Richard Cartwright (British, 1951), Sitting in the Park, 2022. Pastel, 35 x 35 in.

@entomanija <3

When you swim, you feel your body for what it mostly is — water — and it begins to move with the water around it… The swimmer experiences the terror and the bliss of being born. So swimming is a rite of passage, a crossing of boundaries: the line of the shore, the bank of the river, the edge of the pool, the surface itself. When you enter the water, something like metamorphosis happens. Leaving behind the land, you go through the looking-glass surface and enter a new world, in which survival, not ambition or desire, is the dominant aim… You are in nature, part and parcel of it, in a far more complete and intense way than on dry land, and your sense of the present is overwhelming. Roger Deakin, ‘Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain’

Every morning, I put on my thinking cap and my smartiepants. Unfortunately, there is no shirt that properly proclaims my intellectual abilities, so I have to go tits out