Ah yes.. a serene, dawn-lit capture of me entering the icy Autumnal waters of the saltwater pool. This is my morning routine to reset, recharge and shock the bejeebers from a misty mind. Even though it may look as if I do go gently into the proverbial good night, I do not.
Leading up to this and even extending to the fleeting moment before full body meets water, I am wrestling with thoughts trying their hearty best to call me back to the snugness of bed where before I dragged my feet besprinkled with dream dust through the pine needle forest, I lay deliriously warm and comfortable.
I adore my cozy jumper, sheepskin slippers, and hot water bottle for they are loyal and consistent in generating all sorts of fluffy feelings.
But what I have come to learn to appreciate even more is the simple and absolute profound power that lies in the jolt of Presence derived from a dawn cold water immersion. Especially for someone like myself who dances like a Pro in the realm of Crastinator.
It sharpens my focus and activates all sorts of pathways that help shape micro goals post immersion. As I glide through her icy embrace, clarity arrives to captain the inner navigator. Micro goals, when you are feeling into a new land with unknown opportunities like I am, are essential as reminded by a dream that landed this week.
The dream…
What arrives before the visual of his splendor is his smell. The air infuses with the odor of sanctity, of Holy smoke and all things saintly.
The fragrance of faith.
It is a moon-like moment drenched in fullness and expectation. He wears an elegant visage of spirits of a bygone era. Slightly worn by time and the melancholy of old creatures, he raises a deeply funneled brow that looks to be engraved and etched into his forehead by the heavy question that he carries.
A spectacle I cannot ignore, I raise my head from the book I am inhaling, the scent in itself a flavoring of all its characters. If only I could just sit here and sniff books all day. A pleasure that has defined me as a very strange woman whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a myriad of tales and gossip.
He brings with him a vista, a forest of factories and towers with a heavy stench of industry, a sky filled with ashes, an ocean littered with bones, and a constant ticking of a clock.
“What are you doing there sitting idle on that rock?” he mutters in a voice strained by centuries of tobacco use and like it had been left out in the storm too long.
“I am reading” his foreboding presence nudges me to consider how I should end my sentence…
“.. sir. “
“Nonsense! What you are doing child, is procrastinating! Call it what you need to delude yourself further but truth be told, you, with your sluggish disposition are doing nothing but…..”
“Now hang on a minute!” I realise how ridiculous this may sound speaking to Father Time.
“… I am not a child, I am nearly half a century” I say proudly (but still ridiculously) in the face of a timeless figure completely ignoring the fact that I had just been compared to a terrestrial gastropod mollusc.. without the hint of a shell.
Homeless.
“A true traitor to the movement you are” he huffs with disdain.
“Movement? What movement?”
“Your own, you twit!” more disdain with a splash of venom for added effect.
“You are rather rude. What’s the point of being old if you can’t infuse the young with gracious tales seeped in wisdom.” I respond daringly.
“Bollocks. Go find your own. Now get up.”
And I did.
Miffed by the dream, I grumble my way out of the warm bed, ignoring the lure of endless reasons to procrastinate. I climb into a bathing costume still damp from yesterday’s rainy swim, grumpily nudge Martyn into action and say..
“Come on.. there is one that has called to be shared. I need a photo… please.”
