THIS MORNING I SWAM THE bay and thought I might die. I might die in the water, taken by a shark. The sea is so strange. We are a separate creature and yet part of the whole creature. We fear death and become part of death. I am terrified in the sea, terrified that I will end and by turns exultant that I am endless. A kayaker stopped beside me. ‘Two dive boats are launching off the beach,’ he said.
I looked and saw the dive boats. I couldn’t work out why the kayaker was telling me about them, why he’d stopped in the middle of nowhere. He stayed beside me and it took a few moments more for me to realise he was watching over me so that the dive boats didn’t run me over on their way out to sea.
‘I’m a bigger shape than you in the water,’ he said, smiling awkwardly.
I found myself crying into my goggles, having trouble treading water as I cleared them of my tears. I don’t know what the kayaker thought of my crying. He remained with me, gazing out to sea, his paddle across his lap.
The dive boats whizzed past. The kayaker told me to have a nice one and paddled off.
‘You too,’ I called after him. ‘You have a day of days.’