That Little Devil

Another fantastic swim! They just keep coming. Every one so different and special. Almost all of my swims are one of two routes I follow. How different could they be? Very different! Today I left at a little after 10:00 and skies were mostly cloudy. There were scattered patches of blue sky over the water casting pockets of deep blue ocean surface amidst otherwise grey and silver. The sky was pretty interesting but the air just had a somewhat gloomy demeanor and the water was bumpy.

I remember thinking to myself as I walked down the stairs, what will come of all of this? Will this just be another swim to power through. Sure, I’ll feel great afterwards but the reward will largely be at the end. I also remember responding to myself that you just never know. So much could happen. Besides, what could I even try to predict from right here. What I see from here is not even a sample taste of what it is to actually be out there.

Ok. It may not have been the greatest swim I have ever taken but it was so so good. Everything changed and it was good to begin with. The clouds were magnificent and added so much personality to the water, to the horizon, to the shore. It wasn’t just a palid sheet of marine layer. These clouds were like a pantheon of gods dominating the sky. They did not remain still. In fact they completely relocated over the course of the swim.

What started off as a few pockets of clear sky ended as a sky that was mostly blue over the water and surrounded by a circle of clouds. The sun broke through the center and gave a golden sheen to the surface of the water. In the midst of this vast sky were terns and pelicans and cormorants. The terns were flying from the shore out to the fishing boats checking on their lobster. The pelicans were pouncing on the water hunting for the fish swimming below. And the cormorants? Who knows what a cormorant does? They sputter and flutter and move in and out of our timeline. I am convinced that cormorants are not bound by the laws of physics. There is probably only one cormorant who ever lived here and that bird just replicates itself like a looping guitar riff and has us all fooled thinking that we see flocks when it’s just one bird painting itself across the sky as his life’s art.

I think of the differences of my favorite forms of exercise: swimming and running. There are many, but I’m thinking particularly how I experience my environment in each. I love to run. I have been running regularly since I was 8 or 9 when it became all the rage in the mid 70s. My dad got into it and let me come along. Many, if not most, of those early runs were on this very beach. I remember once we saw OJ Simpson and his wife (maybe girlfriend at the time?) Nicole on the beach. Wow. That didn’t end well for anyone.

Anyhoo…I love running outdoors in scenic places. The beach, mountains, dessert, wherever. It provides a fantastic way to enjoy the outdoors in a healthy and life giving way. However, after taking up ocean swimming in 2020, I find that swimming takes this outdoorsy experience to a totally different level. I don’t just feel connected to what is around me but I feel anatomically attached to it. I am after all physically immersed in the water. It’s as if every emotion and feeling on offer is imbued with an intensified helping of energy. When I am running, the clouds are nice and all, but when I am swimming I am establishing a personal relationship with every cloud that I see. My thoughts meld with everything around me and it becomes difficult to differentiate my own experience from my direct surroundings. I have to say, I like this very much.

I swam north today. The wind was coming from the south and so I swam with the current all the way to the Monarch Bay Beach Club. Then I swam against it on the way back. Both directions were great. The water was pretty much a perfect temperature. It was a little cool to start but really seemed to warm up in the second half. I’m pretty sure it was me and not the water that was warming. Water visibility was a little better today than it has been this week but still not as good as last week. Pretty cloudy overall but I can at least see shadows of rock and sand on the ocean floor.

I’m trying to continue to meditate on the theme of relaxing and letting go and trust. I grow so concerned and worried that there is some thing that I need to discover that I am not doing now but should start doing it in order to become what it is that I am meant to become. There must be some missing key that will unlock the missing door to give me passage to the missing life and lead to my missing future. I’m growing more convinced that all of these things are missing because they do not exist in the first place. They are all apparitions created by my own mind. Either that or implanted by that cormorant. That little devil!

I have this theory that a relaxed mind is a free mind and a more creative mind that is better able to identify opportunities and recognize joy and be willing to pursue it. As I swim south, I feel like I am pursuing the opposite end of every wake that comes my way and there are countless numbers of those. It’s just enough current to add challenge and intensity and not feel like a slog or like I am swimming in place. I just love looking at how the light is shining on the water here. This entire vast, wet plane from here to Dana Point is on fire with light.

I remember walking down the stairs thinking how could I not be cold when I walk back up after the swim. I remember next thinking that I probably won’t be cold just like I wasn’t yesterday and the swim before that and the swim before that and the swim before that. Then I remember thinking how can these things be? But they are and as I walk back up the stairs, indeed, they truly are. I’m as comfortable as I could possibly be and I wish I could just keep climbing step after step after step.