What does this all mean?
Can I confide something in you, earnestly and honestly? Oh you can mock me, of course, and maybe that’s exactly what I need. A good swift kick back to quintessential gen-x indifference but until then can I admit to you that I’m having an existential crisis?
I am!
And can’t quite put my finger on it. On what I’m feeling, though I know where the crisis came from. I was also recently injured, arm taken from socket, which will keep me landlocked for a few weeks and I finally have to get the surgery wherein doctors tie my arm in with rope. It used to come out all the time but hasn’t for about four years and now surgery. But that is not the reason for my existential crisis. I don’t quite know what, in fact, my crisis even is but feel it is definitely about surfing.
Like, the physical act of surfing and how it infects my entire life and what that all come to mean.
I am so consumed by the watery ballet that I can no longer type the words “during” or “surgery” without typing “durfing” or “surfgery.” Completely honestly. My fingers automatically put an “f” after the letters “ur.” Every time.
There is really, at this point, nothing else. Surfing. Durfing. Surfgery. Yet even after all these years, all this attention, I am still only ok at the physical act of surfing and not getting better. Growing up and doing it completely alone on a god-forsaken stretch of Oregon coast has infected badly. I didn’t have the privilege of watching ripping peers and emulating them. There was only me. And freezing cold closeouts. And a blooming poor style. And sharks.
What does this mean? Does it mean I took a wrong turn years ago and doubled and tripled down and now am so lost that there is no getting out? Was there something in this world that I was actually good at? Something I could have pursued and excelled in?
David Lee Scales, the consummate host, and I speak of these things here and also how shit The Inertia is, writing, Oregonian localism, whining in the face of danger, wetsuit caps, Damien Hobgood’s stickers and so much more. See the illustrated version here!
Listen here!
Surfing is great, but get a goddamned grip man. You’ll enjoy it more if you stop caring.
Also your fucking boards are too small.
“In absurdist philosophy, the Absurd arises out of the fundamental disharmony between the individual’s search for meaning and the meaninglessness of the universe. As beings looking for meaning in a meaningless world, humans have three ways of resolving the dilemma. Kierkegaard and Camus describe the solutions in their works, The Sickness Unto Death (1849) and The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), respectively:
Suicide (or, “escaping existence”): a solution in which a person ends one’s own life. Both Kierkegaard and Camus dismiss the viability of this option. Camus states that it does not counter the Absurd. Rather, the act of ending one’s existence only becomes more absurd.
Religious, spiritual, or abstract belief in a transcendent realm, being, or idea: a solution in which one believes in the existence of a reality that is beyond the Absurd, and, as such, has meaning. Kierkegaard stated that a belief in anything beyond the Absurd requires an irrational but perhaps necessary religious acceptance in such an intangible and empirically unprovable thing (now commonly referred to as a “leap of faith”). However, Camus regarded this solution, and others, as “philosophical suicide”.
Acceptance of the Absurd: a solution in which one accepts the Absurd and continues to live in spite of it. Camus endorsed this solution, believing that by accepting the Absurd, one can achieve the greatest extent of one’s freedom, and that by recognizing no religious or other moral constraints and by revolting against the Absurd while simultaneously accepting it as unstoppable, one could possibly be content from the personal meaning constructed in the process.”
well I am sorry but this sounds awfully like that Alignment shit.
Alignment? Whats that?
Did you `mean enlightenment ?
i don’t get it. does it matter if you are a sucky surfer? come to the uk. we are all sucky. in fact, suckiness is reified and celebrated! just ask the deity alan stokes.
I haven’t listened yet but Chas. We all have crises because we give a shit about something. It doesn’t matter if the something doesn’t make sense — indeed if it makes sense, it doesn’t engender a crisis, and is therefore worth exactly fuck all. I care and worry about you and Rielly. You are like some sort of horrible nephews. I beg you, don’t try to rise above this crisis! Embrace it! We all could have been great at something. But if you didn’t care about it, so fucking what?
Professional surfing, and perhaps surfing in general is going through an identity crisis. Surfing is becoming artificial. You chose to be a surf journalist/writer. Might your crisis be that you’re becoming that which is akin to the saying, “you are what you eat”. You are worried that you are what you write about. Artificial. You’re not. You stated you have started to drink whiskey neat. Might I suggest the following as your next bottle: https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
you got your nuts tickled pretty good in there DWAT…….
what do you mean?
did you listen?
I tried to shorthand “yes” by upvoting.
And…..?
and you got your nuts tickled…Chas and Scaley both in ecstacies over your comment
Now I get what you meant. I listened to the podcast at my office this morning. Listened again just now. I must have walked away from my desk cause I didn’t hear their reference to my comment this morning. Now your comment above makes sense.
do you feel valued now? have we averted your existential crisis?
maybe thats what Chas needs…..his nuts tickled online or in a poddy.
Here, let me help: Bright, hyper-ironic surf journalist, author, and bon vivant from Coos Bay, Oregon; frequent contributor to Stab magazine, contributing editor at Surfing magazine, and co-founder of Beach Grit, a surfing website.
Smith’s first book, Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell, a surf-based cultural examination Oahu’s North Shore, came out in 2013. In an upbeat review, Kirkus called Smith the “clown prince of trash prose, and described the book as a “boozy and often funny investigation into a little-understood corner of America.” Paradise was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Nonfiction.
In 2014, Esquire.com published Smiths’ “War Dandy” column, about fashion in the world’s hot zones. That same year, Smith and Rielly—who’d just left Stab—together launched Beach Grit, a free-wheeling website dedicated to the surfing by way of a “libertine moral code.”
The double speed stitch and bitch
Camus at Oxford? swoon.
I found this stuff about writing really interesting…the war within and with yourself. In fits of self disgust at the blank screen I have literally walked around the house punching myself in the head.
Fuck off Wigs.
“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it”- B. Dylan
it seems highly inconvenient to have your arm fall off. so good luck with the surgery dude.
Embrace the warm glow of the wave pool, let it wash over you…
Here’s some stirring stuff from Tennyson. I may be misquoting, but
…something something Surf Media
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Then something about a wave pool….
Cheer up son.
Anyway, dissatisfaction is a fundamental part of the human condition. It may well be the single most important force which has steered our evolution and will continue to do so until the inevitable end of our species.
I had a lengthy conversation recently with a man who lives in front of one of the best waves in the known world. He spoke about regularly thinking to himself: “If all I’ve done is surf perfect waves by myself every day, is that really enough?”
Comfort yourself in the fact that our obsession with surfing is simply because it is particularly dissatisfying.
“Deep: In The Comment Section”
My, my. That’s a splendid colon you’ve got there, son.
You came in the wrong way Chaz……..
….again
does it say “I’m not patsy the slave” anywhere in your new book?
Save a bit of crisis in case the book flops.
Comes a time when all the drugs, booze and illicit sex in Vegas cannot solve these crises. As Jean Paul Satre might say if he were Australian, “Welcome to middle age cunt”!
At least you can write. Durfing’s not everything.
Don’t worry Chas – your alcoholic death spiral will fill the void just fine. Smiley face emoji.
I knew it would be good for something!
Existential crisis memoirs are huge……you just won the lottery.
You don’t need to even write it, just write about writing it. Golden ticket.
This is now my afternoon!
Of the soul?
Ho Hum..