Terrarium

Well looks like I get to swim today after all. I had plans and then I didn’t have plans. I mean I still have plans but they are plans that at least include time for a swim. And man oh man am I glad because once again, conditions are pristine. I leave a little before 9:00 but I have to get some gas and find an apple. That’s right. I’m out of apples and I just will not be able to survive my post-swim breakfast without an apple. I get one at Ralphs and I’m off to the beach.

It’s almost 70 degrees out and a cloudless sky - absolutely beautiful. I’m here at the beach just a little earlier than yesterday. The water is super smooth - more so than yesterday. As I walk down the stairs I can hear this sort of pulsating hum in the background. It’s almost like a fog horn but the sound is much more frequent and also there is no fog as far as I can see. So I have no idea what this sound is and I don’t really care too much. Just another one of those ocean/beach related noises that blends into the background and really isn’t at all annoying.

Catalina is super visible today. It looks huge. It’s like one of those hunter moons that looks larger than usual. I feel like I could reach out my hand and touch the brush on its hills. I just love Catalina and really want to go again sometime soon. I had a dream two nights ago that I thought I was going. I was swimming here at the Strand and a boat full of swimmers came by and for some reason I thought they were going to Catalina for the day and somehow in a weird dreamy kind of a way it was communicated or just known that there were going to be super cool fish there. So I get on the boat and after it’s too late I am informed that the boat is actually heading for the bay area but I can get dropped off in Long Beach. I have no wallet and am wondering how am I going to get home from Long Beach. Whatever boat it is I take to Catalina, I will make sure I get on the right one that is actually going to Catalina and that I have my wallet with me.

So I get to the sand and the beach is just absolutely gorgeous. It’s hard to describe just what it is about the light and the air and the color at this particular moment in time that makes all of this look as it does. I come here most days of the year and every day it looks slightly different but every day it looks tremendously great. The air is so clear and so blue and the water is so blue and still and all looks so pure and undisturbed and it feels like if there is any part of myself that is unpure or in a state of disturbance, all of this in front and around me will soon purify and remove any disturbance that might be lingering about. Yes, I think I will stay here for a while. I think I will get in that water because in the water, this entire purification process is expedited.

At first the water feels colder on my feet than it did yesterday then after a couple minutes, I am not sure. The Capistrano Beach buoy said the water is 62 but I’m beting it is right on the verge of climbing a couple degrees in this sunlight. This glorious sunlight that I can feel penetrating my skin and filling me with its warmth and goodness.

I walk into the water and it is chilly but good. I am waist deep and then jump forward and let myself fall into the embrace of the water. I let the surface catch me in its net and I yield to the rush of cold that I feel moving through my body. Somehow this body is no longer my own. I now share it with this infinite expanse of water. Suddenly the borders of what I thought defined me and separated me from other have dropped and are fading away like scattering bubbles.

I swim south today because I swam north yesterday. I stare at the shore and look at the light hit the homes at the edge of the beach that are likely mostly empty. The light explodes and then settles on the walls and forms clumps of mist over the rocks and brush of the bluff. And the blue. There really are no words for the blue. You are just going to have to come down here and see for yourself.

I keep swimming and reach the end of the beach and right in front of me is my turn around rock. It is dark as the sun shines from above the headlands and the water glows black in the glare and then there is a splash of white water as a wave rolls over and crashes on the tops of the rocks. There are people fishing just beneath the headlands and I watch one cast his line and it glows like a silver thread in the morning light before it becomes taught and settles in the water. I look north and then start to swim toward that tiny tiny lifeguard tower I can just barely see from here.

I watch the temperature of the water rise and fall. It feels like I can actually watch it with eyes that sit inside of my skin. I can palpably feel it move through me. I imagine this rising and falling like a landscape of some other dimension. Does the water temperature exist in some in between place that we cannot see or hear but can only feel? Of course it does. Where else would it be?

The rest of the swim keeps moving forward. I never want this to end and then I can’t wait for it to end so that I can hold its memory and never ever let it go. I will carry it inside of a glass sphere like one of those terrariums that holds an entirely different habitat than exists on the outside. Somehow frozen in time to exist fully in tact and unsoiled by the turbulence that rages on the outside. I will put this in my pocket or maybe stuff it in my backpack and never let it go.