breaststroke

begins with a strong kick-off. feet planted firmly against bulwark, body solid against water, straining for fluidity. you gotta feel it. point the fingers forward, tuck the head. set the ears snug against that uppermost curve where bicep meets shoulder. revel in the velocity. you're a wire, pulled taut from digit to digit, knife sharp, a skeleton key slipping into the space between water and more water.

the thing about it is that it's the only stroke that makes peace with water. freestyle is a churning thing - the body a sluice, the water at work. likewise backstroke, which to me has always held a hint of drowning in its refusal to submerge. and the fly. oh the violence of the butterfly. if its wake is anything to go by, the fly is the tsunami of the individual medley. water and body both subjects in the reign of the stroke.

but breaststroke is a different kind of affair - the body and the water in conversation, a back and forth, a quid pro quo. in that lunge forward, the one that stretches into glide, the body seems to move by the grace of the water. which holds up, pushes along, lets be. and in the breath, the body plays master, rearing up, kicking through. we make the water resist with our cupped hands, our frogged legs. the pool is the foothold for the next lunge to extension, the next glide-through, the next chance to feel held and exposed and full of possibility, all at once.


bright eyes - train under water