Today I stood in a gazebo made of old tin cans, listened to folk music in a yurt, saw a sand snake (pictured), touched a live snake (not pictured) and spanked a man on the bottom with a 100-year-old truncheon. However, none of those things count, because they are new things, and, since I was at the Secret Garden Party yesterday too, not a new place.
Instead, today's new place was the swimming pool of the LA Fitness gym in Huntingdon which I used this morning in one of those free one-day trials because the idea of going several days without a swim is largely intolerable to me.
I once heard Stella Duffy say (possibly attributed to someone else) that there are two kinds of people: those who look at a body of water and want to sail on it, and those who look at a body of water and want to swim in it. I'm definitely in the latter camp. Where other writers have their sacred 'writer's walk' (actually I do too, walks are good - look how many of these pieces of advice feature walking) I have swimming. I love how swimming clarifies, how the repetitiveness soothes, how thoughts become crystalized, how you find out how long you can *really* hold your breath for.
So, in Huntingdon, with all of the Secret Garden Party to play in, I sneaked off this morning for a swim. And in Bologna, I went to the most gorgeous underground swimming pool (literally underground, not, like, a secret swimming pool which is in hiding from the authorities and needs to keep a low profile) - it was marble-floored and U-shaped. I feel almost like mentioning a swimming pool is cheating really, because all water is in a way the same place, that's what good about it. It feels like coming home.
Not everything about a person is set, ever. People can always change. But it occurs to me that right now it's almost exactly 10 years since I moved to Manhattan where, when I was looking for somewhere to live, I had two stipulations: nearish to a library and a swimming pool. Some things remain the same.
yup, that was definitely me! at least, it's something I've often said ... preparing to head off to Brockwell Lido right now. have thought so many useful writing things as I swim - many useless things too! the clarity of water will always win out for me over any other writerly 'exercise'. the best though, for me, is playing in a vast-waved, body-buffeting Pacific, ideally somewhere on the east coast of New Zealand. aah ... x
Posted by: Stella Duffy | 07/26/2010 at 08:48 AM