cold water swim
/“Oh no, you can’t go in the fjord without a wetsuit.”
So I spent my first two days here, at Kunstnarhuset Messen, focused on getting myself a wetsuit, because I really wanted to swim:
Should I order one online or take the bus to the nearest city?
What time was the bus to the nearest city?
What kind, what size, what type of weather wetsuit?
Would I leave the wetsuit here when I left, or stuff it in my suitcase and then never look at it again?
How much money would the wetsuit cost and could I find one that was cheaper?
And on and on and on.
Simone, one of the host at KHMessen, sat me down at the end of that second day, and said “I'm concerned that you’re spending too much time focusing on the wetsuit rather than on your art making. It’s time to stop with the wet suit. Get into the studio and start working.”
I hung my head and agreed.
I would not be swimming in Norway, in the fjord I could see outside of the window, in the studio I was dancing in.
The fjord that changes colors all the time --sometimes in a single day. It's a bright aqua blue, almost turquoise in the morning, and then it changes to dark green, then grey and rarely, rarely, a quick black.
Zoie, an installation artist from Hong Kong, came knocking at my studio door at the end of my first week here:
“I just went swimming,” she said “It’s cold, but you don’t need a wetsuit.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope. If you swim fast, you'll be okay.”
I ran and got my bathing suit, my googles, my swimcap, my sandals, my towel, and I was down at the bottom of the rocks in about 10 minutes.
It was cold on my feet, the water, a little too cold for my liking, but Zoie had done it, so I would too.
Oh, it was glorious.
I stayed in for about 20 minutes that first day.
The next day it was raining, but I was planning to swim anyway.
“You can’t swim when it’s raining outside. It will be too cold.” everybody said, “wait until it’s sunny, in a couple of days.”
I didn’t swim that day or the next, just stared at the water that was now a soft green, not so dark, as it had been a few hours prior.
Then Ross, a poet from Australia, arrived.
(BTW, just finished reading Ross’s book, The Blue Dressing Gown. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book of poetry and said “Well that was a page turner." I turned all the pages of The Blue Dressing Gown, until I was done, in one go).
After Ross and I introduced ourselves, he said “You swim?”
“Yeah, I’ve been once, but it’s been raining so I haven’t been in since. I’ll go again on the next sunny day.”
“The next sunny day is too far away for me. I plan to swim after dinner, you're free to come along if you like.”
“You're going to swim in the rain?”
“Yep.”
So I swam too, in the fjord here in Norway, in the rain. It was that rare, quick color black.
Drinking tea later that evening with some of the other artists, I thought aloud, “I wonder if it’d be okay to skinny dip.”
Ross said, “I think it’d be okay, as long as no one else is there. That’s what a few of us did last year, never wore our bathers.”
The next morning Ross and I met at 7am, down by the rocks again.
He went to one side of the fjord, I went to the other, so that we respectfully kept our distance from each other, and we swam.
Without our bathers.
This time for about 30 minutes.
Before dinner that evening, we swam again, and agreed to meet the next morning as well.
Each morning now, each evening, Ross and I meet at the rocks and swim.
In Norway, in the fjord, sometimes in the rain, always without our bathers.
I’ve stopped putting clothes on for the walk to the water from the house through the bit of wood — just a towel to wrap around my body.
Yes, it’s cold.
The water is biting, like little needles, burrowing into my skin.
My head in a bucket of ice.
My fingers struggle to work out the details of wrapping the towel around me when I’m back on dry land. I always hope, so so much, that when Ross and I make it back to the house through that little bit of wood, that both showers will be empty -- hot water, I long for it.
The exhilaration of swimming naked in that cold cold water that is sometimes aqua blue, with the straight up to the sky mountains, and the rain.
Almost always rain.
That slicing of the body through cold open water.
I cannot get enough.
A wide open focus happens in the streamline movement of the the pull, the kick, the breath, the cold.
I have no idea -- ever -- what day it is here, at Messen.
I’ve lost track completely.
But the time -- I’m aware of the time.
I don’t want to miss a swim.
7am, and then again at 5.
What are you doing tomorrow, someone asked me last night at dinner.
Same old same old - swim, dance, write, snack, nap, dance, write, swim, snack, read.
I’ll do it all again tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that, and again and again and again.
The power of suggestion, I’m thinking about, talking about this cold water swim.
If Zoie hadn’t knocked on my door, if Ross hadn’t arrived from Australia, I might never have gotten into this water that is today a blue sort of grey.
And what a sadness that would have been.
Something so big, missed.
What other suggestions have moved through this world and created a miss?
This residency is suppose to be about dancing and art making.
Don’t tell anyone, but for me, it’s about cold water swimming.
Your Dance Mission for the Week:
Turn the computer off.
Lie down on the floor.
Feel your back body, touching the earth.
Notices the places where your body makes contact with the floor beneath you, and the places where it doesn’t.
Let the weight of you, pull you, spill you into time and space.
For 15 minutes.
Last time it was 10 minutes I think.
This time, let’s go for 15.
Dance Classes this summer:
1. Tuesday/Thursday Dance Class:
Tuesday, July 9th-Thursday, August 29th
10:15-12:15pm at The Boulder Circus Center.
2. Weekend Workshops:
July 19th-21st and August 16th-18th, also at The Boulder Circus Center.
Join us if you like -- would love to have you there.
With Warmth,
Joanna
of
Joanna and The Agitators
sweetly agitating/persistently upending
www.joannaandtheagitators.com