I have had my acquaintance with the ocean. I miss her. She was a good friend at a time, a joyful companion. A real love.
I was afraid of water when I was a little kid. Not sure why. Terrified of swimming pools.
One way or the other I got past it, and fell in love with it. I grew up in West Los Angeles until I was about twelve. My mother and my stepfather used to take us to the Santa Monica Beach. I remember learning to work with the waves.
Working with the waves is one of my favorite metaphors of life. If you have a wave coming at you, and it's breaking, the dumbest thing you can do is to try to fight it, to try to get past it. The scariest thing, and the smartest, is to dive right into the heart of it, and swim hard under it and out to the other side, at which point, if you've planned this right, you are past where the waves are breaking, and out floating around in utter bliss past the breakers, atop a warm sea.
Sure, you might get bumped around some on the bottom. These things happen. But you do NOT want to get whacked in the face by that big wave, because you can really lose control that way, maybe even get knocked out, and that's not good.
Dodging waves is an art. It's like playing with a big, friendly, but somewhat rough spirit. Like being a little kid with a Saint Bernard, who didn't really mean to knock you over, but that's just how Saint Bernards are.
I remember what the ocean tasted like in the Santa Monica Bay when I was a kid. It had a kind of rough briny taste, like you'd expect from a big rough being. I liked it.
My family left Los Angeles in 1970. We more or less came back in 1977.
Somewhere in the early 80's, I got around to trying swimming in the Santa Monica Bay again. And then I tasted it.
The human brain is a funny thing. It can forget so much, and remember things wrongly so easily, but a sensory experience in one place, compared to a later one in the same situation, that is different, is like a jolt of electricity. Especially with a primitive sense, like taste.
It didn't taste briny and funky anymore. There was a new taste.
The Bay tasted dirty. And I lost all of my desire to go into it.
Kids these days? Maybe they think that's what the ocean is supposed to taste like. Maybe that's why they surf and swim in it, and maybe even catch an unexplained gastrointestinal or respiratory disorder at times. Because they don't know any better. Because they didn't taste the briny rough being when it was just funky, not dirty.
But still, I remember, even as a little kid, the thing where you go down to the ocean and you get tar on your feet. I had no idea what it was, never thought about it. Thought it was just something that grew in the ocean, I guess.
I wonder what the ocean tasted like before little kids got mining tar on their feet. I'll never know. That's sad.
Update from FishOutOfWater:
Surfers of all sorts notice the water quality. That's why many of them are involved in environmental organizations. Surfrider is one specific to surfers but there are many others.
Most surfers travel some so they discover the differences between clean and polluted water.
Thanks, Fish. You and Fishgrease are doing such a good job here that we're going to have to figure out a way to differentiate your nicknames. "Red Fish, Blue Fish" ain't gonna work :-}