(I somehow lost my post in the middle of reviewing it--sorry if this ends up posted twice! Now let's see if I can remember what I wrote.)
I was talking with a friend about swimming and she said she started "swimming for life" x number of years ago. I got the sense that she meant that it was more than a good workout--it kept her "alive." I have to admit that it has that kind of effect for me, too. At the risk of sounding too new-agey, it's nourishing in more than a physical sense.
What does swimming mean to you? How does that compare to other sports or activities you do? How does that meaning influence your goals and performance?
THE SEVEN AGES OF BREASTSTROKE
By: Leslie Shakespeare
All the pool’s a stage,
And all the breaststrokers merely pretenders,
They have their many guises and sets aplenty,
For one frog plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Doggy paddling in the shallow end.
Then, the inchworm, oozing snail-like down the lane
And tilted head, and large duck-like feet,
Unwilling to go faster. And then the Swim-Stud Romeo,
Sighing like furnace with a dodgy ballad
Made for the USMS female eyes. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths against the King of Strokes
Jealous in honour, and quick in Cruisian quarrel,
Seeking to ride the glide,
Even into the canon’s mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with sock modeling long past
With eyes severe and stroke so backward going
Full of weisenheimers and endless thrashing
And so he over-rhapsodizes his stroke.
The six age shifts
Into the aged and slipper’d 80-85 group.
With ice on the shoulder and nose clip by side,
His youthful fastskin well sav’d, a world too small
For his belly, and yet have shrunk the diamond calves
The memory of the wave gone, by the Leondardian chip
Thus erased. And brandy by the ready. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history.
Its existence now mere oblivion, like Butterfrog,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
What remains, steadfastly, is the Fly.
King of kings, heart beating nobly in the quietude.
Content at last that chip technology thus prevail’d.
Harrassed no longer by the bruises and slings of wild
Whip kicks. Now arrested. Now vanquished.
THE SEVEN AGES OF BREASTSTROKE
By: Leslie Shakespeare
All the pool’s a stage,
And all the breaststrokers merely pretenders,
They have their many guises and sets aplenty,
For one frog plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Doggy paddling in the shallow end.
Then, the inchworm, oozing snail-like down the lane
And tilted head, and large duck-like feet,
Unwilling to go faster. And then the Swim-Stud Romeo,
Sighing like furnace with a dodgy ballad
Made for the USMS female eyes. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths against the King of Strokes
Jealous in honour, and quick in Cruisian quarrel,
Seeking to ride the glide,
Even into the canon’s mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with sock modeling long past
With eyes severe and stroke so backward going
Full of weisenheimers and endless thrashing
And so he over-rhapsodizes his stroke.
The six age shifts
Into the aged and slipper’d 80-85 group.
With ice on the shoulder and nose clip by side,
His youthful fastskin well sav’d, a world too small
For his belly, and yet have shrunk the diamond calves
The memory of the wave gone, by the Leondardian chip
Thus erased. And brandy by the ready. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history.
Its existence now mere oblivion, like Butterfrog,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
What remains, steadfastly, is the Fly.
King of kings, heart beating nobly in the quietude.
Content at last that chip technology thus prevail’d.
Harrassed no longer by the bruises and slings of wild
Whip kicks. Now arrested. Now vanquished.
