Chapter Twenty-Four: Physical Existance (~jinghan)

During my exchange in America I lived close enough to uni that I could walk there, and far enough from uni that it was a decent walk. So during those pleasant (or otherwise) Californian afternoons after a grueling day wresting with abstract algebra and other unphysical things it was a pleasure to be reminded of the physical world and my own bodily existence as I walked the 45minutes home. (Most Americans thought I was crazy for walking that far, and I probably would have too if I hadn’t realized enjoyment of it.)

Some days my bag was heavy and the sun relentless and I would savor the pleasure to finally arrive home and be relieved of both burdens at once. Some days it was very sunny, but just the right temperature in the shade of the trees and I would admire the cool climate and hushed sounds that existed only under the canopy of leaves. I would say “some days it was rainy and I would enjoy the splish splosh and drip drop around me”, but it rarely rained in Davis (maybe five or six times during the 10 months I was there) and that would be lying.

Back in Australia, I found myself in a routine where when ever I was awake I was either on a train (and reading), at a desk (and studying) or in a lecture hall (and scribbling — notes, that is). My head was constantly in a whirl but my physical existence pitifully neglected. It was only on the weekends when my father insisted that we all go swimming as a family that I would have to put aside all mental activity to make laps in the pool.

Every week, walking out into the cold air of the out door pool my skin would crawl and my heart would falter and all I wanted to do was to scrambled back to the change room where I could be snug again in jumper and scarf. And even as I forced myself to plunge into the water for that first cold and terrible lap I would resent it in my heart.

In fact, I hated swimming for a long time. Dad had forced me to join the swim training at school in my first year of high school. I hated everything about it. Not only did I have to cram my swimming gear into my already full and heavy school bag, but I had to then stay after school while all my friends happily trooped off to the train station chatting and in each others company, and then I would have to change into my bathers, and then join my squad of mostly primary school students, and despite that it was always a struggle to keep up during laps. I would always be the slowest to swim in my lane and  have the least breaks between laps despite really needing more. And for four years I never went to swimming without a whining and a whinging to whoever would (or wouldn’t) listen. Oh and then I would have to go home by myself in the quickly fading daylight with cold wet hair.

But then in the four year of this everything changed. I realised, as suddenly as one would realise that someone had shaved off your eye brows in the night, that I was now a good swimmer, that I enjoyed the power and pull of my strokes through the water and the refreshing awake feeling afterwards. And just like that: I fell in love with that one thing I had hated for so long.

And so in the same way, on our weekly family swims, that first cold terrible lap would after a while give way to pleasant and powerful strokes. I would admire the way water is dense and smooth like silk, enough to keep you buoyant. How something very much the elixir of life just falls from the sky. I would enjoy working my muscles hard and giving my brain a rest from all that academic knowledge, and my eyes a rest from always focusing on text in front of me. And by the end I would keep wanting to swim “one more lap” until I’m the last of my family to leave the pool.

As the term went on and the study piled up I missed that feeling of having worked my body hard and started searching for more active and tactile things to do. I went on bike rides with my boyfriend on the weekend. (Remind me to tell you the story of how some dogs ran in front of my bike causing me to use falling to the ground as a last resort stopping method.) I got off at another station to have a longer walk home. I would walk to uni (time pending) instead of catching the tram from Melbourne Central train station.

Never have I appreciated more the pleasure of physical existence than when I have been obliged to spend hours upon hours staring at screens, ruffling through notes, wedged behind lecture hall desks and trying to picture metric spaces in your head.