Swim reads: 'before I start to sink' (Deborah Levy)

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 'My mother taught me how to swim... In old age my mother had found a swimming technique to ‘totally give herself to the water’. This involved floating on her back, ‘emptying her thoughts’ and ‘surrendering to the flow’. She showed me her trick in the murky swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath, floating Ophelia style with the ducks and weed and leaves. I still try to do her trick, but I can only float for ten seconds before I start to sink. Likewise, when I turn my mind to my mother's death, I can only do so for 10 seconds before I start to sink’

(Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living, 2018)



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