Summer isn’t over yet. The gloom came back yesterday but today is a new day. It was partly cloudy to mostly sunny through the morning. When I left at about 9:45 it was looking quite pleasant though I felt like the sky was holding back. There was still some significant cloud coverage here and there occasionally dimming the light.

As I passed Doheny the water was looking pretty paradisical. When I got to the Strand parking lot, there was a bank of marine layer out on the horizon and more to the north but mostly blue sky directly overhead.

I’m leaving my pack in the car today. I didn’t even pack my towel so I’m not sure why I even brought my pack at all. Somehow it gives me a sense of security to have it but I have no idea why.

I walk down the stairs with just trunks, goggles and camera. The sun feels so great. I injured my achilleas yesterday (or re injured it) so I am at a half limp as I make my way down. That’s ok - all the more time to enjoy the scenery.

I eventually see the beach and it is so lovely. The tide is low and the sky looks more blue than it did when I started down the stairs. The lifeguard station says the water is 63 degrees.

I walk along the shallow water and see a crab about the size of a quarter crawling on the sand.

No need to walk up to the rocks and deposit my pack. I get to my spot and head right on out. The water is clear and calm and glassy right here. It looks beautiful.

I soon dive under a small wave and start my swim. The water feels good. It feels about the same as it did Wednesday, which is good. Occasionally it gets cool and occasionally warm but mostly just to the point where you don’t think about the temperature.

I’m swimming south and I am getting close to the end and suddenly I hit something. I assume it is a surfer or a jr. lifeguard. It feels like I collided with something plastic or made of fiberglass. I look up and it’s the southern buoy. I laugh because how is it that in this big old ocean I manage to intersect with this small object? There must be some kind of gravitational force involved.

Just before I resume the swim, I look south toward the cove and cliffs below the Dana Point headlands. They look so pristinely beautiful in this late morning sunshine. I see what seems like several tones of brown and green and shade and the golden beach in shore. All of that set into this smooth and buttery water base freckled with rocks further out to sea.

I keep swimming. I try to shake off my thoughts and loosen my mind. I want to feel the purity of this single moment. I want to shed the models of reality that I build and that are constantly being built by society around me. These models that tell me what to want, how I should feel, what are my limits and what I should be afraid of. I try to imagine the landscape of my mind without the boundaries of what is right and wrong and possible and worthwhile even though these are all part of my imagination.

Heading north I take the horizon into my breath and let it circulate through me. There is just breath and sky and water and light. I feel my hands pass beside and below me through the resistance of the water and from time to time they catch a stray piece of sea grass or other organic matter. Intermittently I pass through a patch of kelp that traces its way along my skin from finger to toe.

I think of God and spirit and all the celestial characters that my fellow church folk seem to think are solid objects that live on the other side of some sort of scrim like barrier. These ideas that they have mass and membranes. I experiment with imagining that God somehow walks the corridors of heaven and looks down upon the earth from some port hole or that Satan is wandering the caverns of hell constantly pissed off. This can’t be the way of things. Every time I visit this model, the characters and landscape feels flat and two dimensional.

I just can’t help but look at the world as whirling clouds of energy interacting and swirling all around each other. It’s an energy that surpasses the boundaries of our imagination, but it somehow coalesces and congeals to form what we see around us and feel inside of us. They reflect translucent glimmers resembling a Father God, a heaven like place, and evil forces. The reflections exist because the source of their light is indeed real. There is a Father God and a creator Vishnu and a destroyer Shiva and an interscorer Jesus and a Amitabha Buddha of infinite light. I believe these talismans are super real and fed by our belief. I breathe them all in here in the water and feel them illuminate my reality and breathe them out and let them go into the moment that becomes a memory and then lost into forgetfulness.

Eventually there it is - the Green Monster. It is still kind of far but the water is smooth today and not obscuring my view. I am directly on course to reach it. Again with the gravitational pull. I honestly wonder if my body is plotting a course without the cooperation of my mind.

This day just keeps getting more amazing. I feel like the sky is now giving me all that it has.

I reach the shore. Do I have to go back to work?

I walk up the stairs and every step is a gift.