1:52 PM, Wednesday afternooning...
Moving through, driven by the smooth muscular exertion of rhythmically scissoring legs. The silken, intimate flow over every inch of exposed skin. Warmth, buoyancy. Liquidly-distorted sound: an audio dreamscape of organic rushing and gurgles. Suspension.
Flight.
I dreamt, repeatedly, of flying. It always started with motion -- running in feral abandon over night-swept fields or through moonlight forests; or with an internal feeling -- a swelling of emotion in the chest, lifting up, surging outward. Flight was smooth, fast, or drifting like a balloon. It took concentration to maintain altitude and direction. Ah, but the freedom...
Visual extravagance, strange colors and textures, shifting perspectives. Flowing mutabilities. A sense of profound internal isolation and yet, at the same time, the feeling of vastness: simultaneously in the womb and in the whole of the world. There is an androgynous sensuality to the curve and flex of the fins, the freedom of motion.
An almost inhuman pleasure this silken movement, but the pulse is vivid in your ears and the pressure of the lungs is as "in the body" as anything can be. How delicate and ephemeral is this flesh, how fragile this need to breathe. And yet, the omnipotence of thought leading directly into motion -- in any direction. Gliding. Flying.
Dreams of flight are always welcome. The exhilaration, the peacefulness, the control and calming isolation. The freedom. The imagined act is a basic human delight; the reality is hard to achieve.
That’s why I like to swim.
--- JWR, 8/12/98
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