Sand Shark
I’m out the door at 7:45. I need to be back before an 11:30 meeting - or so I think. It will be cancelled while I am swimming. If more meetings could be cancelled while swimming, I’d swim even more! I also want to beat the 10:00 6.5 foot high tide getting in the water. Of course I will be darn close to that getting out but that is just too far ahead for me to be worrying about right now.
In most regards, I feel like I could just skip this post and simply refer to yesterday’s. The weather is basically the same. Completely and utterly overcast. The sun did not come out until noonish yesterday and we’ll see if we do any better today. Temperature is about the same both in and out of the water which I’d say is mostly a good thing. While I did not have the ecstasy of direct sunlight on my back, there was no suffering and my internal “spirit meter” did move noticeably up and to the right. Hmm. Then again, it does that when it is freaking cold too.
When I get to the shore, the tide is definitely lower than yesterday but not necessarily low. Waves are still breaking right onto the shore like yesterday but it looks a little less treacherous and smaller. This is odd because the morning surf report boasts of larger surf. Did anyone actually look?
I have noticed that Surfline (the global surf forecasting company that hosts the local web cams) has been getting less creative with the report narrative, which is sad to see. They always provide a couple paragraphs days before about what is forecasted for a particular day but in the past they would noticably edit these reports on the actual day and it was obvious someone was actually watching. In the last few months, the morning report has only changed a couple words from the forecasted report and this week they have not changed the text at all. I seriously wonder how long it will be before all the reports are written by AI that reads over the models, local buoy data and “smart cam” wave height. I get it - gotta keep costs down. However I can’t imagine revenue is down because every surfer in the universe subscribes to Surfline. I hope they pour whatever cash they save on forecasting into their YouTube “Maps to Nowhere” series which is quite entertaining but needs to come out more frequently.
As I am getting into the water there is a “sand shark” speeding across the ocean floor in about 3 inches of water just at the water’s edge. I actually do not know how accurate the term “sand shark” is. That is what we have called these fish since I was a kid here. They are white fish about a foot long and have pretty good girth. They always hang out on the floor extremely close to shore. They do not look like sharks. No. They are completely different from Leopard Sharks.
I swim south again today and it is just lovely out here. - so peaceful. It might not be the summertime fantasy come true which I always love but it is pretty much just what the doctor ordered for my state today. There are no stressful elements here and the grey sky blends with the grey water both above and below the surface and it calms my insides. I’m in fairly good spirits as it is today. There are some outside concerns of course but who doesn’t have those? That reminds me. I listen to this genre of music on spotify and I don’t even know what it is called. It is sort of new age, devotional, spiritual based. Many songs have this guy who quotes some scripture (bible, sutra, upanishad, etc) before the song begins. It seems like different artists have this same guy quoting on their songs. There is something about this guy’s voice. It sounds like he could not possibly have a care in the world and is recording from some place untouched by suffering. I want to be that guy. Who knows…maybe it’s just an AI generated voice.
It’s so easy today, as it is on many days, for my mind to get lost in the water. I have to apply effort to actually pay attention to what is happening around me. The motion of moving over the surface of the ocean lulls me to dream. I am visited by apparitions of friends and relatives who speak or just hold some kind of a pose or gesture. I watch as colors mesh with the shadows in the water and forget that I have a home outside of this ethereal environment. Every now and then I wake up and wonder where is the horizon and where are the houses and what sound are the waves making?
Most importantly and curiously I wonder who am I? Who am I that watches all of this? If I can find the horizon and the houses and listen to the waves, will I discover who it is that I am?
