Song of Solace

Another cloudy start to what I am sure will be a hot day. I get work done through the morning. I also investigate why my camera housing has been fogging up. I bought a brand new housing (only $12.99) and it made no improvement. I’m thinking it’s just this hot and super humid weather. I learn that there are these antifogging strips you can stick in the housing to hopefully make the fog go away. So far the way I have been dealing with this is I take my camera out of the housing, put the housing in my mouth and carefully take the picture hoping I do not drop the camera to fall on the ocean floor. Not a good experience. My anti fog strips should arrive tomorrow.

I get to the beach and the sun is bright by now - just before 10:30. It’s quite warm here and the waves are pretty small. I walk into the water as these small waves break right on shore. I enjoy lingering just on the other side of the breaking surf. They pass right through me and break just after I emerge on their back side. I stay for a minute and then I swim north. I’m wondering just how long it will take me to get to the Monarch Beach Club. Yesterday it seemed like the current was dragging me to a snail’s pace. Actually I don’t think snails can swim. I will be staring into the horizon the entire trip towards my destination. So I try to settle in. I feel like my thoughts are getting all tangled up with my awareness. I worry and I hope and I suffer guilt and then find relief. All of these images float randomly through my field of consciousness - memories from the past and visions of potential futures. I’m having difficulty not completely getting sucked in by whatever thought seems to be driving by at the time. I can’t seem to distinguish my own identity from the narrative of the thoughts.

I just keep swimming. I try to place my attention on the water. I try to look at the sky and imagine my skin peeling away and letting the light of the sun shine on my insides. There is something in that light that sings to the essence of who I am. It is a sort of serenade…a song of solace. I let my heart rest in its melody. The more I concentrate on the light in the sky, the more I am able to pry myself from these thoughts. Thoughts that tell me that I must do this in order to get that. Thoughts that tell me that if I don’t do more of that other thing, then those things over there will never be achievable.

I begin to sense that these are lies. Years of social conditioning wants me to believe all of this. The matrix wants to pull me across its event horizon where I will act out the role given to me. I will join the cast of characters in some timeline of someone else’s making. However this sky and water and the energy of my own forward momentum act as an anti adhesive freeing me from this illusion. I will stare into this light. I will move towards it. I don’t know if I know how. There is no formula or how-to procedure I can find to follow, but I am not sure that those are necessary. I think it’s enough to just believe in the light. The light is alive and it knows and it cares. I feel like it is important to ask it for help. Sure it knows I need help but there is some kind of alchemy in the asking itself that shifts my insides so that I can actually receive this help.

Suddenly faith arrives and I believe that the light will lead me to where it is that I need to go. It’s something primal. It’s something I was born with. It feels like magic but its not. It seems like it must be supernatural, but I think it is the most natural thing in front of me. It is the natural way of things. I think that whatever it is that I choose to trust, and we all choose to trust something whether we think so or not, is the thing that will define my destiny.

I end the swim. I made it to the mouth of Salt Creek and back in about 90 minutes. I don’t need to tell the play by play of the whole journey. What matters is that I got in the water, I pointed my body and got to where it was I intended to go. I looked at the sky and the water and they spoke truth. As I end the swim, a large flock of pelicans flies right past me. Sometimes, like this time, the direction that they are flying relative to me gives the impression that they are flying in place. It is super cool.