Go Figure

Well it’s not quite as idyllic today as it was yesterday but it is still pretty darn nice. I leave a little after 9:30 and skies are mostly blue with a fair amount of lingering haze over the water. It doesn’t look blue and bright, but it doesn’t look gray either. And if you wait long enough, you might just catch a brief moment of brightness as the haze reorganizes itself.

When I get to the parking lot, I can tell there is a bit more bump on the water than yesterday but it’s all good because I can feel sun light on my skin and that is enough to smooth out the surface of all that I see.

I watch the lines of swell move over the water as I walk down the stairs. The predominant swell is coming from the south today. Yet another way the seasons show themselves at the beaches here in SoCal. South swells in spring through mid fall and then northwest swell dominate the late fall and winter.

The tide is low at the beach. I step onto the sand and take my obligatory shots of the north and south ends of the beach that I rarely post these days. It’s much more exciting to post pictures actually taken from the water.

I head on out into the surf and am careful not to strain my compromised Achilles. I start to swim past the bumpy surf and to the south. It’s bumpy but not crazy. I’m not struggling to get air into my facial orifices.

It’s great to be out here, but it doesn’t quite match the pristine quality of yesterday’s light and calm. It’s as though everything is just ever so slightly out of focus but not so much as to dilute the experience. I can still see an endless expanse of water. I can still see coastal bluffs for as far as the local topology allows. I can still look below the water and see kelp and clouds of sand.

The water feels about as warm as it did yesterday which was quite pleasant. This morning’s Capistrano buoy was reporting 68 which is the highest so far this season. Still, it does not feel any warmer than yesterday. I adopt my usual mental visualization of opening my skin to the water. Lethal physically, but healing spiritually - go figure.

I am keeping a close eye out for extremely large fish when I get to the same spot where I saw the Black Sea Bass yesterday. I do see a Calico Bass that is typically small. Then I look further below and swear for a moment that I see something much larger. Who knows what I saw, if anything? With this faint visibility, you can see just about anything your mind wants to see. I definitely saw that Calico though. That’s for sure.

I notice as my body bobs up and down on this bumpy surface. I drift slightly westward and then self-correct east. My direction is very much at the mercy of wind and current but I do have enough agency to steer the final outcome. I meditate on this and reflect on how this is just an echo of how we live our lives. The winds of fate and the influences of out relationships push and pull us over the surface of this earth and all the while we focus our attention this way and that like a sail on a mast in order to leverage these winds in our favor. So I float here and keep moving my arms and kicking my legs. At a minimum I need to keep doing that. I must keep moving my arms and legs and learn how to place my attention on what needs to be attended to. It sometimes feels like the desired destination is completely out of reach, but I trust I will make landfall in just the place I need to be.