If I think about the role that swimming has played in my life, I must admit that above all it represented a sort of ritual, of habit, of constant. Repetitions of laps and movements. Going forward and going back, forward and back, forward and back again: one lap after the other. Doing kilometers without reaching any destination. Moving through the water to find yourself, at the end, at the starting point. Forward and back again, one more lap. To struggle to move your body in order to go nowhere. To research the infinite within a pre-established perimeter. A way of flying in the water. A moving meditation. «Tic-Tac-Tic-Tac»: another lap of the stopwatch. Going forward in order to return. Going back in order to leave again. A beneficial alienation. A sincere lie. A physical soliloquy. An incessant dialogue with oneself through water. Forward and back: another roundtrip. A wet dance in which technique is the way to follow, with effort and commitment, with perseverance and sacrifice, to enjoy the pleasure that only beneficial tiredness can give. One more lap and then another, like waves of the sea that rhythmically and incessantly dry on the shoreline. «Five sec... ...Ready? Go!». Setting new goals to still have something to achieve. To give oneself a purpose in order to have an excuse to move again. Getting tired to rest. Resting and then getting tired again. The pleasure of repetition. Repetition as a way to get better. Constancy as a condition to improve. «One lap slow freestyle and one fast butterfly stroke!». Swimming alone but with others. Feeling to be part of a group while challenging oneself. An individual sport but with a common language. Single individuals who form bonds among each other. Being together and meanwhile swimming alone. “Go slowly and go back fast!». Going forward and going back by respecting a precise order. Reproducing the same movements in space and time. Ten minutes; half an hour; more than an hour. One lap. 400 meters. Three and a half kilometers. Distances to be filled in a time that is supposed to be respected. Moving in space against time. Letting the body to flow through time by flowing in the water. An invisible and inner bucket of moist, wet and regenerating emotions. A sip of freshness. A breath of purity. «Eight times fifty meters mixed styles. Ten times one hundred meters freestyle. Four times seventy-five meters just legs!». Multiplications, counts and results: a way to apply the mathematics to the body and a way to forge the mind with discipline. A way not to get lost while letting oneself go in a liquid. Objective coordinates to orient oneself in a flow of sensations, emotions, physiological and mental reactions. To be alienated while you carve with strokes and strokes inside an enclosure of water built in the middle of infinity.
