My Own Anthropologist
Almost didn’t swim today. I thought I was going to help my ex-wife get her car into the mechanic but that didn’t end up happening and then 10:00 rolls around and the weather looks too perfect not to swim. The sky is mostly sunny, the morning has been a little cooler than usual but not significantly so. Wind is calm and the water looks inviting on the web cams. Internally I am feeling all out of whack this morning. I certainly didn’t get enough sleep last night, which doesn’t help. I know I’ll feel better once I reach the other side of this swim. Heck, I’m sure I’ll feel better as soon as I am in the water. There is something about total submersion that transforms one’s inner state. It is not necessarily a “cure all,” but it will most certainly change how you feel and look at the outside world. Sometimes it is just this smallest change that we need to be made for us to allow us to complete the rest of the needed improvements on our own.
From the parking lot, things look even better here than they did on the cams. There are hardly any clouds at all in the sky except for reasonably far offshore. It is a beautiful beautiful day and the light has that fallish tint to it. I can’t even begin to describe what Fall light looks like but when you see it, you just know.
As I walk down the stairs it is obvious that the cool of the morning is past us. The sun shines warm on my back and it feels so so good. I’m trying to tilt my mind at an angle to best absorb these rays. It feels lie there is some kind of interference keeping the sun from penetrating my mood and preventing the sound of the ocean from washing over my thoughts. I know these things are right here right now - the water, the light - and I know they can heal. How can I unlock the active ingredients?
On the beach, the berm on the sand is still here but it looks a little smaller than yesterday. There is mushy soft sand at its base and I jump right into that stuff and it is all good. I get to my spot and walk on into the water. It all feels about the same as yesterday which was good. I swim south today and I am gliding right along the edge of blue water on my sea side and a cloud of stirring, sandy water on my shore side. The blue, clearer water is warmer so I veer just a little bit westward.
The water gets more and more comfortable until it is obvious that it is warmer than it was yesterday despite the fact that Surfline posted a drop of a degree in temperature. It absolutely does not feel like 64 here. I’m gonna say 67. It also seems like the water’s surface grows more and more calm. Usually it gets rougher as the morning progresses, but this water is dead smooth. It is super beautiful.
I reach the south end and linger here for a bit before turning around to head north. As I swim back up the beach, I see several lobster trap buoys. Recreational lobster season started last Friday night. I love lobster season with all the different colored buoys scattered about the water. I prefer the more colorful ones.
I’m trying to find my solace in the water here but I’m trying even harder to find what it is I think I need solace from. I feel like my insides are filled with echoes of feelings and the original sounds are now muted. It’s like looking at a reflection of an image on water that has stirred. I feel rumblings in the inner breeze and small divets in the fabric of my memory. I can’t find the story that holds all of these things together. It’s being acted out just on the other side of the horizon. Maybe if I swim just a little further offshore I will find it.
I think about how often in my life I have been filled with feelings that I cannot give a name to and I start making up names and stories and creating facts to try and give context to my fiction. We all seem to think that our feelings arise from these solid things that have some kind of actual mass to them. We hold tight to an event or a face or voice. I wonder if it is the feeling that caries the true mass and what we think of as the things are actually woven in our minds and died with the pigment of our imagination.
As I grow older, some of my dies become more vibrant and rich and others fade and I can’t remember what color they were when they were new. I remember new things and fill in empty spaces that sit between this feeling and that one. What sense is there to make of this? I try to play detective and hunt for clues. I dig up artifacts like some kind of archeologist and then put it all together as if I am my own anthropologist. In the end it is all so fragile and transient. These objects change form but they loyally follow the law of the conservation of energy: they cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.
