liquid life

Water and me – not two. I get that. There’s water and there’s me – this me of me, this Buddy Cushman, this Milky Dent, this “Here” – and we – water and me – are not separate. We’ve never been separate. I’ve come to understand that.

I was in the Pacific Wednesday afternoon, yup, with my boogie board, and from my place in the ocean, looking out into the blue for the next wave, just like surfers do, I could see those surfers beyond my courage, my “this is far enough” place of footing, the surfers were out there where the three and four-foot waves were breaking, and it was pretty thrilling to be so right there and see the wave crest, see the surfer’s drop, see the speed of the board, humans literally flying over the water. And none of any of that happened, happens, without water, and there I was in it, just like the day before, just like two and three days before that. Me and water, water and me.

I fled to the water from Golden Hill yesterday because those are things I do – chase water, flee, go someplace else – and in part, yesterday, because of all my sweat back there in the room I rent on B Street. The thermometer on the wall in the living room said 83 at noon, in the condo, and my room was surely four or five degrees warmer. If I was a toy store I’d be in the Yellow pages listed “Sweat R Us”. Like at the meditation meeting Monday, sweating such that the word profusely comes closer to hardly at all than the way it was. More salt water.

Then tonight, on my third Dunkin Donuts large iced-coffee plastic cup, filled with ice and sacred California tap water, I somehow knocked a newly re-filled cup over. Fortunately I had my beach towel up and in this toasty room for a laundry wash tomorrow, and used it to sop up the rug. What was left after the rug’s quick claim.

I sopped up the best I could, I made silent amends to the Colorado River, I tasted lingering salt residue from the graceful Pacific on my left arm. I re-filled the cup and I’m drinking from it now – it’s cold, it’s so good, it’s an honoring of the planet and all the brook and river and wild-sea fairies, Kwan Yin, a thousand hands and eyes seeing it all, and I’m pretty sure I’ll take a shower in more of that precious liquid in the coming hours.

All this – the Blog requesting my presence all of a sudden – has little to say. It’s just thusness. It’s love. Like water wearing my high school ring. Cold water replenishing all the sweat. Even a grateful rug. It’s okay to write this here. I wouldn’t say any of this if we by chance ran into each other on the street. I will tell you I was talking a lot – a lot – while I was in the Pacific Wednesday. To me, about me, for me. Water has come to fetch me this week. Happily, I’ve been quite fetchable.