The Day To Target
Well maybe it hasn’t been exactly 72 hours since our last rains, but I feel like I have waited long enough for the runoff and debris to clear considering we did not get all that much precipitation. If I grow a 6th digit, I promise to put it to good use. The water looked clean to me. I’m sure it’s fine.
I left my place at about 9:45 and I’m freezing. My apartment just doesn’t want to warm up and I’m too lazy to walk to the closet and grab something warm. However, as soon as I get to my car, I feel the sun hit my neck and already things are looking up.
It’s a beautiful sunny morning. There is some texture on the water that I notice once I get to the bluff but not all that much. Doheny and the Strand look more still than Capo Beach.
Walking down the stairs, I can see the shadows of the underwater rocks all over the surface of the water. When I am on the beach, I can see through the wave faces into the clouds of sand that the water stirs as the wakes pass over the water. The tide is highish and I am trying to relax my mind and body to ease the light shivering from the cold. I can feel the sun on my skin and it feels even warmer here on the beach.
I don’t see anyone in the water today. Surf is super small too and the surf report this morning says this is “the day to target” this week. Glad I made it!
On the one hand I totally do not want to do this. This is certainly not going to improve my coldness issues. I’m just starting to really enjoy the sun, do I have to get in the water? However on the other hand I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this water is going to do wonders for my psyche. I need that water to calm my nerves and get my overall mindset back on track. I need to surrender my body to the mercy of nature’s elements. I need to present myself naked (or nearly so) and weak to the power of the ocean and receive its grace. Well here I go. May the will of the currents set me free.
I walk out past the meager surf and I start to swim and immediately I hear the squeaking of a nearby bird. Oh it is a Curlew! I usually only see them on the shore and not out over the water. I try to snap a quick shot and we’ll just see how that turns out.
The water is cold but not quite as cold as last weekend. The initial cold shock is less fierce and I seem to regain composure by the time I reach the little lifeguard hut. The water is clear and I enjoy watching the life below me. Kelp and sea grass sway back and forth rooted to rocks that have been sitting on this ocean floor for God only knows how long. I wonder what indigenous person may have seen the same thing I am looking at a millennium ago.
With every stroke of my arms I try to let go of myself and the thing I think that I am and the thing I think that I want to be. At least for the next hour, I’ll let the ocean be my judge as to what those things actually are and I’ll gladly receive its verdict. Every breath is an emptying. I raise my head to observe the shore to my left. It’s all that I can see and there doesn’t need to be anything else. My world shrinks down to just this stretch of beach. My experience compresses down from the moment I entered the water and I look ahead only as far as when I will leave it.
It is such a wonderful day here. Over the sky above there is only blue empty space and then some large puffy clouds just to the land side of the shore. I pause and look south toward the point and see a path of light the sun has spread out before me. Soon I reach the south end of the beach and take in the cliffs below the headlands.
The northbound journey is good. I manage to hold my own in the cold pretty well. I do feel the cold close in over the second half but it’s totally doable. The intensity of the cold keeps me here which is exactly where I want to be. Then it’s here - those bathrooms just below the Ritz. I’m relatively close to shore today. I take a selfie because I’m told I should post more of “myself” to Instagram.
I swim back to my finishing spot, grab my backpack and head back up the stairs. I try to continue my coldness meditation because there seems to be plenty of it right now. Someone along the way asks me if it is difficult to walk after swimming so long. I say that it isn’t but then I wonder if that is true. I guess “difficult” is not a word I would choose but my legs feel a bit more stiff and heavy.
I rinse off and arrive back home just as my vacuum cleaner is being delivered. It has been six weeks of no vacuum cleaner and believe me, it is well over due.
I have to admit that I look a little cold in this picture. Also my head looks huge.