Beating somewhere in my chest, an image of life is being usurped by something else. Like so many things, this swarming amniotic fluid can be better described by what it isn’t than the latest consensus about the nature of the flood. It clogs my nose and throat and sends ionic receptors whirring.

No wonder The Supremes sang about the struggle — floundering through this wet, caustic environment instead of breaking the surface tension. There is no surface. The swim is the thing. That makes tomorrow somewhat like September 11. It has meaning only as an icon for all those other days we drown unaware we are surrounded by the world. Not a planet or a universe or even a sphere of experience. People are the world and this trick is about destroying that sphere, breaking through the insulation and isolation to find the people and the person on the other side.

Then you can breathe and I can drink this experience without a bottle or a thermometer. Taking the measure of all this has proven impossible. There are too many filters and variants. So when you drift asleep as a child, dreaming in silence, there may be no way to tell what is fantasy and fiction.

Documentation of this substitute has turned out to be a substitute of its own. Abelard and Heloise never wrote their own letters. Instead they entrusted scribes, and then those scribes passed words and images on to further operators and who knows what was left of the initial experience? They say very little. But this is the best window we have — and it is no less interrupted than all the others who supposedly bridged the barrier.

If you want to tell the story of a soldier and a prostitute, do not echo Antony and Cleopatra like a hundred other scribes and pugilists. Imagine instead Pvt Prewitt, separated now by existence and half an ocean from Alma. Their dip into the channel is as violent and volatile as any verifiable fiction, only less vacuous. And this is the nature of the things we do, of the kicks and strokes, of the gasps and sighs. There cannot be a vacuum any more than there should not. These humans touch one another. It is warm and slippery and not at all easy to traverse, this communication with the world.

So whether we have gentleman rankers or swimming sirens, or another queer concoction, the moment of expression is always in contact and never in context. I touch the wall and turn, but enough of these lanes! This is not a swimming contest. My heart is beating without adrenaline; it is powered by friction as my body moves in this substance, restricted and confused.

There are no more records or any albums. So if this is healthy, let me kill to stay healthy, because no one will remember anyway. One person, two humans, or at least something else will be here today and also tomorrow, whether or not I dine to fuel that beating heart. It is a fine thing to be above water and in the sun but that is not the nature of this competition. Just be aware and together.