Diana Nyad to try the Florida-Cuba swim again

Diana Nyad is waiting for the right weather in the Caribbean to begin her swim from Cuba to Florida, a feat she attempted over thirty years ago, but had to cut short because of weather problems.  Now she has assembled a team including kayakers with shark repellent and charted a plan to accomplish at 60 what she couldn't at 28.  I am hoping that she succeeds. 

August 8, 2011

Last night at 8:30 or so, Nyad jumped into the waters off of Havana, Cuba and began swimming to Key West.  According to the map posted by CNN this afternoon, she has swum more than 25% of the route.

What I don't understand is, and guess has to do with the sexist nature of athletics and media coverage of them, why this is not a bigger story.  To me, it wraps together a story of human endurance, athleticism, and female power.  People have asked why is she doing it.  I think the answer is simple.  Because she can.

Here is a poem I wrote when she first tried the swim, thirty three years ago.



The Legend of Diana Nyad


When I entered the sea at Florida,
my body covered with a layer of thick oil,
my limbs turned over the water like a motor.
But the waves sucked me in, spit me out,
jellyfish stung me until I puffed up,
and the shark cage rattled so I thought I'd go deaf.
I wanted to make it to Cuba,
but a voice, familiar and terse,
said Diana, Diana and fished me out.
Into the boat I flopped,
my eyes sunken into my head.
They slapped me back to life
and I began spouting like a fountain.
And I will go back until the strain has snapped
and the difficult becomes easy--
to let the part of me that isn't lost to shore
glides easily through the sea.

&&&&&&&&&***********&&&&&&&&&

It is now August 10.  Nyad made it halfway when she became ill and had to stop.
I still am deeply inspired by the effort.

"I am stunned, at age 61, at how fast it all flies by. My mom just died. We blink and another decade passes. I don't want to reach the end of my life and regret not having given my days everything in me to make them worthwhile. Now that also means relaxing with a friend, taking in a sunset. Not all type A personality activities. But I don't want to waste any precious time, as Bob Dylan put it!"

--Nyad in an interview from February 2011 (LA Times)

I Want To Swim To Work

If you could see the way I go to work,
descending down the tunnel like a drone,
then later huddled on the bus with jerks
who broadcast when they’re on the phone,
you’d know I don’t exactly want to shirk
my duty as to be alone.
Deep down I am a country girl at heart.
Mass transit was a challenge from the start.


In Syracuse, where I grew up upstate,
my transportation usually meant the bus.
Let’s say your curtain’s set to rise at eight,
when evening schedules slow to a crawl,
and you cannot risk coming late.
With no subways, trolleys or vespas,
the only way to get from here to there
meant filling up the tank to drive the car.

In Manhattan, I learned to take the train
and not to land in Brooklyn by mistake.
My entry level job was to retain
what customers we had who bellyached.
The sample issue of the magazine
was something they refused to pay or take.
We signed the cards with names completely sham:
Yours sincerely, Virginia Cunningham.

(In the backseat of a cab suddenly you are
stuck on the upholstery of an idling car--stuck in a bottleneck)

I love my three speed bike. Weaving at noon
between the cabs, leaving them in my wake,
I speed downhill outside the tunnel traffic.
Just now, I pedaled to the market
where I bought leeks, potatoes, melons
then onto the butcher, the library, all done.

Swimming downstream in rivers takes
less muscle than swimming in a pool.
My arms and legs stretch out like superman's,
then coast, my torso thin and high and tense
to keep from bumping into rocks that jut
and but my shins in shallow water. I swim
in as little as a thimble of water when I get into the groove.

But since the Hudson's all upstream,
and the East River filled with toxins,
between my house and where I work
I will go on taking the train,
then boarding the bus, or fetching a cab
or riding my bike, ending always as
a pedestrian, crossing the light
on the green while I dream
of the river that lets me swim downstream.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoom-in-tight/2724208943/

In South Carolina

We went to Huntington Beach where many families were cooking barbecue in big metal drums, and sitting in the shade. A family of five, three of the girls under the age of ten, wearing identical sailor dresses came bouncing out of the car.
A little girl with a blond ponytail exited the sea and marched up to her mother her arms swinging back and forth as if dancing, her steps springing, to ask that her boogie board be tied around her wrist.

She then took the board, laid down face down on it in the shallow water and waited for the board to be immersed in the water and the water to lap over her.
Later, her grandmother, with an identical blond ponytail (her mother also sported the same hair style, under her plastic visor) agreed to pull the girl through the water as she sat on the board.