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The newly emerging ideal was solitude, purity, perfect waves far from civilization.
been, in my mother’s terms, gathering much moss. I had lived with a couple of women, but, since Caryn, had never felt committed heart and soul.
What was consistent was a certain serenity that followed a rigorous session. It was physical, this postsurf mood, but it had a distinct emotionality too. Sometimes it was mild elation. Often it was a pleasant melancholy. After particularly intense tubes or wipeouts, I felt a charged and wild inclination to weep, which could last for hours. It was like the gamut of powerful feelings that can follow heartfelt sex.
(Patrick White: “parents, those arch-amateurs of life.”)
With my usual one-eyed thoughtlessness, I never asked her what she wanted. We never talked about the future. She was nearly thirty-five. The truth was, we were mismatched. I had somehow kept her interested for years, but I wasn’t what she wanted. Meanwhile, I took her for granted.
Being out in big surf is dreamlike. Terror and ecstasy ebb and flow around the edges of things, each threatening to overwhelm the dreamer. An unearthly beauty saturates an enormous arena of moving water, latent violence, too-real explosions, and sky. Scenes feel mythic even as they unfold. I always feel a ferocious ambivalence: I want to be nowhere else; I want to be anywhere else. I want to drift and gaze, drinking it in, except maximum vigilance, a hyperalertness to what the ocean is doing, cannot be relaxed.
“He either says you should look into the pit, and see exactly what it’s doing, so you’ll know,” Peter said. “Or you should not look, keep thinking positive, don’t think about what the wave could do to you, just think about making every fucker you catch.”
“You think you’re living in paradise,” he said. “And then . . .” He gave an eloquent shrug—the gestural equivalent of the fado.
