Henrik Karlsson, Swimming in July:
There is something so frivolous about water. It makes you float like you are in outer space! And no matter what you do—whatever shape you make of yourself—it will instantly fit itself around you!
Water didn’t have to be this good.
You forgot it for years while you lived in the city. But here it is: that one day in July when it storms but the water is lukewarm and you tumble inside the waves. You lose yourself in the sensation of being a body submerged in another body. Your back against the concrete pillar under the pier; the waves cresting, crashing over you—you can do this for hours.
Nothing beats a soak, in a pool or otherwise, in the heat of July (and August).
“Try jumping from the cliff over there,” the guard would say. “And then you shape yourself like a cannonball before you hit the surface.”
