Like hundreds of thousands of other wringled people I swim laps in a pool as a means of staying limber and as a further means of boosting my anti-depressant drug . I make no bones about it: having one disability can indeed induce situational depression and I’ve been depressed most of my life. I take my meds and swim my laps and in turn I walk long distances with my guide dog.
The great thing about swimming is that you can’t hear a damned thing except the beating of your own heart and the aqua-graphic bubbles that make their own mystic alphabet in one’s head. Sometimes I hear my hair rowing its own boat. And sometimes when I’m swimming fast enough and starving for oxygenI hear Amelita Galli-Curci, star soprano for the Metropolitan Opera circa 1908 singing an aria from Madame Butterfly.
I have better dreams when I am swimming regularly. Last night I dreamt that I was living in Brooklyn, New York, circa 1935and I was happily writing a novel. I didn’t own much. I had a typewriter that resembled a pipe organ and a tea set with a lovely pitcher that had hand painted yellow roses. I had a cathedral radio with glowing tubes. I had some pencils.
I woke this morning all dried out and smelling of chlorine but I knew that we’re swimming in larger pools than we daily can conceive of.
I have a desire for tea.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Music that emerges from the unconscious while swimming
on good days: Bach Cello Suites, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers singing ‘A Fine Romance’, Coltrane ‘My Favourite Things’
on bad days: Queen ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, George Bush’s favourite ‘My Shirona’ (or whoever she was).
Can you get underwater IPods? Or is it better to swim awaiting unbidden melodies?
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I, too, am a big fan of swimming. I love the meditative quality of it, almost perfect sensory deprivation; it’s the one place I can’t see much either, even with goggles. It helps my sleep more than any other cardio exercise I do. As for my desire, I already have plenty of tea. I just want a pool closer to me.
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