break.

nov 21, 2009

i guess if they’re truly circles, they can only be full.

circling back to itacare, brazil, high in the air.  the last time i was there, between sessions of being tumbled by the ocean’s wash, surfboard tangled somewhere deep below (above?), i was checking my email madly to see if a mission had come through.  this time i will be doing it to see if i get to travel to London to accept the John Llewyn Rhys prize for the book i wrote about the one that eventually did.  it might be the only compelling reason in the world to leave brazil early.  in the hold below me, in my backpack underneath pairs of shorts and sunglasses and different flavors of Frisbees is an overcoat, a scarf, galoshes, a shirt, and a tie.

the clouds have cleared, patches of green on the ground, dappled with lakes.  i am in the planes last row, the one that doesn’t recline,  my laptop pushed into me.  over the black backs of people’s heads, stewardesses are smiling their way down the aisle pushing a narrow cart.  how many times have i seen this?  a hundred?  more?  will i tell my grandchildren a story that starts with “when i was a young man, when we had enough oil to lift things as heavy as planes full of people, i was able to see the world.  yes, many places,  oceans, mountains, waterfalls, ancient things. we could travel thousands of miles in only a few hours, so far in the sky that cities seemed smaller than we were, and when the sun set over the clouds, the ground looked like it was covered with smooth orange waves, just like you would imagine.  yes, we used to smoke cigarettes too.  why?  well…uh…i’m not really sure.  i guess we thought it was cool. ”

i will be glad to visit itacare again, with fewer thoughts pulling me away from it.

clouds cleared again.  this time a city, its roads weaving like veins.

last time i was there, the ocean taught me important lessons.  early in the trip, as i was getting my sea legs, i walked through the forest to get to a beach that, in an interesting topographical turn, was deep in a bay.  this meant that with the mass of water carried in with each wave, the bowl of the bay held temporarily more liquid than gravity’s equilibrium preferred.  at one end of the beach, a current carried it out.  the locals called it “the elevator”.  it took you perilously close to the rocks, but if you paddled hard away from them, you would find yourself pulled out past the break without getting pounded by broken waves.

that’s where i found myself, bobbing on the swells that i wouldn’t otherwise have been able to fight my way to, ones i didn’t really deserve.  i stayed out there for half an hour, gathering my courage.  the waves started to get bigger.  whoa.  wow.  look at them crash. i should paddle farther out.

i looked behind me.

oh.

the white crumbles at the top of a breaking wave,  metres away.  i started to turn my board around. too late.

smash.

(glug.)

it’s good to live as much as possible as often as possible.  sometimes that means staying home and reading poems, and other times it means getting sucked to the bottom of the ocean, your surfboard tethering you to the sand and the surface seems so far away and you need to breathe and it’s all water and the airs not any closer and that dark panic starts to fly from that centre spot like a thousand black birds and you fight it and struggle and then the surface and a breath and on top of that breath another wave and you roll some more.

i washed into shore, tripping over my leash in the surf, and lied on my back, huffing. i made a mistake.  you can’t fight the ocean.  it’s too powerful.  you have to release yourself into it, and let it carry you.  it’s the only way.

perhaps i will get carried to London next week.   if not, the company i am keeping on the shortlist makes me feel like i have already won.   as will rising and falling with the swells, well past the break, in the last of the day’s purple light.  that’s where i really shine as a surfer.