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Swimming! (*winks ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
illariy)
Aug. 21st, 2008 02:08 amA (long) declaration of love for swimming in literature by Willard Spiegelman at
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/buoyancy-spiegelman.html
Excerpt:
According to Mark Spitz, swimming is perfect for narcissists. Like the mind, the body is self-absorbed.[...] Even more than to narcissists, swimming appeals to obsessives and dreamers. Charles Sprawson, whose Haunts of the Black Masseur (1992) remains the best book devoted to the activity, observes that both opium addicts and swimmers 'tended to be solitary, remote figures, who felt themselves superior to dull, conventional minds.'
Ooops :) It's not that bad, really! Okay, another excerpt:
"There was a total engagement in the act of swimming, in each stroke, and at the same time the mind could float free, become spellbound, in a state like a trance." In such trances one dreams, one composes—poems, songs, lectures, it hardly matters what. Sacks also aligns swimming with “musical activities”: flowing, buoying, suspending in its dynamics. Swimmers pay attention to rhythm, much as dancers do. Like Sacks, an athlete engaged in any endorphin-producing activity knows the fretful nervousness that ensues when he is deprived of the source of his euphoria.
Oh yes, I know! But finally, school holiday is over here and I'm looking forward to quiet hours of swimming soon!
P.S. Oh, nice - "An enlarged version of this essay will be included in his forthcoming book 'Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness'." I might be tempted to buy that :)
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/buoyancy-spiegelman.html
Excerpt:
According to Mark Spitz, swimming is perfect for narcissists. Like the mind, the body is self-absorbed.[...] Even more than to narcissists, swimming appeals to obsessives and dreamers. Charles Sprawson, whose Haunts of the Black Masseur (1992) remains the best book devoted to the activity, observes that both opium addicts and swimmers 'tended to be solitary, remote figures, who felt themselves superior to dull, conventional minds.'
Ooops :) It's not that bad, really! Okay, another excerpt:
"There was a total engagement in the act of swimming, in each stroke, and at the same time the mind could float free, become spellbound, in a state like a trance." In such trances one dreams, one composes—poems, songs, lectures, it hardly matters what. Sacks also aligns swimming with “musical activities”: flowing, buoying, suspending in its dynamics. Swimmers pay attention to rhythm, much as dancers do. Like Sacks, an athlete engaged in any endorphin-producing activity knows the fretful nervousness that ensues when he is deprived of the source of his euphoria.
Oh yes, I know! But finally, school holiday is over here and I'm looking forward to quiet hours of swimming soon!
P.S. Oh, nice - "An enlarged version of this essay will be included in his forthcoming book 'Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness'." I might be tempted to buy that :)
