Cloud Therapy ─ A Book About Swimming

Literary Nonfiction. For over twenty-five years I have been going several times a week to swim laps in local pools. That's a lot of time with my head submerged, my thoughts left to wander and percolate. I had long been tempted to write about this intermittent life, almost like a dream state though different, but only gradually did I begin to find the form. A mix of memoir, reflection, metaphysical speculation, social observation, CLOUD THERAPY seeks to track moments, patterns, relationships, wild thoughts, gathered from my ongoing practice of this curious discipline that is swimming. Where does the mind go in that altered state? How do we incorporate the physical exertion? Is there some dynamic of community at the pool, albeit one composed of stubborn individualists? Is swimming, with its implicitly interior dimension, somehow a more private discipline? And what does it mean to return so faithfully to water, the primordial element, how does that affect our bodies, our being? Numerous angles and points of contemplation occur to me while swimming, and this book explores that other realm, hidden in plain sight.