you know how to be

The pool in Hofsos, an old trading port on the northern coast. Credit Massimo Vitali for The New York Times

loved this article — i have always felt that being in water, specifically, the ocean, resets / reanchors you. part two from “the water cure”:

This time [at the pool] I didn’t approach anyone, didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t speak at all. I concentrated on what I could feel: the water pressing lightly on my skin, the wind prickling my beard. All around me was the soft white noise of a community. The conversation; the connection; the freedom, within that flurry of sociability, to withdraw and simply be within yourself. It called to mind something a Ph.D. student named Katrin Gudmundsdottir told me on my first day in Iceland. She was describing a certain ineffable emotional state to me, a native Icelander’s sense of comfort while immersed in her neighborhood sundlaug. When I thought of what she said, a perfect G chord strummed inside me. “It’s not exactly like you’re happy,” she had mused. “It’s that you know how to be in the swimming pool.”