what the wavelets said

They weren't shouting. Nothing special - no crashing breakers, no flying foam in a roaring wind. Simply wavelets in the sunshine, a beautiful bay, and more distantly, the huge misty arc of mountains on down the coast of Cardigan Bay.

 An inexpressible (for me) sense of being, in a wide-open space filled with light.

I wasn't alone; the walking group are good friends, so I drifted in and out of conversation, and I took a little time to myself right down on the shore.

I wasn't looking for consolation, just a little presentmomentness. Which, of course, is always there all the time, if I can let the presentmomentness become me, and me, it. 

Certainly, it was in the wavelets. And so, because I wasn't thinking about consolation, I wasn't trying to get myself consoled, the moments at the sea's edge were calming and consoling. All you have to do is be with it and let it work. And a beautiful place is a big help!

Above and below the waves

If, on a rainy, stormy day, you take a funny little tram/train right out to the end of the very long jetty at Busselton, Western Australia, 

 you can walk down a spiral staircase to the bottom of the sea, and through windows, look into an aquarium - except the sea creatures are all wild, in their natural habitat.  


The water is not very deep - eight or ten meters - so the power of the waves can be seen much of the way down, in the rhythmic rise and fall of a group of large fish, for example, or the waving fronds of feeding corals and sponges. 

And it's lovely looking at the ocean's surface from beneath, that silvery, shifting, illusory film.

This was fascinating in itself, and very beautiful, but what stirred something deep within me was being at the same level as the surface, being able to see both above and below at the same time.

The Celts used to believe (some may still, and who's to say they're wrong?) that the boundary between land and water, be it the ocean or a river or a lake, is a "thin" place, where there is a less firm frontier between the world of spirits and the daily world we live in. 

Spirits and people can move more easily between worlds, at the water's edge. This may be true symbolically and mythically, even if you can't accept it in any literal sense.

This wasn't a beach or a river bank, it was the thin place between air and open ocean. Very wonderful; very strange.

"The river is within us, the sea is all about us," TS Eliot tells us, and I feel this is true in ways I'm only just beginning to understand.

What the waves at Coogee Beach have to tell me

A dip in the briny is a dip in the briny wherever you are, right?

Not really. I'm no power swimmer, so I don't concentrate on speed or distance, which I suppose might reduce the differences between swimming locations. 

A few strokes, a float, tread water, swim a bit more- so there's time to tune in to the ocean, the sea state, the light, the breeze, the - splash! 

A face full of Indian Ocean, because there is a bit of a swell today, nothing huge or surfer-exciting, just enough to make it particularly enjoyable to float on my back and feel lifted and lowered, with a powerful but irregular rhythm. We saw the oceanic rollers pounding ashore during stormy weather further south, in Eagle Bay. Here there's just a sense of that irresistible power handling me gently. I wouldn't have lasted long in the storm surf, that's for sure. 

The ageing intellect starts up. I"m mostly salt water; life evolved from the sea; the land's edge is the sea"s edge. TS Eliot's "The Dry Salvages" much on my mind recently. There is a strange kind of between-two-worlds belonging that comes from being rocked in the oceanic cradle. 

Always assuming that the classic Australian terror-fish isn't homing in on that tiny cut on my ankle, gaining speed, breaking the surface.....stop it. it's too shallow here, and there's a sort of shark deterrent line of floats I'm swimming inside. You're more likely to be struck by lightning. 

Another splash in the face. I shall give up thinking too much, and just float, rise and fall, dip and sway, give in to the the sensations of the present moment.

..."the unhurried ground swell....the ground swell that is and was from the beginning.."

Or, with apologies to Dylan Thomas, "the force that through the green ocean drives the swell, drives my green age" and very pleasant it is too. For a little while, I belong here, in this moment- rising, falling back, rising...