It isn’t the Paris 2024 Olympics and I’m not Katie Ledecky. But I can dive off my dock into Copake Lake. The water is still cold and I’ll freeze for a few seconds, then will be absorbed in its wet embrace.
Until a few years ago, I used to stand at the edge, unable to enter the water—pools, lakes, forget about the ocean. I perched helplessly.
Was I afraid of the cold? Of the shock to my body? What made me stand there like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo? I love to swim. I’m a strong swimmer. The fear was powerful, paralyzing—until finally, after much fanfare, I slowly waded into the water like the gallows. And it was all right, it really was—but preceded by so much angst.
So I created a mantra to save myself. It couldn’t be more primal: one-two-three. I know. Not a stretch. (But I don’t tell anyone.) Sometimes I extend it. One, two, two and a half, two and three quarters—but when I say the word three—that’s it, no excuse, hesitation. I must fling my body into the waiting body of water.
Mantras have spiritual and psychological power. Their repetition focuses the mind, promotes concentration. Now that I have my mantra, I can avoid entering the agonizing state of stuckness, the limbo before moving forward. I wrote this poem some years ago:
Is it Terror’s dare that forces her
On the stage, the phobic addicted
To staring down the high diving board
She balances on the edge about to plummet.
Once her father cast her into the sea
Of brine, broken oyster shells…
She smiles at the audience, her mouth
A worm pinned to her face with toothpicks.
She picks up the bow to warm her instrument
It is the familiar sound. She sighs.
The audience dissolves into blue light
Her fingers are hungry gulls circling
Plucking the strings as if they were fish
She jackknifes through years of scales
And yes, the violinist is wet.
One-two-three. It cured me. The liminal space between dry land and wet eliminated or at least, radically shortened. I must go into the water, no matter what. There is no choice. My body lifts off from the dock and turns a crooked C, corkscrewing into the water. Yes, the violinist is wet!
This is what I’ve waited for all day. To give myself over to my lake, glory in the release of my breath like a huge sigh. A natural, non-thinking exhalation. Breath, body, and water are one. There is movement. There is buoyancy. I am an amphibious creature. How we all began. I swim in gratitude.
