I swam 200 metres today. That’s 100 more than yesterday. I make incremental progress. The first day I swum backwards, and got caught in a riptide. I watched the horizon recede as the current pulled me away, and I knew I had to keep my head above water. And when the current broke, I could see the infinite sea and its mirror image flipped on the horizontal axis, and I swam towards where they met.
Soon, my body begins to perish. My legs churn through the ocean; at night it is black and thick as oil. It laps at my shoulders, crawling to the end of my chin. Things swirl around me unseen, barely shadows under the moonlight. Something drifts, brushing against my abdomen as it passes, and a singular wave moves against the current.
I float on my back, waiting for it to pass. I awake with a jolt as there is no coldness or otherwise sensation to the water that supports my body, as if I am a non-entity in the vacuum of space, with nothing but the intangible stars to ground me.
When the day breaks and the sun drives the darkness away, the sea is clear and uniform and almost motionless, and I am left again with the impossibility of reaching the horizon. I used to think there were only 360 directions, but this number only suspends the madness of infinity, from the knowledge that there are limitless ways to never reach the shore. The idea is incomprehensible without an utter loss of optimism. And so I swim, gasping for air like I am sucking it through a straw in a container, kicking the ocean away as if it were not already a part of me.
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