Softness in Layers

So this week I decided to enjoy the beach sans camera - although there was one moment in the surf when I wished I could have had my camera with me to share my experience with you... it was very early, just after sunrise, with a dark purple grey rain storm receding into the distance over the sea, dark steel-blue showing through some lighter white clouds in the west, more rain moving over the mountains from the North, and soft yellow sunlight shafting through clouds shifting past each other in that 3D effect of the early hand-painted Disney movies. And that was just the sky. The water, smooth and soft with perfectly formed swell, was a light teal green, looking as if it had a luminosity of its own, with constantly changing patterns on the surface. Oh, and the water was warm, warmer than the air! At one point, lying on my board, I watched as a wave swelled towards me, a fleck of startlingly white foam appearing at the top, startlingly white in contrast to the dark of the sky, expanding sideways into a line of leaping tongues and finally crashing down in a thick textured line of white... Oh, and occasionally I remembered to actually paddle for a wave!
There was a time (and still are times) when I'm so caught up in my mind, in the uncontrolled -and seemingly uncontrollable - thoughts about my life (from the mundane to the monumental) when I was unable to experience the pleasure of such moments. I knew they were enjoyable, but it seemed like my mind's senses were numb to them. It was then that I realised (feelised) that it's not our external circumstances dictating how we feel - we carry the how of our experiences with us.
It's these moments of experience that I believe we're living for. And these moments are actually all around us, all the time, now, here - whether we're experiencing something conventionally beautiful (like nature) or sitting in traffic. The trick is realising this, and remembering it when when you're caught up... and then being able to let go, release yourself to the experience. (If anyone's mastered this trick, please let me know!)