A Lot of Nuance

I left my place at about 10:30. Another grey morning and we’ll just see if we see much of the sun at all today. It seems like the last few days, the sun comes out late and retires early. Must be nice.

Winds are fairly calm this morning. The temperature is mild and the surf is medium sized or “fun” sized as the surf report often calls it. I’m hitting the beach late enough that the lifeguard station is already open and posting 65 degree water temperature and a yellow flag which means one should use caution in the surf. All in all it looks pretty mellow here. There are a few waves worth looking at but they seem kind of few and far between right now.

The water feels pretty gentle on my feet. Often times the thought of getting my nearly bare body in the water in the morning seems very unappealing. I do it because I know I will feel great after I get in. There are just a few seconds to endure until I slip into gratitude. Even those few seconds are not much, if anything, to complain about. It’s really the anticipation of those few seconds that is the toughest hill to climb. However as I let my feet sit in the water, I immediately understand there is no hill here. The illusion quickly dissolves. It is good to be here.

I get in the water, wait out a couple waves and then swim out past the surf. Ahh it does feel good. I swim south and remain fairly close to shore. I pass about a dozen surfers over the length of the beach. It’s a good time to be out surfing - very little crowd to contend with. At the southern end of the beach, I sit just to the north of the big rocks and watch a fair sized set of waves come in. They grow and break just to my southwest and then pound into the two larger rocks near me. I watch several of these pass and enjoy the full body tactile experience of rising and falling with the wave and listening to it break and watching the nearby rocks grow as their surrounding water gets sucked up by the oncoming wave.

I turn around and head back up to the north end of the beach. I swim over large kelp beds. I have these fantasies of the kelp clearing and exposing large schools of fish or some huge shark beneath. None of these fantasies come to pass. Still I love this kelp. I love how it looks both from above and below the water. It’s like a walk through the garden out here.

I’m trying to lose my thoughts in my exhale and leave them here in the tangled kelp. They just don’t want to go. I feel caught in a dream that I cannot wake up from. It’s not a bad dream but I just can’t hush the constant din of memories and ethereal images that come and go from my mind’s eye without permission. I just want to see the water and the horizon line. I just want to hear my breath and the sound of my hands plunging through the surface. I just want to feel the coolness of the water on my skin. I want to be able to listen to what nature is telling me. I want to be able to see the path in font of me as it is without my worries and fears. If I could just exist within the purity of this experience, I wonder what I might actually be able to see. I have this hunch that so many of the thoughts that pass across my internal field of vision is just a movie that I’m making up. I mean obviously much of the plot is true non-fiction. I am actually swimming in this water. However I sense I am adding A LOT of nuance that is skewing the story in a fashion not in my favor.

As I take my final pause before finishing the swim, I can hear the waves breaking but I can’t see them. It all sounds much louder than it looks. I swim in and before a single wave can break over me, I feel the sandy floor touch the tips of my fingers. I just sit here for a bit with my butt on the sand and watch an oncoming wave approach. It breaks right in front of me and I just let my torso fall below the white water and feel my body roll and then I come to my feet and walk back up the stairs. It’s all so great.