A Body Out of Place in the Bay

A foreign body inside the human body will probably cause trouble. In the bay, however, something strange can create an entirely different effect.

It was a rainy weekend. The sunset remained subdued, hidden beneath the heavy gray clouds. I like that kind of drama, but I missed the sun sparkling across the water. The remaining light was soft and unhurried, a little like Caymmi.

The image establishes a visual order in the landscape and then disrupts it. The athlete appears to be performing a 360, breaking the visual continuity between the water, the boats, and the horizon. The body does more than enter the frame. It changes the way everything else in it is seen.

The eye follows the movement quickly, then settles back into stillness. Restlessness meets calm without disturbing it. The ferries and the small boat draw the gaze toward the horizon again, awakening a desire to get on board, cross the water, and discover what the bay is made of. But the athlete is not me.

What initially feels out of place begins to belong to the landscape once it changes the way we see it. The bay does not have to remain still to remain itself. It can accommodate a body, a movement, an interruption, and become more complex because of them.

Caymmi wrote, “The sea’s wave carries, the sea’s wave brings back.” The line belongs here: the image carries and brings back as well, while the gaze keeps wandering between movement and stillness.