The Aquarium
Another beautiful morning in Dana Point. Just how many of these can nature stand to produce? It’s like we have gotten caught in some kind of utopian loop where mornings never dip below 60 degrees and the days top out in the upper 70’s. I like it. The local buoy water temps are 64 degrees. Did I oversleep through March and April?
I leave a little before 10:00. I am spiritually preparing my mind and body for the pleasure I am about to consume. The sky is clear and as I get a glimpse of the water passing Chula Vista on Selva, it looks smooth and ever so blue. It is just such a lovely day.
I get to the beach parking lot and I wonder just how slowly I can possibly walk down the stairs and savor this warm sunshine. I’m reminded of my mornings at the Zen Center when I lived in San Francisco and we would do walking meditation (kin hin) paying attention to every little movement of our legs and feet. I’d do that here except I’d look a little crazy and I don’t have the time.
Tide is high again as I get to the beach. Like yesterday, the waves almost break right on the bare shore. However the waves are a notch smaller today. There is also just a little more sand at the bottom of the concrete ramp making for a more secure transition to the shore. The water rushes over my feet, hits the rocks on the opposite side of the beach and then retracts back into the ocean splashing my legs in the process. I can quickly tell that the temperature of the water is going to be easy and gentle.
I get to my usual spot and start to walk out into the water. A pelican flies north on the crest of an oncoming wave. Then another pelican is flying south…wait…that’s not a pelican! That’s a dolphin! A dolphin just sprang up out of the water on the back side of the pre-breaking wave and then it plunges back in. Through the face of the wave, I can see two dolphins swimming just like looking through the glass of an aquarium. What a magical place this is.
I start to swim south in the direction of those dolphins though I know that I will not catch up to them. They are long gone. The water is delightful. It’s still a little murky like yesterday. However, the cold spots are not so cold and the warm spots are not so warm, but the mean feels warmer. I’m almost exactly 24 hours shy of the Spring equinox but it sure feels like Summer, and man I do like Summer.
I swim to the headlands and then my usual route up to the Ritz before heading back to where I started. I can’t say there is anything unusual about this swim other than the fact that the water feels so comfortable in mid March. The whole swim feels luxurious. I wonder what the ocean wants to tell me today. I try to imagine my heart is open and receiving all of the goodness that the water has to offer. I try to imagine that my skin is like paper - porous enough to let the water in but strong enough not to break.
I believe that our imagination is a gateway to the object of that which is imagined. Thoughts become things. I never thought I’d find myself swimming in the ocean several days a week year round. Then one day I could not get the thought out of my head and here I am. People scoff at the phrase “thoughts and prayers” as if they are no more than empty gestures thrown away into the wind. I believe if we all tended more attentively to our thoughts, we might wake up and find our world transformed for the better. And as for prayers, aren’t those thoughts that we intentionally cast out to the force of all creation with the expectation that the thought will come back and find us wherever we might be no matter how far we have wandered?
