Summer Left its Fins
I’m finally leaving my apartment at 10:40. I was afraid this might not happen today. Earlier this morning, there were some issues at work that needed to be taken care of immediately. It was the type of thing that could take a half hour or 6 hours all depending on a multitude of factors. Fortunately it took about an hour. I still wasn’t quite sure if I should leave just in case some other issue were to surface, but I just couldn’t NOT go. The conditions were more than ideal. They were sublime.
It’s 78 degrees outside - 78! It’s sunny an beautiful and there is just a small offshore breeze. It’s like summer realized it left its fins at the beach and had to come back real quick to retrieve them. I hope it stays a while. I do appreciate all the seasons but I feel like maybe I just need some time apart from Winter.
When I park my car and get out into the open air, it is unspeakably pleasant. I walk down the stairs and watch the waves roll in to shore. It’s high tide but there is still some beach to walk on. By the feel of the water, it seems like Summer did not get wet today. The temperature differential between air and water is rather extreme. However I would not say the difference is particularly painful and is certainly not enough to deter me from getting in.
I make my way into the water, dive under a wave that breaks just a few feet in front of me, and start to swim south. It’s cold and I feel my body react but everything settles in just a few minutes. It’s truly magical out here. I keep swimming and just can’t motivate myself to stop until just before I reach the south end of the beach where I see scattered seagulls resting on the water’s surface. I say hello, but get no response. One flies away as I swim by. This is definitely not a welcoming group. That’s ok. I still appreciate their presence.
When I get to my usual turn around spot, I stare out at the end of the point just below the headlands and watch the water shimmer in the sun just inshore of the rocks. Everything is blue and then suddenly electric white. Part of me wants to swim out to that spot and experience whatever it is to be experienced in that electrified zone. I’m not sure what that would be like but it seems like it could be transformative. I wonder if I would ever come back. I wonder if I would evolve out of bodily form and into something else that I can’t even envision.
I swim north. The water is extremely cloudy. Even close up, the kelp looks blurry. I swim in and out of who it is that I am. I have flashes of some kind of idea of how it is that I move in this world. I can’t quite connect with how these ideas actually manifest into reality. All I see in front of my face is blue and green haze that lacks any kind of solid form. It seems as though this is all that there is. A horizon emerges briefly and then disappears. How do my ideas of who it is that I am hold any kind of meaning in this water? Do I even exist? Do I swim in a dream or will I walk on to the shore and enter back into sleep?
