“Finally, I popped to my feet and threw my weight into a careening turn that switched all my leftward momentum into a swift right-hand track, ran to the nose of the board and sped across the racing lip of the wave.” Photo: Paul Crétinon
I woke up suddenly for no reason, then I’d remembered I had nothing to do. No appointments, no agendas, no leaky gutters on the bungalow that needed repairing. Maizy slept on like stone, her brunette hair covering most of her face. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the small white bedroom blued slowly with the growing dawn. Although there was nothing I had to wake up for, once my eyes were open it was ritual to amble into the kitchen and brew a pot of pepper tea. I went through the back garden to the garage and noted a slight breeze coming from the distant mountains. More ritual: wetsuit and booties, wax, which board to choose? 9’6” pintail noserider never failed, and there was just enough room from stem to stern in the rusty station wagon that she fit neatly inside with the hatch closed. I let the engine warm up in the morning chill and retrieved a banana and the jug of pepper tea, kissed Maize, and trotted back through the garden. My breath stood out against the gray sky.
The drive down was uneventful. Twenty minutes of yellow streetlamps and empty, foggy intersections that matched the jazz on the radio. The fog grew thickest in the grassy dales right before the beach, and lifted suddenly as the coast appeared. Few guys out, some gnarled old timers staring and sneering about the tide. I changed quickly into the wetsuit, hopping and puffing in the knife-cold air. Sliding the sock from the 9’6” I marveled again at her sleek emerald lines, her crisp rails. I slapped a coat of wax on her and noticed one or two glances from the old timers.
The swell was lazy but I knew the break well enough; when one swung wide I turned, paddled twice and felt the pulse sling me forward. I stayed down, back arched, waiting for the wave to stand-up just a bit more, drifting left but peering right. Finally, I popped to my feet and threw my weight into a careening turn that switched all my leftward momentum into a swift right-hand track, ran to the nose of the board and sped across the racing lip of the wave.
In another hour I was showering and drying off, slipping the sock back on the board, and driving slowly home sipping pepper tea while listening to Stan Kenton on the radio. As rituals went, this was one that made perfect sense to me. In another day I’d be back to rituals that were technically obligations, although that was thinking in limited terms. One man’s obligation is another man’s reward, after all, and the opportunity to make a dollar and be self-reliant in this world is no small thing. However, I’ve never lost focus on what constitutes true ritual and what are mere hollow motions designed to satiate the machine. The fatal error is the belief that one’s obligations to the machine are a ritual of substance. Start down that line of thinking, I knew, and you were worse than lost: you were the walking dead.
