Не просите – и будет вам дано, не ищите – и найдете. А тот, кто делает – тому опаньки.
I NEVER HAD A TRADITIONAL FEAR OF WATER - 1000 слов бай Джесси АйзенбергI NEVER HAD A TRADITIONAL FEAR OF WATER, just a rational acceptance that it would someday swallow me up and kill me. Fear of water—or aquaphobia—may derive from terrifying real-world experiences. A little girl is left alone in a bathtub and scarred for life; a young boy watches Jaws too many times and refuses to venture off the beach. My aversion to water, I've come to realize through years of therapy, derived from my mother's imagination.
When I started leaving the house to go to elementary school, my overprotective mother began to have nightmares of me drowning. To make sure they weren't real, she would slip into my bedroom in the middle of the night to check on me. When I woke up to the sound of her hyperventilating, she would say, "Don't worry, sweetheart, I just had a dream we were in a canoe that capsized and I couldn't save you. Go back to sleep."
Other times she'd wait until morning. "Had another dream last night," she would casually remark while packing my lunch bag for school.
"Did I drown?"
"Yep. In a sailboat."
"Oh."
"Have a great day, sweetie."
The following summer, my mother and I reluctantly decided that I should try going to camp. Her dreams suddenly became less abstract for me: Every Tuesday and Thursday, I would try and inevitably fail at swimming. I would follow every order from the camp counselors—turning my head to breathe, kicking my feet at water level—but I would always sink to the bottom and wind up wading through the water, groping for the ladder, eager for dry land. Strangely, I never attributed this mental block to my mother's nightmares. I just assumed that my body didn't have the swimming instinct. I just assumed that more than 4 million years of human evolution must have stopped at me.
Going through life as a nonswimmer was never really a problem. I suppose if I'd lived in Miami or Los Angeles, my aversion to swimming would've been some kind of social impediment. But I lived in Manhattan, which is probably the only island in the world where the surrounding water is off-limits to the public. I didn't know how to swim and it didn't matter.
A few years ago I enrolled in the YMCA. My girlfriend and her family were lifelong members, and I finally caved in and got my own membership. I soon discovered that I loved the gym—I would play basketball to loosen up, run around the track for 20 minutes, and finish my regimen with some weights. Not only was I in better shape, but I was also in better spirits.
But when I passed the Olympic-size pool on my way from the locker room to the basketball courts, it shimmered in my periphery, ominously reminding me it was there. The pool was like a member of a rival gang. When I passed by, I would nod to it knowingly, as if to say, "Respect."
Still, I never considered learning to swim. I wrote it off as a dumb idea—who would want to walk around the Y in a Speedo and rubber cap?
Who would want to jump into water polluted with baby piss? I stuck to the basketball court, the track, and the weight room.
A few months after joining the YMCA, I was cast in a play called Scarcity, playing Billy, a tough, sexual, reckless guy. My acting teacher suggested that to nail the role, I would need to "get underneath" my character. This meant I had to start thinking like Billy and, if possible, even live like him. But Billy lived in a Massachusetts factory town. I lived between two pad Thai restaurants in the West Village. Billy had guilt-free sex. I had guilt-inducing sex. One more thing: Billy knew how to swim.
It became interesting for me to think like Billy even when I was offstage. Moved by his spirit, I actually bought a swimming cap and a bathing suit, albeit one that extended below my knees. After a particularly satisfying performance one night, I threw on my bathing suit and ducked into the Y, just before closing.
I stood before the empty pool. In the West Side Story version of my life, I brandished a knife, hidden from the pool's view, in my palm. Slowly, I climbed down into the chill water. I awkwardly waded through the water, heading for the ladder, just as I used to do in camp. And then something else took over—Billy took over. And we decided to swim.
I started off flailing, less the star of Scarcity and more the lead character in my mother's nightmares. Then I stopped and reminded myself—Billy. And suddenly all the swimming lessons I'd had came back to me. All the time I thought I'd wasted in my summer-camp pool had at last found utility.
I instinctively remembered how you turn your head to breathe, the cupping shape your hands should make to pull you through the water, and the way you point your toes at water level when you kick.
Freud would have been proud; my latent fear of swimming suddenly had no relevance. Thinking like Billy—or, more accurately, not thinking like myself—allowed me to overcome a bad habit I didn't even realize I'd developed: talking myself out of a life experience.
If only for a few seconds, I swam.
Billy swam.
We took in air.
We kicked.
We spotted the ladder—but kept on moving.
The pool nodded back: "Respect."
Джесси Айзенберг, американский актер и драматург, проплывет стометровку стилем баттерфляй на Олимпиаде 2012 в Лондоне © Men's Health
Этот человек сведет меня с ума 
Интересно, Эндрю придет на это посмотреть?
When I started leaving the house to go to elementary school, my overprotective mother began to have nightmares of me drowning. To make sure they weren't real, she would slip into my bedroom in the middle of the night to check on me. When I woke up to the sound of her hyperventilating, she would say, "Don't worry, sweetheart, I just had a dream we were in a canoe that capsized and I couldn't save you. Go back to sleep."
Other times she'd wait until morning. "Had another dream last night," she would casually remark while packing my lunch bag for school.
"Did I drown?"
"Yep. In a sailboat."
"Oh."
"Have a great day, sweetie."
The following summer, my mother and I reluctantly decided that I should try going to camp. Her dreams suddenly became less abstract for me: Every Tuesday and Thursday, I would try and inevitably fail at swimming. I would follow every order from the camp counselors—turning my head to breathe, kicking my feet at water level—but I would always sink to the bottom and wind up wading through the water, groping for the ladder, eager for dry land. Strangely, I never attributed this mental block to my mother's nightmares. I just assumed that my body didn't have the swimming instinct. I just assumed that more than 4 million years of human evolution must have stopped at me.
Going through life as a nonswimmer was never really a problem. I suppose if I'd lived in Miami or Los Angeles, my aversion to swimming would've been some kind of social impediment. But I lived in Manhattan, which is probably the only island in the world where the surrounding water is off-limits to the public. I didn't know how to swim and it didn't matter.
A few years ago I enrolled in the YMCA. My girlfriend and her family were lifelong members, and I finally caved in and got my own membership. I soon discovered that I loved the gym—I would play basketball to loosen up, run around the track for 20 minutes, and finish my regimen with some weights. Not only was I in better shape, but I was also in better spirits.
But when I passed the Olympic-size pool on my way from the locker room to the basketball courts, it shimmered in my periphery, ominously reminding me it was there. The pool was like a member of a rival gang. When I passed by, I would nod to it knowingly, as if to say, "Respect."
Still, I never considered learning to swim. I wrote it off as a dumb idea—who would want to walk around the Y in a Speedo and rubber cap?
Who would want to jump into water polluted with baby piss? I stuck to the basketball court, the track, and the weight room.
A few months after joining the YMCA, I was cast in a play called Scarcity, playing Billy, a tough, sexual, reckless guy. My acting teacher suggested that to nail the role, I would need to "get underneath" my character. This meant I had to start thinking like Billy and, if possible, even live like him. But Billy lived in a Massachusetts factory town. I lived between two pad Thai restaurants in the West Village. Billy had guilt-free sex. I had guilt-inducing sex. One more thing: Billy knew how to swim.
It became interesting for me to think like Billy even when I was offstage. Moved by his spirit, I actually bought a swimming cap and a bathing suit, albeit one that extended below my knees. After a particularly satisfying performance one night, I threw on my bathing suit and ducked into the Y, just before closing.
I stood before the empty pool. In the West Side Story version of my life, I brandished a knife, hidden from the pool's view, in my palm. Slowly, I climbed down into the chill water. I awkwardly waded through the water, heading for the ladder, just as I used to do in camp. And then something else took over—Billy took over. And we decided to swim.
I started off flailing, less the star of Scarcity and more the lead character in my mother's nightmares. Then I stopped and reminded myself—Billy. And suddenly all the swimming lessons I'd had came back to me. All the time I thought I'd wasted in my summer-camp pool had at last found utility.
I instinctively remembered how you turn your head to breathe, the cupping shape your hands should make to pull you through the water, and the way you point your toes at water level when you kick.
Freud would have been proud; my latent fear of swimming suddenly had no relevance. Thinking like Billy—or, more accurately, not thinking like myself—allowed me to overcome a bad habit I didn't even realize I'd developed: talking myself out of a life experience.
If only for a few seconds, I swam.
Billy swam.
We took in air.
We kicked.
We spotted the ladder—but kept on moving.
The pool nodded back: "Respect."
Джесси Айзенберг, американский актер и драматург, проплывет стометровку стилем баттерфляй на Олимпиаде 2012 в Лондоне © Men's Health
@темы: Обоже, Джесси!, Цитата
-
-
06.02.2012 в 10:16Интересно, Эндрю придет на это посмотреть?
Он просто обязан это сделать!