Have you ever swum in the ocean? It is positively primeval. It is the one thing I most look forward to when I am near the beach, and a thing I gave up on for unimportant reasons for a time. I would wet my toes, knees, maybe up to my waist, but really rocking along with the waves as they wash over me, one after another?
Waiting for the next one, turning my back to it, facing it full on at a jump or diving right under it? Riding a wave back towards the shore? Feeling the salt on my tongue, the sun on my shoulders? It had been years, and I was poorer for having missed it.
There was a group of women in San Sebastian or Donostia, Basque Country, when I lived there, who met each and every morning for their swim out into the bay. My heroes, and wow: what way to start your day! I wanted to stay there forever and join their club.
I have never experienced the Pacific or another warm ocean. Nope, it has always been the icy Atlantic for me, on both sides of the pond. The exhilaration in the first hit of freezing cold water, first the feet, then the shins, further up with each step and backing away as the wave recedes, then blam! I am hit in the chest by one that is a little higher than the last. Once you're in up to your neck, you are good, aren't you? Not much else to soak, so you may as well stay and swim. And in the swim is the beauty, the power, the washing away of past, present and worry. Immersion, oblivion and total presence in the here and now.
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