Super Powers

Well here we are again today. I wasn’t so sure if I was up for a swim. I was feeling not 100% well when I got up this morning. I did not sleep well last night. I got to bed later than I would like and then my dog woke me up to take her out at 1:15 and 2:30. Both of these incidents involve a 10 minute walk outdoors in the “cold,” but I feel sorry for my dog because I know she is probably having a stomach issue. This happens every few months or so.

So I don’t want to push my body over the edge and get sick but I’d also really like to swim. I go through my morning meetings and some chores and a little bit of work. Eventually I feel good enough to go ahead and head to the beach. If I get sick, I get sick, but I think I’ll be fine. I’m also thinking of water temperature. Like when am I NOT thinking about water temperature? The buoys are down a degree or two this morning thanks to some strong northwest winds yesterday afternoon. This just means my body will need to work harder. I tell myself that it can handle it.

By the time I leave at 10:15, it is 66 degrees outside - pretty nice - and the sun is shining. I’m feeling better about my decision to swim the closer I get to the beach. There is some texture on the water but it is smooth enough to look pretty dreamy.

I get out of the car and there are some police officers doing calisthenics by the pullup bars near the bathroom. There are a couple fire crew guys doing pullups and some running up and down the stairs. Good to see our first responders engaging in good clean fun. On the stairs, a couple women look at my camera and ask me what I hope to see in the water. I tell them I hope to see dolphins, which is always true. They ask if I have ever seen a whale. I tell them I have not but that would be totally awesome. Oh man I can hardly imagine. I know it is not outside the realm of possibility but it is highly unlikely.

I get to the beach and conditions look similar to yesterday. Smallish waves and a medium-high tide. I do notice that the water looks beautifully clear. As the waves peak, they look like glass sculptures and I can see the light pass from one side to the other. I adjust my goggles and try to ignore the feeling of cold on my feet as the water rushes over them. I’m trying to balance the energies of my senses. If I can just take the sense of ease and delight coming in through my sight and transfer just enough to my sense of touch to take the edge off.

I walk into the water. I watch a small wave approach and it is going to break right on me. It’s a small wave but it’s cold. The next one comes and I dive underneath it just after it breaks and here we go. Oof! All I can do is let these feelings wash over me. I cannot make it go away, but it cannot hurt me. I try to examine my feelings with more curiosity than aversion. What is this feeling? It is intense but it’s not painful. It seems like it could be whatever I let it be. Somehow I have been conditioned to think of cold as bad but if I can just shift my mind ever so slightly, perhaps I can experience this in a different light.

Still, what I also observe is that the thought or anticipation of cold is entirely more terrible than the experience itself. As I dive under that wave and experience the onslaught of cold, I experience a sort of relief that I am actually in it in real life instead of in my head. THIS is the water. I’m finally here, and now it is solid and real and I interact with it in the here in now. In my head, I just can’t win. It’s a monster with super powers. Oddly, I am the one who bestows it with such powers.

So I swim south and I work with these intense feelings and as they do on every single swim, the intensity subsides after a few minutes. Soon it seems as though I actually am able to take some of the calm from the blue in the sky above me and disperse it throughout my body to settle my nerves. And oh that blue. It packs quite a bit of calm. If I can focus my intention with just the right amount of singlemindedness upon that sky, the best of past, present and future all blend together. I remember the blue sky that was in this exact same spot when I was younger and it’s the same sky that is here now and I know it will remain there for as far as I care to look into the future.

The water feels very bouncy today, which is kind of fun. It’s probably the leftovers of yesterday’s winds. There are very thin and wispy clouds that seem to stop at the bluff along the beach. After I reach the south end of the beach and turn around and face west when I breathe, the sky looks so bright towards the horizon, but when I lift my head to look ahead to the lifeguard tower to my north, everything looks ever so slightly darker.

There are definitely warm patches here in the water. They become more abundant as the swim progresses. I mean some are downright warm. They feel like 80 degrees but it’s probably more like 64 that just feels like 80 compared to the 59 degree water I was just in. I feel like this whole experience is such a gift. There is something about the tone of the light today that makes the water and sky appear like a painting. It feels like there is an almost artificial glow coming off of the surface of the water. It’s just too perfect. As I take a picture that captures the coastline, those clouds look magical in my viewfinder.

Then as I pass the northern bathrooms, I wonder if there is a submerged iceberg in the area. It suddenly grows extremely frigid here. However I know this will dissipate soon, and it does. The water warms. Until I turn around just before the Ritz and pass through the same spot - still cold.

The water is clear today, similar to yesterday. I enjoy watching the trees of kelp pass beneath me. I can see them up ahead emerge like shadows from darkness into these sort of angelic creatures made of vines that reach upwards like arms of love. Their leaves catch the light and just like the surface of the water, they glow unnaturally. Their detail is slightly muted in the water enough to make them appear as painted apparitions. Then my hands lower into the water below me and they make contact with these creatures and for a moment, we see each other.