Leisure

I’m mainly going there on holiday. I enjoy swimming.

L.M.The ocean was always there. It was very present. It’s part of the world in which I grew up. I come from a fisherman’s family → so even though the ocean is more of a space of leisure for me, for my family it is more connected to labor.

In Portugal, swimming was very much a class thing. People only knew how to swim if they went to swimming classes. Those kinds of people, that could afford swimming classes, see the ocean as a space for leisure. But for poor people like my family, the ocean was seen as labor + not necessarily as leisure. It still is the case with some people. There is another mode of relation towards it. For poor people, it’s not just about labor but about hard labor. For some it is as if they don’t have the right to pleasure. Pleasure is located in the family for them.

Although I spent some of my childhood holidays by the sea → I am a very good swimmer. I spent a lot of time swimming in rivers: particularly in Cheshire, England. I have a strong relationship to water but more to fresh water than to seawater.

P.H.Well, in terms of the physical atmosphere of the city. But also economically→. Rio is a big port. In fact, in Rio there is a → blurred boundary between beach life + city life. There is an atmosphere of carefreeness + leisure and + at the same time there is a certain tension in the air because of the high crime that happens on the beach(es).

I love beach holidays: I just spent a few days in La Gomera.:Swimming in the sea there gave me a certain feeling of liberation.

My mother grew up in the West Indies. My family doesn’t know how to swim. I was “taught” how to swim in school essentially by being thrown into the swimming pool (and being left to fend for myself). When I was going there for vacations, we would have mainly picnics on the beach with my family, and I used to go into the water – but only up to my knees. I slowly taught myself to swim but swam like a “small dog” (as they say in French).

I used to spend vacation time in Martinique. I prefer the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean. Nowadays, I can play with my son + my dog in the sea → they can both swim better than me. I feel joy when I encounter the ocean now, because I experience it through my son’s eyes. The experience of weightlessness and buoyancy is what fascinates me the most.

P.P. I agree that swimming is a class thing. For fisherfolk, the ocean is work, → you don’t necessarily enjoy going there. Whenever we were going to the seashore for leisure → we would do a picnic.

Everyone from France going to the West Indies was telling me that the sea is beautiful. But I was looking at the Atlantic + not at the Caribbean (where you can see your feet in the water) → The sea is different and it felt like we were not talking about same thing. Also, because people talking to me about their vacations in the Caribbean where actually there for leisure. While I was seeing people working from dawn to dusk. We not only didn’t look at the same sea but also not at the same lives.