Weekend
I spent most of the weekend reading and updating my iPod, so to satisfy everybody who might be undergoing beach deprivation at this point in my blog, here is an excerpt from my book, Wave of Incarnations. This is actually something that could happen practically any weekend during the winter on the North Shore:
Finding one of the last parking spaces, Otis took his favorite bigger board off the roof of the car and headed purposefully for the shining ethereal blue gap between the shadowy trees, where the sand fell away like a golden waterfall down to the ocean. The trees were full of people sitting, squatting, and leaning, all of them earnest surfing fans, many of them kids and teenagers and many of them sun-darkened wiry older adults. Stepping lightly over the lip into the moist yellow sand, Otis observed the grand phthalo blue, white-capped stretch of Pipeline/Backdoor materialize before him like heaven on earth, simultaneously noting from the corner of his eye the tripod jungle of cameras set up to the left, the presence of six surfing magazine editors named Matt, the mixed-race busty popular blonde nicknamed “Tarzana” in her pink crocheted bikini, the twin boy and girl in old-school punk attire, the guy carrying the proposed independent Hawaiian nation flag if sovereignty ever became a fact, the Gala Daliesque woman with the charmed alive white cockatoo on her shoulder, the kid hawking board leashes, the Brazilians under the black cabana, the black Rastafarian couple holding hands, the grinning young professional tourists, the insouciant lanky beach bums in faded t-shirts, board shorts, and baseball caps turned backward, and the not-infrequent soulful-eyed and modest faces of the Surf Junkies, who simply found this beach, and all its attendant beauty and insanity, the closest they would ever find to a spiritual home on earth.
I Came to Surf. Otis spotted the rip, and, grinning, launched into it. Diving deep under the first break, and the serious second break, knee driving down tail of board, he came up to see Sammy and Adam, and a host of variegated strangers, floating in a flotsam lineup, half-submerged photographers bobbing in clusters like mines left over from World War II.
Finding one of the last parking spaces, Otis took his favorite bigger board off the roof of the car and headed purposefully for the shining ethereal blue gap between the shadowy trees, where the sand fell away like a golden waterfall down to the ocean. The trees were full of people sitting, squatting, and leaning, all of them earnest surfing fans, many of them kids and teenagers and many of them sun-darkened wiry older adults. Stepping lightly over the lip into the moist yellow sand, Otis observed the grand phthalo blue, white-capped stretch of Pipeline/Backdoor materialize before him like heaven on earth, simultaneously noting from the corner of his eye the tripod jungle of cameras set up to the left, the presence of six surfing magazine editors named Matt, the mixed-race busty popular blonde nicknamed “Tarzana” in her pink crocheted bikini, the twin boy and girl in old-school punk attire, the guy carrying the proposed independent Hawaiian nation flag if sovereignty ever became a fact, the Gala Daliesque woman with the charmed alive white cockatoo on her shoulder, the kid hawking board leashes, the Brazilians under the black cabana, the black Rastafarian couple holding hands, the grinning young professional tourists, the insouciant lanky beach bums in faded t-shirts, board shorts, and baseball caps turned backward, and the not-infrequent soulful-eyed and modest faces of the Surf Junkies, who simply found this beach, and all its attendant beauty and insanity, the closest they would ever find to a spiritual home on earth.
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