Blooming

Today was starting to look a lot like yesterday. A cloudy morning. I wasn’t sure if I was going to swim, but I honestly can’t think of any good reason not to. The conditions are good and work is not crazy. The forecast calls for more sun later in the week, but I figure I might as well get in the water while I can because you just never know what could happen later in the week. Hopefully nothing (at least nothing that would prevent a swim). Also, I just have to wonder how much longer the water will be this warm. I still can’t get my head around this - 66 degrees today. March is often the coldest month of the year in the water. The month isn’t over yet!

Well I go about my morning meetings and some other work I want to get out of the way and before I know it, it is 10:00 and I see some patches of blue sky as I walk out my front door that faces east. Does it face east? What do I look like, a compass?

By the time I get to the beach parking lot, there is significant amounts of blue sky over the water, especially looking north. I’m very happy with how things are turning out here. As I walk towards the stairs, I feel the unmistakable warm glow of direct sunlight on my skin. If I were a flower, I am blooming.

I head down the stairs and the breeze blows on my skin to offset the sun. It all makes me wonder how the heck that water could be 66. I’m sure the temperature must be dropping with every step I take down these stairs.

I love how the clouds look as I step on to the sand. I step into the water and sure enough, it feels pleasant. Yeah it feels cool, but I have become a pretty good connoisseur of the flavors of cold. There is that muscle aching cold that precedes hypothermia. Mmmmm…hypothermia. Then there is that bite in the cold that tells me it will be brisk. This is different. It is an “all will be well” cold.

I get in the water taking a final note of appreciation for these wonderful cloud patterns. I expect these clouds are not long for this world. I swim south. Even though the north is brighter, I have swam north two days in a row and it is time to switch things up. By the time I get to the south end of the beach, the sky is basically entirely blue. There is a strip of white out near the horizon. It looks like a fog bank and I also hear the fog horn. I wonder if that bank is the leftovers of the former cloud cover or incoming fog. I figure it doesn’t really matter, even if it is fog, it probably won’t get here soon enough to blanket the beach. That said, never underestimate the speed of fog.

I turn around to swim north - the full length of Strands Beach - just past the northern bathrooms. I feel like my thoughts pick up right where they left off during yesterday’s swim. I am asking myself the entire way, what is it I an let go of. What extra baggage am I carrying that I can slough off to ease my journey into the center of I don’t know what. I don’t know where I am heading in this life. I think it is somewhere good. I am just taking this one step at a time because I am surrounded in fog and I can only see a single step ahead. Fortunately that is as far as I need to see. Yeah I wish I could see further. I wish I could clearly see the destination but I can’t. I just can’t. I know there is something out there past the fog beckoning me.

I was listening to my piano recordings again today on the drive here. I can hear myself play notes in and out of flow. How do I stay in the flow? What is it that knocks me off kilter and what is it that allows me to right myself? I think I become distracted by my tendency to chase after the flow. I slip in to it and then identify it and become enamored with it and grasp at it. It can’t be grasped. I have to tune my focus on the music and try not to become distracted.

I wonder if that is a metaphor for other things in my life. I become distracted by my desire to become something. I get lost in the thing and lose sight of the becoming. I feel like the juice here is more in the verbs than the nouns.

So here I am in the water and it’s just yet another metaphor. How can I leverage what I have here right now in the water to put my mind where it needs to be in order to just be. I am going to stare into the blue forever that lies below me. I am going to feel the water on my skin - all of my skin. I am going to lift my arms and kick my legs again and again and again. I’m not going to stop until I feel the sand brush against the tips of my fingers.