water
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The Gap
The body remembers more than it can perform. When I return to the water, the first thing that comes back is the structure: the rhythm of the swimmers’ strokes, the movement of bodies through the lane. I know where to stand, how to push off the wall into streamline. The sequence if familiar before the…
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When Language Falls Away
There is a difference between thinking and what happens in the body when language falls away. I first encountered this difference as a child, when I nearly drowned while swimming in a lake. The experience was not dramatic. It was physiological. The body reorganizes around breath. Speech becomes unavailable. Everything narrows to orientation and survival,…