Film from the last lake dip of the summer

10 November 2021
I never swam in lakes growing up, or rivers, or oceans. I was very much stranded, but making entrances of my own into unknown waters. Nature was both my refuge but also the wild thing that kept me close to my home, Id get lost looking up in wonder and hurry my way back to soft warm lighting; my mother listening to her gospel radio in the background. Now Im stripping down into something more breathable any chance I get, I want to be in the water whenever it’s around. I look to get rocked by waves and lose it all for just a moment. There’s something about self baptisms in cold water that shake me awake again. I wouldn’t say Im doing it for any dogmatic reasons, but for whatever good things I continue to see, and am hoping to hold on to (I know they’re there, the good things, even when I am blind to everything but anxious miserable thoughts).

These photos are from our last trip up to Portland, nothing too deep about it. I was floating along, looking up, listening to old friends talking, listening to distant cars and pretending they were far off waves of the coast–I felt small, I took a deep breath and swam under the sun, shook myself off all while laughing wildly. It never gets old, what a relief.




Photo by Benjamin