Magic Moments and life spent on the pulse

Magic Moments and life spent on the pulse



There are those moments out there on the ocean riding waves that we sometimes refer to as magic. They spring up when you don’t expect them and cannot be captured again by seeking them. They just happen. I think of those moments as the driving force that keeps surf riders so attached to every aspect of the sport.



To outsiders it appears to be an mere obsession. Even among the masses who surf, most have no deeper feeling for it than they would having their favorite rock star or idol give them an autograph they can show their friends. To them it more of an addiction to fun or escape from responsibility rather than a true heart felt love of what it is to take in life as close to the earth’s living pulse as you may ever find.



Like the beating of a heart or the drawing of a breath… surfing, paddling, taking off and even sitting on the beach sizing it up has a rhythm. Recounting a great session to others who know, or have shared the same experience is universal. Like staring into a campfire among comrades . It touches some in the primeval realm and I suspect the very first humans that every slid onto a wave felt the same.



As with primordial man, wave riders create art celebrating time spent on the water… but instead of painting on cave walls you will find it sprayed on the walls of our decaying society or created in the craft used to ride waves. Others put it to the pen while others to the canvas. In a world that has lost touch with it‘s basic needs… I believe the art of surfing and the art about surfing is an unrealized struggle to escape the unnatural and return to the natural. Like many who leave society to live in the mountains, or cannot leave the farm for modern society. There is a longing to be free from false gods and societal bindings.



Time spent in the line up will require you to leave baggage that binds you to society on the sand to keep focus in the water. The mask you wear to exist among the land dwellers will fall off or be exposed in the line up. There are no secrets out there among those that ride waves. All is exposed and respect can only be earned.


There are interlopers who are dead to those magic moments and the dead that take up space in the line up are the same zombies encountered on land. They exist, but they don’t live and they never quite figure the love of surfing out while huddled together reading their magazines and wearing store bought images. They take the label of surfers, but they don’t have the ancient spirit of the sea. They offend easily, poison the water in which they swim and like a red tide are best avoided or shunned.


In the end…there are those moments out there in the ocean riding waves, that we sometimes refer to as magic. They spring up when you don’t expect them and cannot be captured again by seeking them.

They just happen.