Zero: In Terms of Surfing

Upon “discovering” Hawaii, Captain Cook and his crew became the first Westerners, and possibly the first non-Polynesian people to witness the act of surfing. In reaction to what he witnessed, in his journal he wrote, “I could not help concluding that this man felt the most supreme pleasure while he was driven on so fast and smoothly by the sea.”--He was probably right. The Hawaiians called their pursuit He`e Nalu or wave sliding. They did this by cutting large planks of wood out of huge trees and shaping the planks into a board with a round nose at the top, and a flat back at the end. They were the first people to fully appreciate the ocean and its infinite power, celebrating this physical and psychological influence by riding the waves that caressed their islands by breaking on its reefs and beaches. What many people fail to realize about the Hawaiians is the means of how they became Hawaiian in the first place. They sailed north from Tahiti in war canoes, and stumbled upon the most isolated land formations on the planet, 8 tiny islands in the great Pacific’s dead center. Their cultures knowledge and connection with the sea and nature led them to develop this spiritual activity. Surfing’s function as a cleansing ritual is obvious. It’s a joyful and purifying act, bringing all those who are willing enough to learn the ritual to balance, to zero.

Waves break because of the configuration of rocks, sand, and or coral in relationship to depth. When a wave break and form what look like a tube or pipe this is usually because the wave is traveling through deep water and suddenly hits a shallow shelf, slab, or reef on the ocean floor. This relationship is what creates the very beautiful but many times very dangerous tube. To get covered up by the wave, in essence to be inside the wave is surfing’s ultimate goal, what we like to call getting tubed or barreled. It’s a feeling only a surfer knows--which is unfortunate. Paddling for a wave with the whole line up looking at you, standing up straight into a crouched position, to take the bottom turn and pull onto the face of the wave crouched down, legs burning, looking out of a portal where time is trapped and space is stuck, shaded from the world and the decay of time, this is being in the tube. These metaphysical chambers between the there and the now capable of stopping time, creating pure equilibrium, define the live for the now life style. In the tube you are moving forward. There is no way or form of turning back. Traces of you being on the wave are continuously washed away making every second spent there unique.

Surfing has become more to me than just a hobby or sport. It’s an escape. When I surf, I can forget all of what was bothering me upon entering the water and just surf. It’s very hard to explain, because it’s not that I’m erasing my problems and replacing them with surfing. When I’m surfing it’s like I’ve taken a deep breath and walked away from a troubling situation, and I can think about it with a cool head. After surfing you come out so refreshed and new. I feel better than I did before I got it. It’s hard not to look at things differently from when you got in the water, to when you got out.

Timothy Leary was fascinated by wave sliders. Surfers connect directly with a separate reality governed by nature making every one of us a sort of religious specialist, eliminating the need for a priest or shaman. Each wave ridden becomes a ritual of its own. His fascination was not undeserved. He saw the highest destiny of man on Earth in a form of existence would be a purely aesthetic one; that surfers were the first “tribe” to reach this level of appreciation. Reaching this point was the highest possible goal that man could achieve as a species. Historically, man would save up enough food (or money in this day and age) so that he’d have enough for later. Thus the more food he could save the more successful he was as a person. He felt this was a false pursuit. He thought that the dance was everything. Being in the moment is what is really worth pursuing, and that surfers had discovered this before any other “tribe”. Leary felt that surfers were the “be here now” life style. When getting tubbed, the wave is falling over your head and converging unto itself disappearing and all the traces of you being on the wave or the wave even being there at all, slips slowly back into the sea. In that instant it’s all about being there at that moment in time and space, not about where you’ve been or where you’re going to be. We surfers live for those moments and base our lives around having as much of those moments as possible. Which was, in a sense, the highest level of attainment man could achieve in his life on Earth.

Balance is what surfing is all about. To be able to physically practice surfing you have to know how to properly distribute your weight across the board as to not fall off. Most people surf to bring balance to their lives. To most surfing is a takeoff, two turns, and wipe out and that’s what they’ve got to get them through the week. It’s an outlet where they can detach from everything for a couple hours while still being aware of your surroundings and being able to for fill your responsibilities. Why do I surf, what point do my ramblings have? Well to me, it’s a way of protesting all that is evil and wrong with this unforgiving world and to remind people that life is more about the dance, than the acquisition of wealth. While I’m surfing I am me and everything in my world and everything around me is at peace. While I’m surfing my world is at balance, my world is at zero.