I reached that vacation without an accident, but I did not find any love for the sea. So the spontaneous slim surprised me in Cornwall. The screaming of laughter and distorted spots has changed the open water from the mine to the field.
I think a large part of that was also the cold shock. Cold water destabilizes physically, but is mentally soothing. The sensations in my body become so urgent that my mind loses the grip of anxious ideas. After that, as soon as my mind realizes that yes, I am safe and not, I will not freeze to death, the adrenaline becomes a fuel from the burning euphoria.
It has now decreased all over the world: the heights, the inner animal, the western islands and the Beheira region; Rockpool drowns in Inishmore (from Bans from Inisherin Family) The New Year’s decline in Dublin; Ice baths in the Japanese Alps. The warmer Mediterranean spots (although wild swimming is not really counted when it’s hot); Even the London tank, where one can divide after closing to swim in the middle of the night and Monkas.
He is Muslim, perhaps the word “swimming” is far from. For me it is usually running and lower fever. It is ridiculous and full of laughter. I did not buy a lot of the group, joined a club or set aside time.
I am my guidance for two principles. First, when I see an attractive body of water, I assume that I entered until I was persuaded otherwise. I changed this spontaneity how I look at the world: it is a stadium again and I am a young child, trampling in the ponds rather than emphasizing my shoes. Last year, during a cycle across the center of Kyoto at 40 degrees Celsius, you and a friend of ourselves and ourselves were in the Camo Crystal Camo River. He is safe to swim, and a few people were immersed in their feet, but it is shallow to lie like a pie to immerse yourself. The second principle is that you do not regret dipping. Regardless of the extent of cold or public, the euphoria always wins.
It is a strong feeling and stayed with me while writing my novel. ELOM finds solace in the quiet water around INA in the internal Hebrides. I found my peace there as well, as he dipped every morning and wrote in the afternoon for a week in early January. Like me, he struggles Elom to follow the rules that dictate it. For me, these rules are high in high school, when the stadium stopped being a place to play actual. Instead, I found a islands of teenagers, gathered together by some group identity. Staying alive requires wearing a uniform, even if it is not appropriate. There are only some things you can’t do.
I still feel this way when I approach the water deep in the countryside – a sudden look, or confusion from a person who is supposed to be, in reverse. But when cold water strikes, all of this comes out of the window. It is simply to make voices that I have not heard before or to see my friends in disbelief, bliss or terrorism; It doubled with laughter while stumbling through the oil rock to get to our pants before the waves do. It is my childish and immediate, and for a few moments, I am completely present, inside my head, instead of watching myself from the outside, and I establish how I was watching. Wild swimming reminds me of I am, and I am not supposed to be.
Before we are posted on the ground by Selai Fiamanyya, it is published by Porough Press at a price of 16.99 pounds sterling. Purchase it for 15.29 pounds from Guardianbookshop.com