The Church of Surf
Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 5:21 am
Yeah, I know this is a slalom site but I just read an astounding essay by an interesting writer - Steven Kotler (West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief). It is in the New York Times Magazine section last page yesterday. There is a connection here for our "kind".
Seems Kotler got Lyme disease and it nearly killed him over the course of a couple years. The long road to recovery is a lethargic one and was ridden with many bed days. He had lost 25 pounds and was contemplating suicide; that's when the call from a friend came inviting him to go surfing - thinking it would do him good...
"Surfing is not found among remedies - common or otherwise - for chronic immune conditions, and since I had rejected just about every mystical system known to man, I didn't think it was time to start believing in some aquatic hippie nonsense about communion with water. All I know is that when that ride was over I wanted another and another and another. The ocean was offering me a taste, no more, but for the first time in two years, for that one wave-riding instant, I felt the thrum of life, the possibilities of possibilities."
"Five waves later I wasn't just exhausted, I was disassembled. Those five waves led to 15 days in bed, but on the 16th I drove back for more. I caught five more waves and spent another two weeks recovering. The ratio would stay bad for months, but there was no way around it: I started to feel better, and the world started to feel mysterious again."
Water, asphalt, it's the same in many ways.
SL
Seems Kotler got Lyme disease and it nearly killed him over the course of a couple years. The long road to recovery is a lethargic one and was ridden with many bed days. He had lost 25 pounds and was contemplating suicide; that's when the call from a friend came inviting him to go surfing - thinking it would do him good...
"Surfing is not found among remedies - common or otherwise - for chronic immune conditions, and since I had rejected just about every mystical system known to man, I didn't think it was time to start believing in some aquatic hippie nonsense about communion with water. All I know is that when that ride was over I wanted another and another and another. The ocean was offering me a taste, no more, but for the first time in two years, for that one wave-riding instant, I felt the thrum of life, the possibilities of possibilities."
"Five waves later I wasn't just exhausted, I was disassembled. Those five waves led to 15 days in bed, but on the 16th I drove back for more. I caught five more waves and spent another two weeks recovering. The ratio would stay bad for months, but there was no way around it: I started to feel better, and the world started to feel mysterious again."
Water, asphalt, it's the same in many ways.
SL
