I am the Sea

“The project relates the author’s special connections to the sea and swimming. Since childhood, the sea has been a symbolic environment for the author, from which she draws psychological certainty and support.” Most of all I love swimming in the sea when there are no buoys in front of me – buoys or anything else that immediately stands out. Just an undulating grey or blue horizon stretching out into the distance, a span to the edge of the Earth that can neither be shortened nor extended. Usually I cheat and return to the shore on my back, so I can see it again. “Swimming, physically overcoming the expanse of the sea, becomes a metaphor for the path to oneself, an accessible way of reassembling one’s personality, a simple way to look into one’s own depth. Endowed with high symbolic meaning, the images of the sea act in the same space as the artist’s dreams and childhood memories.” Dad taught me to swim. He waded in until the water was lapping at his chest – back facing the horizon – stood me up on his folded palms and threw far behind him. First I flew in a wonderful arc, then entered the water like a skewer, slowed down within the unfathomable depths, flailed about, thrashed at the water with my hands and jumped out like a cork from a bottle. “This habitable, tamed space of the irrational is not hostile to her — it collaborates. And every real journey to the sea, the opportunity to enter its waters and swim far from the shore allows her once more to be in close proximity with herself and her creative beginnings.” Throughout this process mum sat, turned away in fear, on the shore, and pretended not to know us. It’s strange that out of the two, father taught me to swim. Because the real swimmer, inspired and untiring, was always mother. Lying on her back, languid like a turtle, she swam for an hour, two hours, three. Her swimming didn’t entail any sporting achievement; all was peaceful prosperity of the spirit. That’s why I believe that, in the end, it was her who truly taught me. I don’t do breaststrokes, I don’t swim freestyle or butterfly, I don't even doggy-paddle – I simply swim. Shift my legs and arms through infinity, sometimes assuming a vertical position underwater and walking, going nowhere. And, of course, I do not lower my head below the surface: why would I swim without two or three senses if their presence heightens the pleasure of swimming to its extent? When mum went swimming, I became non-existent to her. I was an obedient child, and upon her return – however much time she needed to force herself out of the waves – she’d find me on that same stretch of towel as before. My children aren’t so obedient, but they look after one another, or their father does. I forget about them all. In the sea, I am on my own. It is the only place where nothing and nobody exists aside from me. The shortest way to imagine immortality is to remember oneself floating in sea water. Present and absent at the same time. Perceiving oneself maximally in control and yet completely lost, washed away into myriads of salty droplets. Concentrated on oneself and distilled in all that the eye can see. I am everywhere and everywhere is me. I do not dampen in water. I am water. I – am the sea. Or something else, or somebody else. In the sea, there is no time. But then it catches up with me. Pangs of guilt, like a ringmaster’s whip, drive me out onto the shore; the gathering of towels, bags, shale, sandy children begins. I return to those who waited for me on dry land like a traveller fresh from a long journey, a tad embarrassed at how pleasant I felt during its course, not quite sincerely wishing they were there. My confidence in the sea does not waver, like its waters do. Its tremulous surface became my trusted purchase. Its parting waves are the firmest foothold my feet can feel. Occasionally, I dream of the open sea. I think: if I get tired, I will just lie down on my back, for I cannot tire on my back. I will lie on the water, only sometimes shifting my arms, and gaze at the sky – be it morning, or day, or evening, or night. Because the sea will not let me down; it will carry me out.