Look Mommy! It’s a Merman!

~New Moon Over La Jolla~

I suppose it was a perfectly reasonable conclusion in the mind of the four-year-old girl who, sitting not twenty-five yards away, dining by candlelight on the patio of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club with her extended family, watched the strange creature, body of a man, red-neoprene head, big plastic eyes, and a rainbow swirl of colors flashing from its ears (multi-colored night light), emerge from the dark waters onto the beach before her. What didn’t seem entirely reasonable was the response of her grandmother: Jumping up from the dinner table and rushing onto the beach to see what the sea had borne: “Are you a merman! Where do you come from?” Come, came…I couldn’t resist the tense error: “I come from the sea and I come in peace. Take me to your leader.”

How a 4-year-old sees a swimmer emerge from the darkness?

After a shared laugh, she, realizing what she had said and still infinitely curious: “I mean, where did you start?” And, thus, another night swim at the Cove offers up an unforgettable experience.

After a few minutes of chatting with the highly animated and most amiable woman about sharks, the differences between bravery, bravado, acceptance and resignation; charities, and a seemingly insane group of people that are going to swim 75 miles at sea in hopes of making the lives of a few of America’s Wounded Warriors at least a little bit better, the “merman” strode off into the darkness to be reunited with his kind, just as they swam ashore some hundred yards north at the boat launch.

And in the mind of the grandmother who sees the same.

While the weekly night swim wasn’t meant to be done solo (I swam ahead and in a different direction), it almost seems as if the sea requires some breaking of the rules now and then; not following the plan. And for those who have never experienced solo swimming at sea, there are only a couple of Earthly experiences that compare…   And when the Great Mother puts away Her sun and moon, scatters Her stars across the blackness of space, and warms Her waters to a therapeutic  70°,  well...it is difficult to know where the sea ends and the swimmer begins; and there is no place I would rather be.

Beyond Avalon, there is a healing…

Team Members in attendance: Dan Henry, Lee Grove, Penny Nagel

Special thanks to Penny, who doubled her swim by putting glow sticks on the B buoy earlier in the day. 

One Way?

Unfortunately, I am not a believer in destiny. There is just no good reason for it to exist...no reason to make anything so complicated when the humans it was meant to be perpetrated upon aren't.

Fortunately, I am inconsistent, the victim of metabolism, the chemical processes of the body (mind, being an integrated consequence). And today I thanked...the periodic table?--for one of those moments when I wanted to believe, needed to believe.

I awoke this morning, the day before Memorial Day, to my normal routine: computer on; coffee maker on; rinse the eyes, dust off the teeth; password into computer; coconut oil, butter, cinnamon and baker's chocolate into the coffee; blend and settle in for the morning's news:

Seven Dead, Twenty Injured in California Mass Murder 

Obama in Afghanistan

Dozens die in Nigeria Attacks

North and South Korea Trade Fire

Man in Coma After Being Beaten by Gang in Kanagawa

Ad Infinitum...

And then I read this:

Man Catches Falling Baby, and I thought, Thank You! I needed that. Everybody needs that.

Humanity at its best. And, in my mind, there was a bigger story within this story: the opportunity to do good, the right thing, wasn't offered up by the worst humanity has to offer: the mistakes and misdeeds that are inflicted upon the masses by misguided individuals in positions of power. No, the darkest possible forces that lay at the origin of this opportunity to do right may simply have been some level of parental negligence; maybe not. Babies are slippery things. Duct tape and Velcro were insufficient to secure the last little bugger I babysat. (I no longer babysit: parents are so picky.) But here was a moment that inspired me to Google thebrightside.com as I was thinking, would the world be such a bad place if everyone, every morning awoke to The Bright Side of things, a news service that told nothing but the stories of good deeds and good people? Maybe it exists. Everything else exists in Google search! The results of that Google search shook my belief in non-belief. Those of you on the Beyond Avalon team will surely find value in what sat atop the webpage before me: The Wounded Warrior Project, not our choice for this benefit, but having a focus similar to the more financially efficient organization we've chosen:

Warrior Foundation--Freedom Station.

Of course there is irony in finding purpose through destruction. And what is known as The Contrast Doctrine (no cold without hot; good without bad), sadly, seems to be the inevitable defining characteristic of human mental existence. 

Maybe there is a path. Maybe I'm on it...along with you.

Where's Dan?

We didn't plan to lose one of our teammates at sea on our weekly night swim in La Jolla Cove. Things don't always go according to plan...