Swimming

The Belgian seaside is covered in cement. As a child I remember the boardwalk in Koksijde and how I spent → a lot of time looking at the ocean. I remember swimming with my grandmother in the sea; she would play with me in the cold waves for hours.

We are not meant to be in the ocean. It is an alien medium for us. We cannot exist there. To be able to be there we have to be able to swim or we have to use something that is external to our bodies. Going to the ocean is like going to the moon.

Since last summer, after the accident, I’ve been very afraid to go into the sea. After the accident, I went to the sea (in Spain). This was not as traumatic as I had imagined it to be, because I was well accompanied. I was with someone who I trust very much + also because I don’t have any memory of the accident. But now I cannot swim far away from the shore anymore.

G.V.I am a very good swimmer but still I prefer floating to swimming. When I float, I am taken away by the waves, losing my sense of orientation. Then at some point, I am thrown by the waves to the shore.

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

I remember seeing the ocean as an unapproachable monster. The thing with swimming is: I swim badly. My uncle does not know how to swim. Only the boys would risk it, entering the ocean without knowing how to swim.

Still, my partner and I recently stayed for a few weeks in a place called Woodgate, a small sea resort in Queensland, Australia. This is an amazing place; we were swimming all the time.

I swim in the Indian ocean whenever I visit India as it always delivers very special impressions and experiences. It’s always a joy to watch Indians of all sorts interact and respond to this ocean. They externalize their emotions in tune with the action of the waves and the wind in beautifully subtle and uniquely theatrical or dance like ways.

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.

I learned to swim by trying to swim 10 strokes, one after the other, if I managed I would get a small reward from my mother.

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.

In Bonaire, the sea is very transparent. When swimming out into the sea, there is a point where all of a sudden the bottom of the sea deepens so abruptly, it goes from seeing the seabed clearly, to a huge black hole, without any transition, it completely disappears from view. Reaching this point left me feeling really scared. Even though it has no physical consequences for my swimming on the surface. Still, I almost did not dare to swim past this point. I felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.

When I am swimming in the ocean I get the feeling of being in infinity something that just goes on+on. The ocean is undividable. It’s not just your complete freedom of movement within this body of water, but also that there is literally no border to it. The particles that are touching you could have been somewhere else only two days before. The ocean gives me a notion of holism.

1. First, one could describe it as sublime, in the classical sense (i.e. you feel very small.)
2. Secondly, is the power it has to lift you when you swim. It’s buoyancy.
There is an ecstasy of the thing that can engulf you + charm you + suddenly you become conscious of your own vulnerability.

There’s a French film (Welcome by Philippe Lioret): about a refugee crossing the channel by swimming. The film describes the process of him getting ready for the crossing, training like mad. I don’t remember if in the end you actually see him entering the water, but I have a clear (perhaps imagined) image of him progressively getting disoriented + getting sleepy.

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).

About 2 years ago, my relation to the ocean became better because of my son who is 9 years old. He is learning how to swim in the swimming pool in Brussels. On the days where I pick him up, I jump into the water with him and he teaches me some basic movements of the hands and feet.

I have fisherfolk in my family but they don’t know how to swim.

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.

Elements make you feel small. Respect and fear → define one’s relation to the ocean. It's work. A fisher friend from Brittany once said that when you fall far into the ocean, knowing how to swim doesn’t change anything. Cause any way you cannot fight it.