Posts Tagged: Swimming
Space to Breathe
We inhale when we’re born, then breathe and breathe and breathe until one day we exhale our final breath.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Genesis
The speed boat moves fast and Genesis notices Kayla’s hair keeps getting into her eyes. She laughs, as do all the others, who bounce up and down and let out high-pitched screams each time the boat rides a wave up into the air before crashing back down on the choppy water. Kayla grips the edge […]
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Forms of Narrowing: Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers
After the memorials, the funerals, the endless influx of flowers and casserole dishes and well-meaning texts, the collective retreats back into their lives and all that is left is the individual, grieving for months and years and perhaps even the rest of their own life.
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This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
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Spines of the Finwomen
This may be a reclamation story.
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The Water Goddess
To exist solely now on land is to live always waiting to reenter the water—to feel soothed even by the sound of it falling. To live a life on land is to feel the loss of our former lives within our very faces.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Less Than I Hope For
If we want to talk about desire, a gnawing ache for something we don’t yet have, or for something we’ve lost, we can say that we yearn for the transformation that the satisfaction of our desire will bring.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Distance Devotion
If I understood the difference between good and great in that moment, it would be years before I came to accept it.
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Keeping Secrets from the Stupid
I was four years old when my mother taught me to lie. There were certain instances, she explained, when lying was acceptable, when it wasn’t even lying, really.
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Safety Rope
No touching unless he touches you. No touching where people can see. No touching unless dared to touch. Brad makes the rules, but never says them aloud.
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Faith and Water
Amy Shearn writes about swimming and prayer in Forward: I like swimming though I suspect I’m not very good at it; pool visits involve removing my glasses and I’m so nearsighted that I’ve never actually seen anyone else swim, so I’m not sure how you’re even supposed to be doing it. Pools are dreamy, unfocused […]
...morePageantry and Water Sports
I had come in search of the meaning of synchronized swimming in modern America. Over the course of a week, I had gotten bored with the human body’s physical excellence. Maybe that was because, despite the spectacle at this level, even flawlessness becomes mundane. Without the threat of failure, watching people perfectly execute the seemingly […]
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: From the Earth to the Stars Part One
When you’re a diver, you’re only a tourist of the air.
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The Rumpus Interview with Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai talks about ghosts, teaching, chronology in writing, and her new novel, The Hundred-Year House.
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The Lonely Voice #29: Feels like the World, On a Story by Richard Bausch
Richard Bausch can take your head off with a plain sentence. He’s direct, no frills, no pirouettes. A writer who says what he means and not a word more.
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Ukemi, The Art of Receiving
In Japanese martial arts, the uke is the ‘receiver’ of the technique, the one who attempts to attack their sparring partner, the tori. The tori defends against the attack of the uke, who usually winds up on the floor after getting flipped, swept, thrown, punched, or kicked.
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On the Rocks
There was a lightness to the way the waves batted me around on the stones, the lightness of a cat playing with a mouse it was about to kill.
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
This week, Rumpus books has published reviews of a novel and two short story collections.
...moreLife Underwater
The heroine of Nicola Keegan’s debut novel is an Olympic athlete who tries to swim against the current of her tragic family life.
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