Rest. I have been in constant motion for the last year – barely a day has passed where I have not had something to do, somewhere to be. Now I am at rest … resting … it feels essential. Returning to a place that I am familiar with grants me peace, no need to dash about to get my bearings, to make sense of somewhere new, to work out how to be … instead a welcome ease and rest.
A two hour walk along the coast yesterday was pleasantly mindless. The passing thought of turning it into an exercise, paying it attention, making it in to something, slipped free and was blown away. It wasn’t something that I actively released, it was just what happened, something that I could not, did not, resist.
A long stretch of the coast is a nature reserve – The Swans’ Reef. Between the reef and the mainland is a shallow lagoon of clear water. The lagoon confounds me … the breadth of it evokes an anxiety that it cannot be transversable yet I know it to be so … I have waded through it previously and encountered water reaching no higher than my knees. The water is warm, the sandbed firm and soft. I walk with a gliding action lifting each foot in turn no more than necessary before pushing my leg smoothly forward. This reduces the disruptive splashing caused by a more common gait, it lowers my centre of gravity and invites me to tense my abdomen. It feels determined and adventurous. I notice first one white speck in the distance … then a couple more … six … eight … nine … eventually eleven by which time I see that they are swans. It is the first time that I have seen swans here. The abundance of large white feathers on the reef evidences their presence … or their passing … even when the creatures themselves are unseen. The last time that I saw swans was in the Latvian countryside, and there were swans printed on the duvet cover that I was given to use on the residency.
Eleven rhymes with seven but does not share its sibilant alliteration with swans … besides seven swans a swimming would be very unseasonal … along with eleven lords a leaping. Swans and lords, sevens and elevens … seven eleven … Lord Swan. A racing detour.
A return to rest, but if my mind races again I shall let it. It is no doubt a good way to use the last of that hectic adrenaline fuelled energy, a stage en route to stillness.
Skanör, Skåne
