A crooked jetty

New Journal 57 – Learning to swim

Most adults feel at home in the water. Others, however, believe that the water will take them one day, and if the water doesn’t finish them off, whatever horribleness deep within almost certainly will.

I was a weak swimmer. I could do a manic front crawl for about 2 minutes before panic set in and I’d almost die. I attribute this weakness to an occasion in my early childhood. I was in a local swimming pool, in the shallow end, of course, when what was unmistakeably a human poo floated past me only a metre away.

The pool was evacuated. I decided that swimming pools weren’t for me. Why would I want to spend my time in a tank of human swill? From then on my swimming progress slowed drastically. It’s strange, really, considering my mother is a medal winning paralympian.

I did honestly try to learn to swim. I wanted to learn the breast stroke. It looked easy. Yet, whenever I’d set out kicking my legs like a frog and moving my arms, I’d slowly begin to feel my legs sink lower and lower. Eventually, my feet would be touching the floor and I’d basically be walking while I moved my arms. I wondered if anyone could see my legs and if I could get away with just looking like I was swimming.

Sometimes my legs would sink but there’d be no floor to touch. A panic as violent as ever there was would over come me until my body would get itself into the front crawl position and I’d smash my way to the nearest edge, coughing water out of my mouth and nose.

When I was very young, still wearing inflatable arm bands, I thought I’d come up with an ingenious invention that would finally allow man to walk on water. I placed the arm bands on my ankles and decided to walk across the swimming pool, utterly unaware of the early death I was about to give myself. Before I’d made the leap, of which I was confident, a girl life guard screamed at me.

That was my first negative swimming pool experience. It could have been worse, I suppose. I could have died.

I was also terrified of sharks, as any sane person should be, and of frogs, fish of any size, seaweed when it touched my leg and I thought it was a shark, and all things in the sea. If there was a layer of humans between me and the sharks, I would occasionally venture into the sea at waist height.  My fears were justified when I was in Byron Bay, Australia, and I saw sharks off the coast of a very popular beach.

They were probably in pools, too. I was sure of it. All the pools in America had alligators in them. I’d seen it on the TV.

A change was needed, I decided last year. I wanted to conquer this fear and learn how to swim. I was motivated by two factors. Firstly, my left knee had an injury that was getting worse as the years went by. My days of running were numbered. I needed a lower impact way of exercising. Secondly, I wanted to be able to swim because my fear had already caused me to miss out on a few occasions. I was an adult, it was time to empower myself.

This decision arrived as we’d booked ourselves into a hotel in Bali for 10 days. My goal was to create HDR One Magazine. Swimming would be my second achievement, and also a nice way to get away from the computer screen twice a day.

Every morning, in the beautiful sun, after my first coffee, I’d practice in the pool. I’d repeat the exercise in the afternoon. I watched a few youtube videos and took advice from Rachel. I felt like an idiot. Nevertheless, I wanted to achieve this goal. Day-by-day I noticed an improvement.

By the time we left Bali I had gained a good understanding of the technique, but exercising these newly used muscles was exhausting. I couldn’t last long. Yet, I was satisfied with my development. What’s more, there was no human poo or sharks in the pool. I felt empowered.

When we got back to England last month, I wrote a swimming goal down, as I do with all of my goals. I want to able to swim 1 mile by February. These past three weeks I’ve swam 3 or 4 times a week and now I’m close to half a mile.

More importantly, I’m a swimmer. I’m still scared of sharks and dangerous seaweed, but I’m confident enough to know that I can out-swim any child in a race for survival. One doesn’t need to out-swim a shark, just its closest meal!

Today’s Photo – A Crooked Jetty

I had  bit of fun with this image. Using the Liquify tool in photoshop I bent the jetty out of shape. Since it was surrounded by water, I didn’t have to worry about overly distorting any lines and patterns outside of the jetty.

After increasing the contrast throughout the image, I then added a Detail Extractor layer from Nik Color Efex and masked it into the jetty only, in order to create a stronger contrast between the fine detail in the wood and the smooth surface of the water.

After Photomatix but before Photoshop adjustments