Sunday morning. Year 77.

I come here to the edge of the continent with my canvas beach chair and my dog. I am here for my morning mind exercises. I am reading my own mind.
I settle down three feet from the cliff edge, 80 feet above the ocean on Point Loma. I watch the brown pelicans gliding without an effort just two feet above the surface of the green water. I see the waves, unconscious of time, swelling, breaking, rolling in on the rocks. The surfers are here, a quarter mile out on bone colored boards wet and slick like seals, waiting for their time.
Way out, a couple of miles maybe, I spot a rhythmic spray of seawater headed a few meters straight up. The gray whales are making their annual pilgrimage to the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez to bear their young. In and out, in and out, their breathing. I listen to my own.
I am mindful of my experience here, looking west until I can see no more. I think about the sadness enveloping loss, my own pesky expectations of others, my anger growing from hurt and I turn thoughts over in my hand like small beach rocks. Now I decide to let them go—no, to give them away.
I give my sadness to the horizon. I watch it float away toward Japan, smaller and smaller until I can’t see it at all. I give my expectations to the pelicans and they glide away with it. My anger I donate to the waves and the waves cover it with white foam and it sinks to the bottom, sleeping with the fishes.
Some might call this meditation, this clearing out. I don’t call it anything. I’m just improving my thinking, reading my mind.
The ocean is SO big. There is so much room out there, to let things be. I am of so little consequence to the ocean. The sea would envelop me, absorb me, with no notice at all. This is why the ocean is of so much solace to me; it can take me in without resistance, without a care.
My mind improvement this early morning is to allow my sadness, expectations and anger to be of the same tiny consequence to my bigger self as I am to the ocean.
Breathe, I remind myself.