Refractions

Another nice and peaceful overcast morning in Dana Point. I have one meeting at 8 and am able to get out of the house a little before 9.

As I drive into the parking lot, I can see Catalina out in the distance. It is blanketed in a misty coalescence of cloud. I wonder if it is raining there. It is not so dark here. It’s total cloud cover but it feels brighter than Wednesday.

I have missed the jr. guard rush down the stairs but I am passed by a couple stragglers. One is at a half run and she seems either excited or anxious to get to the group. The other looks like he has other places he would rather be and seems in no hurry to get to the beach.

I myself am trying to get my head around the fact that I am about to be wet. Is that something I really want to do right now? I’m warm. Getting wet is going to change that. I feel ok with warm right now. I basically have to force myself to do something I know I will love but seems not so great in the moment. I think about what if I just never swam when I didn’t feel like swimming. I’d honestly swim a lot less. However, I just know the reward is so worth it. Today will not prove to be any different.

It’s practically high tide but only a 3.5 and there is plenty of beach to walk on. The sand seems to be even higher today. I feel taller as I set down my pack on my favorite rock and get ready to swim. Eventually this rock will be buried beneath a couple feet of sand.

The surf is small. I stand knee deep in the water and just let the next couple of waves break so I don’t have them breaking right on me. I just don’t feel ready to get wet under such sudden circumstances.

Well it is time and there is nothing else to do than to submerge myself and immediately my reality shifts and it is good to be wet underneath the blanket of the ocean surface. I wonder how I could ever imagine otherwise.

The water is smooth and I pass over the surface like a knife over butter. I stare below me and I see clouds of white mist in pale blue water. The white effervescence looks like granules of dust floating in blue airy space. If I focus on them I see bubbles, sand and other organic and unknown specs coming together to form a single ethereal body.

I notice a new buoy here at the south end. It’s fairly inshore and at about the half way point down the beach just in front of the middle stairs. It says “Salty Strands.” Apparently whoever was in charge of inscribing this buoy is more realism and less playful fantasy, but “Salty Strands” does have a nice ring to it.

As I turn to head back north I see the second South buoy further off shore and closer to the end here. Do I really swim that far out when I have passed it before? The last few swims I do seem to swim closer to shore and have to aim west as I near the large rock at the end so I don’t swim into it or get pushed into it by an oncoming wave.

The water seems almost clear today but I can’t see the bottom. I only see a solid blue. The shades vary from light, sky blue to a dark blue that is nearly black. I imagine this water as an extension of my own psyche. Here I am swimming in my own thoughts and feelings. I’m trying to welcome every feeling that comes to me here: the coolness of the water, the warm spots, internal reactions to random memories and imaginations. This mental energy reflects off the water below me. These shades of water reflect off the movie screen in my mind. Where does the water end and thought begin? Does it even matter? It’s easier to see thought as shades of light than to label them with words. The words are just another refraction in the water.

I’m near the north end of the beach now. I can’t find the Green Monster. I do see several individuals paddling out on surfboards towards this guy further out who is just sitting on a surfboard and yelling at the paddlers to go faster. This is all feeling very ROTCish.

I don’t want to get in the way of this very serious event and aim for just outside of the yelling guy. Once I get near him, I find the Green Monster. It is being straddled by the yeller. I wonder just what the Green Monster thinks of all of this.

Once I am about 10 feet past the guy and the Green Monster, I turn around and say “Good Morning” to the him. He says good morning back but he is all business. I sense there is no time for chit chat here.

I head back to end the swim. I see just the faintest shade of blue in the sky way out on the horizon. I’m hoping that really is what I am seeing and that it thickens and spreads.

Once I am back at the car, it still looks like Catalina in enveloped in a film of cloud but it feels like someone has nudged up the dimmer switch. Not long afterwards in the early afternoon, the sun emerges and it is good.