I left the house a little before 11:00. Skies are overcast, sadly. I’d hoped by now we would see some burn off but hope is all I have. Recent experience over the weekend has not provided an earlier burn off so there is not much reason to expect one today.

When I exit my car, the air and ground feel warm and as I head down the stairs toward the beach, the light feels particularly luminous as if we are on the verge of a transition. Is that blue I see far out over the horizon? I’m not sure. Is it just wishful thinking? It is definitely wishful thinking but I am hoping it is not JUST wishful thinking.

I’m on the beach and in the water and there is no surf. A new ssw swell is on the way which should gradually start to show itself this afternoon and become sizable mid-week but there is no sign of it now. The water feels just a touch cooler today but since it has been so warm, a touch hardly moves the needle into unpleasant.

Pretty early into the swim as I move south, I begin to see blue sky as I lift my head to breath on my shore side. It’s not just a patch or hole but it looks as though everything has cleared east of the bluff. Oh happy day. Not much further and it truly feels and looks like a genuinely sunny day.

When I get to the south end of the beach. There looks to be a large group of bodies on body boards about a hundred feet west of me further up the base of the cliffs below the headlands. I assume this is a jr. lifeguard gathering.

I head back north and find myself veering further out west. I correct myself but I’m not too concerned since I feel the urge to swim out to the North Star buoy today and the extra distance from the shore will make that a more direct route.

I have not seen any of those strange Salp creatures for a week and I assumed that they were just gone but today I am seeing a ton of them. I see a couple that are longer than any I have seen before - perhaps a couple feet long. I stop a couple times to find dozens of the individual thumb sized specimens surrounding me and hovering just below the surface.

The water is beautiful today with just the right ratio of sun and cloud to brighten the surface and provide a sort of muted glow. Visibility is not great but the water I can see is a clear greenish blue color.

My mind just does not want to clear today. There is no particularly dominating thought but I find myself reaching for my breath and finding more than just breath. I feel like I am being haunted by some ghost of myself that I just want to go away. I drift back and forth between thoughts and thoughts of thought and then feel overcome by a vertigo of misidentity. Who am I? Who is thinking? On the one hand I feel attached to and defined by the thought but on the other hand the thought is like a foreign body that I would like to have extracted. These are not disturbing or even unpleasant thoughts. I don’t know. I have this hunger to experience things as they truly are and sometimes it feels like my thoughts are filled with notions, ever so subtle, of self and other stimuli that are artificial and manufactured.

The day is getting brighter and brighter. Once I am close to the northern end of the swim, I lift my goggles and everything in front of me looks vibrant and bright. I have to wonder if I am seeing things correctly. Is this just the effect of lifting my tinted goggles? Maybe but it all looks so great regardless.

I just can’t seem to find the North Star buoy. I know it has to be close but there is a breeze out that is stirring the surface and making it very difficult to find. I eventually give up and head back in the direction of the point where I started. Hopefully it is still out here and I’ll revisit on another day.

By the time I am walking back up the stairs, almost all of the cloud cover here at the beginning of the swim is gone. It is so delightful.

At the shower up top, a surfer asks me about my ankle band. I tell him it is a shark deterrent with some embarrassment. I tell him about the day I thought I might have seen one. Who knows if I did, but I’m happy to have this layer of protection on me. He asks me how it works and I explain it disrupts their electromagnetic navigation and it is akin to having a bright light pointed in one’s face. He remarks that he has had a bright light in his face and it did not stop him. Fair point.