Surfing. Hurts.

Stretch your bodies kids. Yes, wear your sunscreen, but for god's sake: stretch. I have read countless interviews with Gerry Lopez in which he describes waking at dawn and immediately working through a yoga routine. This is something I'd like to say that I do. But christ, I'm really stiff first thing in the morning. I'd also like to do push ups and sit ups every day, and occasionally I do, sometimes for an entire week straight. But, in reality, I'm just not that into working out. And as a painful and painfully easy to predict result, I hurt myself. Most recently I have angered one of the (small) muscles in my lower back, something that happens at least twice a year, enough to annoy and occasionally terrify me, but not enough to motivate me to become the next Taylor Knox. And it really, really hurts. Wrenching your back is supposed to be an old man's injury, so now my mortality is screaming me in the face. What would I do if I truly injured myself and couldn't surf anymore? How then would I justify my existence and hipper-than-thou attitude?

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Let's hope it doesn't come to me having to bodysurf or ride a longboard for the rest of my life because of a lazy or careless injury (this is not to disparage loggers and bodysurfers--but hey, not my bag). But, I don't think I'll be taking back health for granted anymore. . . oh hell, who am I kidding. I'm absolutely going to do that. But I am writing this post while perched on a yoga ball, so that counts for something, right?

Out of the Shadows

Until recently, I have tried to keep separate my surfing from my literary interests. This started when I began to take the idea of grad school seriously, right around the end of my junior year in college. I started to resent surfing, at first just a little bit, then quickly and unstoppably. I found myself saying things to people like, "the life of a surfer is so limiting." I know why I said that then, but surfing was not really to blame: I was. Tired of surfing foggy, cold, blown-out closeouts, and even more tired of the cutesy small-townness of California's Central Coast (capitalization intended and deserved), I confused my own limited lifestyle for that of the surfing life in general. I could have moved to a more wave-rich coastline (though my attempt at doing so in San Diego failed) or embraced other elements of a more varied kind of surferdom. Trips more exotic than Baja would have been helpful here, or perhaps wider experimentation with board design and waves could have further, uh, stoked the stoke. But, who cares? For one or all of these reasons, I grew bored with myself as a surfer and moved on. Or so I thought.

I never really gave up on surfing entirely of course. Even while living with Margaret in Paris I harbored thoughts of getting myself to Biarritz, if only to see Hossegor, that dream of all beachbreak dreams. And carefully packed with all of my furniture, clothing, and bookish detritus in the back of the rented pickup I drove up to San Francisco for the Big Move to grad school, were my cherished Parmenters. But then they sat unused, saving of course the rare, hot autumnal afternoon glass-off days that happened infrequently my first fall in the City. Still, surf magazines were scoffed at more often than read in this period, with my radar honed more on Hayden White's conception of narrative structure, and with wrestling with whatever the hell Foucault was trying to say. When professors asked what I had done in my early 20s while my contemporaries were undergraduates, and I answered "surfing," they nearly always tried to goad me back into the water. Maybe they were trying to tell me something about my soon-to-be discovered lack of academic conviction. But, perhaps to save my ego, I don't think so. I think they saw the writing on the wall in terms of academic jobs for one thing, but possibly and more importantly, they recognized in a way I didn't, but in which academics and dreamers are more likely than most to be tuned-in to, the beauty of a life devoted to something like surfing. After all, there are few things more impractical than basing a life on mastering an obscure scholarly topic, then moving from city to city desperately chasing a paycheck for lecturing to bored undergrads; except perhaps for devoting a life to riding waves. And here's the kicker: when it came time for me to move on to the PhD, something for which I had devoted myself to for a number of years, I balked. I fucking couldn't do it. I didn't want to. I hadn't surfed on a daily basis in three years, but, there it was. I was still first and foremost a surfer. I couldn't leave it for the less sexy, but more complicated and exotic mistress of being an academic intellectual, probably living in Kansas, or maybe Ohio, or hell, even New York City. I had my affair with the non-surfing, outside world, but, like Tom Blake, my god was in the ocean.

I quit academia about a year and half ago. I'm once again fit, tan, blonde. I don't regret my time away from the water at all. In ways, it has made me a better surfer. I'm less concerned with turns, more focused on the glide, which of course means I'm going faster and my turns are better: linked, critical, flowing. I'm mostly riding a beautiful Pat Rawson-shaped 6'2" that catches waves without trying, accelerates on its own, and goes straight-fucking up, all in a relaxed, Cadillac-esque 2+1 setup. I love Ocean Beach, though it intimidated me a bit at first, and have had some of the best waves of my life in that occasionally edenic cauldron. I'm in Santa Cruz a couple times a month, high-lining around her points and reefs, growing tired of the crowds; fantasizing a move to Aptos.

And what's better: I'm finally joining surfing and writing. I'm a fool for not recognizing the possibility earlier, probably foolish for embracing it now. Yet, it's a natural fit. I'm far more interested in the history of surfing, with experimental boards and characters, surf spots and trends, than I ever was before, and each time I take off on a wave nowadays, I'm aware of how that history led to my riding that particular wave in that particular way. I've somehow talked my way into working with a famous surfing writer, helping him with his latest project, learning and hopefully shoehorning my way into an existence as One Who Writes About Surfing.

I don't know where this leads. But, then again, I don't know where anything leads. But I will write about surfing. And I will get better at both. There are aspects of the two disciplines that I can improve at: tuberiding, and a stronger written voice. Stay tuned.

The death of words...

This morning's "Fresh Air" broadcast featured past interviews with two recently dead writers and critics: Reynolds Price, the much-loved southern novelist; and Wilfrid Sheed, a British critic-cum-nonfiction writer and novelist. Both of these men were about 80 years old, and though they came from different countries, their particular ways of speaking struck me as being quite similar. They each seemed to delight in fastening words together, as if their specific points were secondary to the ways in which they were presented--poetically, thoughtfully, and with a graceful ease. While listening to the broadcast, I was struck by how these men seemed to speak for a different time; the language they made use of and the care with which they composed their statements seemed old fashioned, but also much much better than how almost anyone speaks under the age of, say, 60.

I got to thinking about who would speak for today's American literary presence, and the first author who jumped to mind was Jonathan Franzen. I suppose that, aside maybe from Don Delillo, Franzen is the most respected--at least on a worldwide popular and pseudo high-minded scale--American author today. Compared with Price and Sheed, Franzen's spoken English is sadly inferior. I listened to a clip from a radio interview with Franzen late in 2010, and there is not even close to the same command, confidence, and resonant joy in language as evidenced by writers of ages past.

What does this all mean? I am not sure exactly, but I suspect that there are historical causes at play here. The most interesting possibility is not the most obvious: the postmodern (I know I know: not supposed to use that hackneyed term anymore) condition has eroded a reverence for words that once consumed men and women of letters. That makes me sound like Allan Bloom, but, well, there you have it. Then of course there is the reliance on technology to speed up communication, a condition that obliterates subtlety and joy in the name of efficiency, speed, and access.

I fear that the worst part of the 60s, namely the attempted eradication of a sense of good, better, and best in cultural expression, was so successful that we have lost the ability or interest in promoting a learned mastery of words, all in order to include all points of view.

First interesting development

Today I accepted an internship as an editor and (hopefully) writer for the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's magazines. I guess there is life after grad school. I have long harbored the dream of one day writing about baseball for a living, but that seemed even more of a stretch than becoming a professor. Not that this internship leads directly down that path, but, at least I'm closer than I was a week ago. Writing about baseball in an official capacity--woah.

Here is another wonderful video; I think it is the best I've seen about the misery of humanities PhDs in training...

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1944515

Great video.

We well-read people are better than you.

Macbook Air. Politics.

So last week I bought a Macbook Air. The 11in. über cool model. The model that is designed specifically to draw envious stares. Sure, the thinness presents all sorts of practical benefits, but really, nobody buys the Air for that. Those of us willing to spend $1000 on a computer like this are concerned with aesthetics first and foremost. Plus, once you play with one, it is instantly apparent that you can never again go back to the world of regular, non-Air computers. I do not care in the slightest how much more powerful the Macbook Pro is. I do not care that I could have bought a super-PC capable of rendering the fabric of space time for the same price as my diddly little Air. I just had to have this machine.

On a darker note, I want to take this time to announce my complete and total annoyance with the way the horrible tragedy of the Tucscon shooting has turned into a...wow this Air is thin. Did I mention that I bought a new Macbook Air? And it is so quiet. And so fast. And so...