Silent Angels
No meetings this morning but I decide to give the sun some time to break through the clouds. Based of the day’s forecast, we are looking primed for some late morning sunshine and a little more warmth than we have seen for the last several days. So I’m looking forward to some Friday summer goodness at the tail end of May. 9:00 rolls around and I still see mostly clouds in the sky but the tint seems to be turning. What is that I see in the sand? Is it sun? Is it Joy? Is there a difference? I’m not sure but I like the direction things are heading. 9:30 comes and I see blue sky in the Salt Creek web cams. Ok, that’s my cue that it is time to go.
I’m out my front door at 9:45 and I can feel the sun on my skin and it feels so good. I’m so delighted and excited to get to the beach. It looks like the wind has calmed just a tad from earlier in the morning. The forecast does call for a bit of a reprieve in the wind before it turns onshore. It’s a pretty common pattern here.
I arrive at the parking lot and everything is about as wonderful as I was hoping for. There is a pretty good breeze in the air but it is well offset by the shining orb of wonderfulness above me. There are so many shades of blue on the water, rich and dark and alive with movement. I can tell it is going to be a bit of a bumpy swim today but that is totally ok. What is a little bump when you have the pure love of the sun shining on your skin and through the surface of the water.
I get in the water and head north today. Will I be able to stop myself and turn around before I intersect with Monarch? I guess we will find out.
The water is indeed bumpy. I’d say I get a full and satisfying breath on about every other stroke. On the others my face is covered with a sheet of liquid and I try to breath in what little air I can get. Still, the liquid is magical. It somehow mixes with the light, of which there is an ample amount, to create this sense of well being that is wrapped in a memory or a premonition, I can’t tell which, of happy times. It’s a sense of cosmic safety and a resolve that all is well in the world and as it should be. This feeling melts into this present moment and makes me realize that everything is ok right now. Right now.
I often find myself obsessed with getting to the other side of whatever it is that I am on now. I’m in the midst of divorce and selling my house and I wish I was doing something different to support myself financially and get all hung up in an effort of getting from here to there but right now I see that right now is good. If I were to be “stuck” in this day of my life, it would be a good life. I live comfortably. There is good food in my fridge and cupboards. Coffee is ready to be brewed. I’m working on an interesting problem at work and like the people I work with. I can come to the ocean in the middle of the day and I can stop working at a reasonable hour. This is all good. Sure I could project doom and gloom onto my future but that is just my raw fear whose bark is much worse than its bite.
I’m loving the way the sun illuminates the kelp beneath the water today. Most of the water, besides a cloudy patch through Salt Creek, is pretty clear and given the turbulence of the water which is increasing as the swim progresses, the vines lean and sway and they appear to be fully sentient beings in the radiant glow of the sun. They are just really quiet. Perhaps they are silent angels that inhabit the water and spend their eternal existence interceding in prayer for all of us on shore.
On the swim back to Strands, the current has seriously kicked up and I am propelled forward and surrounded by chop but I am facing mostly away from the white water. I stare at the top edge of the bluff and it just feels so good. Eventually the swim comes to an end and today, for the first time in months and maybe over a year, I allow myself a bit of a walk on the shore and I head to the middle stairs where I climb up to the parking lot. I look over the water as I walk along the bluff towards my car and it is filled with white caps now and it is so so beautiful.
