there used to be a time when I, for one, built up aggression as a fuel in order to have energy to sit with a pusher, a snitch and a stripper. being a therapist, my work was to psychoanalyze the pusher, soothe the looming panic attacks of the snitch and help the traumatized stripper develop a self-esteem based on something else than imaginary acceptance from older men. eventually I built up more fuel than was necessary for the well-being of those three, and for a reason I can't remember I decided to use the remaining energy in swimming.
my routine was to swim two thousand five hundred meters which took in between twenty and thirty minutes, and then use the rest of my hour in the saunas and hallways of that piece of nordic classism. at times I smoked in the snowy streets before entering the building from a dim inside courtyard, just in order to develop my muscle coordination and whatnot while in a state of good focus. my dearest memory of those swims is a spontaneous start out competition with a stranger with chromosome anomaly. naturally, I lost.
last time I swam was in ostia, and that day in ostia was the end day in may on the beach where I was the only one crazy enough to swim in the freezing mediterranean sea. I knew I was leaving, and so let myself float on the cold hand of the same sea that eight months before had greeted me with a warm embrace a bit beyond the shoreline of alghero. after that swim I left ostia and drifted for four months.
today, I am not sitting with anyone nor am I building up my shit on aggression either. I am on the road first time in months, and I cannot quite point the date or the week or the month of my first steps. maybe it was the cold icy day when I bought myself a new backpack. maybe it was the night when I fell first time in years. maybe it was two days ago when I stepped into the train. now, I am about to swim in a river.
after dipping into the water I speed pass hollering kids who like to stay close to the shore to swim along with the surface current, passing beach houses built in good respect to functionalism. the undercurrent keeps teasing the surface with icy water from its depths. I turn to follow its cold flow and swim against the strong surface current opposing the natural direction of the flow of the river. remembering everything they were once taught about order my muscles tense happily, and the blood rushing to my brain makes me realize I am leaving again - but this time, when I leave, I will follow the cold flow east stronger than ever before.
