Category Archives: synchronized swimming

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Relax

For the Daily Prompt: relax.

Well, no, but they aren’t relaxed! This is my daughter and friends from her synchronized swim team in 2011. We have a home show in our small town each year and the parents and friends and grandparents and everyone is asked to come and see our girls perform their routines. They are waiting for the music to start….

But it relaxes me to see this photo and smile and remember. What a lot of work the parents put into supporting the team and driving to meets and making costumes and funding a new underwater speaker and then another one….

And still it makes me smile. And relax.

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Quiet

For the Daily Post Prompt: moody.

My daughter is 14 in this picture. I took it with a zoom lens. She is not standing on the bottom, she is far out in the water alone, quiet. When this is taken, she has been swimming since age 7. I think that she is most comfortable in the water, more so than on land.

This photograph doesn’t fit moody, at least in the sense of temperamental or gloomy and depressed. But think of the range of moods we all have.

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Jump blues

Jump is the daily prompt today  and that makes me think of JUMP BLUES!

I have been dancing jitterbug and swing and zydeco and salsa for more than 30 years. Met my kids’ father swing dancing. A friend made us a tape of Jump blues: It ain’t the meat by the Swallows is one of my favorites. GREAT song to dance too as well as being appreciative of all sizes and shapes of the opposite sex…Here is a more Jump blues: http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/jump-blues-ma0000002678

I took the photograph at  Synchronized Swimming Nationals in 2012… speaking of jumping. This double lift is done by the other six swimmers under the water, never touching bottom.

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Z is for zest

Z is for zest. What do you feel zest for?

The photograph is our small town synchronized swim team in 2007 at the Blossom, the last meet of the season that we went to that year. Our girls posed outside where it was very chilly, and all of the exited parents snapped photographs. Zest on both sides for the team and for swimming!

Webster 1913 here
Zest (?), n. F. zeste, probably fr. L. schistos split, cleft, divided, Gr. , from to split, cleave. Cf. Schism.

1. A piece of orange or lemon peel, or the aromatic oil which may be squeezed from such peel, used to give flavor to liquor, etc.

2. Hence, something that gives or enhances a pleasant taste, or the taste itself; an appetizer; also, keen enjoyment; relish; gusto.
Almighty Vanity! to thee they owe Their zest of pleasure, and their balm of woe. Young.
Liberality of disposition and conduct gives the highest zest and relish to social intercourse. Gogan.

3. The woody, thick skin inclosing the kernel of a walnut. Obs.

Z

from Dictionary.com here:

noun
1. keen relish; hearty enjoyment; gusto.
2. an agreeable or piquant flavor imparted to something.
3. anything added to impart flavor, enhance one’s appreciation, etc.
4. piquancy; interest; charm.
5. liveliness or energy; animating spirit.
6. the peel, especially the thin outer peel, of a citrus fruit used for flavoring:
lemon zest.

verb (used with object)
7.to give zest, relish, or piquancy to.

Zest for life, zest for writing, zest for all of the A to Z feelings that I’ve written about in the 7 sins and friends and all of the feelings that I haven’t written about. They are all part of being human! And now: zest for breakfast, I’m hungry!

Hooray for finishing and hooray for everyone who participated whether they finished or not!

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Sink

Sink

I tried for a long time but now I am back in the water. My tail is back. I am so happy with it that for 20 minutes I just swim and dive and play with my own tail, chasing it. I am ready, strong again. I call my people and the waves.

I tried awfully hard on land. I hid the knife that my sisters bought. He married the other one and kept me in the little building in the garden. Everyone knew including her, it was normal for them. She didn’t enjoy his tidal pull, his pounding, the waves. It gave me so much joy. I sang without my tongue. My tongue was not cut out, that is a myth, one of those stories. It’s just that that is how they like the women: voiceless. Silent. Obedient. Admiring. Wounded: oh, he would kiss the poor feet, mangled jangled feet that I am forced to wear on land.

All for love. But: she had children. Three. And I watched as he treated the males as princes and ignored the girl. Mere princess, valueless, to be trained for a strategic wedding. Added value for the land, a pawn in training. She found me. And I pitied her and raised her and told her tales of my home, where people are people, not a gender. Not raised as a separate species.

She disobeyed and her father had her beaten, only where it would not show, and locked up. Bread and water. Cold and cruelty. And suddenly my love was slain. It was as if I was awakened and looked about and saw his cruelty to women and to his wife and his daughter and to me. I was a toy, an amusement, loved only if I kept silent and was crippled by my feet.

I rose and called the waves. The land flooded and the castle was broken and I reached the little princess in time to change her, to give her a tail too.

She is so surprised: in the water. She keeps trying to go up and breathe air and it chokes her. She swims in wild panicky circles, choking on the air, as I drag her out from the castle.

Now we are in the sea and the waters recede, full of broken bodies. Male bodies. I changed every woman I could find and the children if they were young enough and the girls. I called my family, my people. They came and each grabbed one, to drag towards the sea. The ex-humans fight and cough and wail and cry, but we drag them.

And now we sink, each holding one. We sink into the depths. They hold their breath, fighting, but we are so used to our tails and are stronger. And one by one they let the air go and breathe: and breathe the ocean. Breathe. We are entering the dark and the phosphorescent fishes come to see.

Soon we will be home. Just a little further into the ink black: sink.

 

I took the photograph in 2012 at the Pacific Northwest Synchronized Swimming Regionals. This is a young team routine with eight swimmers. These two are each lifted by three teammates, using only swimming, never touching bottom……

 

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Armour Suit II

Yesterday I had the massage that I have once every two weeks.

We talk first about muscles and illness and emotions. He is thinking that if we forget how to use certain muscles and put them in the “armor suit” then that is where our body will store toxins. After all, we aren’t using those muscles. Good storage place. And then that in turn is where illness or cancer could pop up.

I am talking about emotions: that the US culture seems to see certain emotions as “negative”. Anger, fear, grief. I asked my son what he thinks emotion is. His reply: “Chemicals?” I think emotions are neurological information. Information just as much as what our eyes see, our ears hear. If we label some emotions as “bad”, how can a child protect herself from a predator, from abuse, from a charming addict? If girls are supposed to be “nice” all the time, they have to suppress any “bad” emotions. Why would we suppress neurological information? And both my massage person and I think that stuffed emotions go into the armor suit. So toxins from the outside and toxins from the inside…. no wonder we get sick.

In the massage I am paying attention to each muscle, asking them to relax, rather then focusing on my breathing. I am also thinking that I am not sure my back is broad enough to carry what I want to carry, between work and family. I am asking the Beloved about that, sort of…. and then I have the sensation that my back is very broad. Enormous. Very very strong. I have small hips and an enormously strong back. I am 5’4″ and 130 pounds. Yet in this sensate dream, my back is as wide and strong as my friend who is 6’4″ and 220 pounds.

It’s not momentary. It goes on for thirty minutes or more. My latissimus dorsi are tight and sore, punching muscles. We talk about how we would both like to see grade school children taught to activate the slow twitch muscles, to loosen and drop the armor suit. Most of the physical education and sports are fast twitch. “Not synchronized swimming,” I say. The first formal move they are taught is to float on their back, legs straight. Hands controlling position. They slowly bend one knee and then straighten that leg up, and equally slowly lower and straighten it. This is called the ballet leg. My daughter started synchro at age 7 and had to do that at the meet. They were scored on the Olympic scoring from the start: the beginners scored in the 3 range.

“No,” he says, “synchronized swimming must use slow twitch. But that and Tai Chi are the only ones I can think of, and maybe some dance.” He says that I need to learn to release that energy: the wanting to punch, wanting to kick, instead of storing it in my muscles…. I have a heavy bag. I will make time.

I am silent, exploring the map of my back, strong and broad enough to carry much more than I thought….

This is our synchronized swimming team at our small local pool, doing the yearly show, in 2010. The five girls are in a routine and just starting a ballet leg in time to the music….

 

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I will fight no more

I am tired of fighting
I am tired of fighting for justice
I am tired of fighting discrimination
I am tired of fighting for health care for all

I am tired of fighting insurance companies
I am tired of fighting medicare’s contractee
I am tired of fighting for prior authorization
I am tired

I will fight no more forever

I heal
I am a healer
I am trying to heal patients
I am trying to help patients heal

I am a healer
I help heal cancer
I help heal heart disease
I help heal PTSD
I help

heal cancer
heal heart disease
heal PTSD
heal addiction

I am a healer

heal the insurance company
heal the medicare contractor
heal the pharmaceutical company
heal

heal anxiety
heal depression
heal addiction

I will fight no more forever

I heal

The legs in the photograph don’t look delicate, do they? They are strong and beautiful and powerful. I took this at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition in 2009. Those girls on the edge of being women are strong, they are a team, they work and play together. They have the skills and the strength to lift their bodies out of the water that far using their arms… think about the practice and strength needed to do that. We all want to heal and create fun and play and beauty. Let’s work as a team.

also on everything2.com

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Sea of Love

I go in the sea
of dreams
open the chest
the trunk
the saddlebags
Empty the dirty laundry
Of emotion
On the floor
Grief and joy
Fear and hope
Mine
All mine

There is a place
Beyond words
I see you in that place
It is very old
And very young
It is so frightening to go there
Lose words
The first time
It is haunted and hunted
Are you aware
Of that place
Do you go there
Of your own volition?
Or do you struggle
Fight and suffer in the
Choppy boundary between air and water
Fear drowning
Water surrounds you
Above you too
You are in the wordless place
Over your head
Are you too deep?

Open your eyes
In the green water light
A mermaid waits to lead you
To a rope to a raft
And me

But first you must open your eyes

 

I did not take this photo: it was taken at the Weyerhaeuser Pool in Seattle in 2009 at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition. The professional photographer asked our girls to jump in so that he could get some practice shots from the underwater window. No one else was allowed down to that window. My daughter was in her third year of synchro and already so comfortable in the water that she and the others just mugged and played….

First published on everything2.com.

The Honeydrippers: Sea of Love

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Cheer for the other team

On Friday I was at the Washington State Swim and Dive Championships, at the Weyerhauser Pool in Federal Way, with our small town swim team. The girls did a great job and every race that they’d qualified for at districts, they also qualified for finals. None in the top eight, but all in the top 16.

The parents and our young women were excited and delighted. The pool is Olympic size with international flags hanging in two parallel rows along the roof. I love the flags and was admiring them. My daughter and I went to that pool for the first time when she was 8, for the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition. We volunteered to help at the competition.

Hearing the news of more bombs and shootings later in the day, I felt terribly sad. But there is hope in peoples’ kindness: in the culture of girls’ high school swimming each team does a cheer at the start of the meet. And the tradition is to do a cheer for the other team.

Finals started with cheers before the National Anthem. I asked my daughter if the cheers were for the other team and she said, “No, not at the State Competition.”

I am not cheering for anyone who has committed violence. But I am cheering for the voices of tolerance and love and peace and refusal to generalize hate on all sides. I hope we can all remember to cheer for the other team.

Mozart Requiem: Confutatis lacrimosa