Ballistic missiles head for Hawaii. Then they
don't.
(Earlier today, Hawaiians were
told via SMS that they were under attack from ballistic
missiles. Twenty minutes later another SMS let the
terrified populace know it was a false alarm. “I hid in a basement
and told my family how much I love them because I thought we might
only have another five minutes to live,” wrote Jon Pyzel, shaper to
John Florence. “I will never forget that feeling nor will I forgive
the leadership that put us in that position.” Kelly Slater railed,
“So how does this happen? Was it a FalseFlag to gauge public
reaction? Did #NorthKorea hack
the system for fun or was it #SteveHarvey?!
What took 38 mins to correct that ‘mistake’ via follow up warning?
Did a missile get launched and blown out of the sky and do we have
Star Wars defense capabilities (or does space not exist and there
are no satellites for the flat earth minded 😀)? Who has their
finger on the text button to send out an alarm like that (never
mind it being 8am to start your day like that)? And is Trump or Kim
Jong-un the bigger antagonizer in this back and forth? It’s a weird
little game people play with each other and other people’s
lives.”
It’s these moments, when death looms, that the fragility of life
and the importance of relationships and health, is put into sharp
relief. Suddenly, money and bullshit don’t mean so much.
Printed below is a story I wrote for Warshaw’s book
Zero Break: An Illustrated
Collection of Surf Writing on the importance of
grace. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to step away from the hammer and
the blowtorch.)
Meet Michael. Twenty three. Perpetually untidy
dark brown hair. Doesn’t work. Enjoys nothing more than sitting
around with his pals filled by a lungful of pot smoke and watching
the latest surf clips. Reads surf mags cover to cover and thinks
all the girls in bikinis are pretty hot. An average surfer, you’d
reckon.
He would be except Michael has never surfed. Never will. When he
was nine he dived off a jetty and into a shallow sandbar. The
impact crushed the vertebrae in his neck. Hasn’t felt a thing in
his arms, torso, legs or, if you’re wondering, his dick for
fourteen years. Lives in a Melbourne nursing home, shits and pisses
in a bag that hangs over his wheelchair and that has to be emptied
by the nurses he’d love to kiss, hold, fuck, if he could feel
anything. He’ll probably die of the usual complications that
afflict the paralysed, infection, liver malfunction, in twenty or
so years. A good guy but prone, understandably, to depression and
drug abuse.
He watches with quiet awe as surfers duckdive their boards. How
incredible it must feel to have a wave pass over your back and to
surface into the bright tropical sun. And how amazing it must be to
view the world from inside the tube.
When he gets his hands on a long-form surf movie his life
changes. The grim grey and metal surroundings of his ward fade away
as he enters the cool blues and greens of the ocean. He watches
with quiet awe as surfers duckdive their boards. How incredible it
must feel to have a wave pass over your back and to surface into
the bright tropical sun. And how amazing it must be to view the
world from inside the tube.
At night he dreams that his body works. Dreams of paddling into
a Grajagan boomer, the spray blinding him for a moment only to
clear as his tail lifts and he drives down the face and begins his
hunt for the tube.
Michael thinks about death a lot and would like to commit
suicide. He is jealous that others have the luxury of being able to
hold a gun or throw a rope over a rafter. He imagines dying will be
like finally breaking the tape after an endurance race. He pictures
a heaven, paradoxically he thinks God is a hoax, where his legs are
strong and his arms power him and his surfboard through the
water.
But when he wakes, he’s a man in a wheelchair. No magic
cures.
Along with a few movies, I gave Mick a miniature plastic
surfboard for Christmas. Another joy. He puts it on his table and
uses a pen in his mouth to move it around, banking off imaginary
wave sections like a tiny Kelly Slater.
His family doesn’t visit much anymore. More often than not,
Mick’s a bit of a trial to be around. He knows that. He’ll cry at
the smallest thing, like his seven-year-old cousin Lisa giving him
a drawing she did in school and he’ll overreact if he thinks he’s
being patronised. Mick regrets it after but it leaves everyone
pretty upset.
Michael thinks about death a lot and would like to commit
suicide. He is jealous that others have the luxury of being able to
hold a gun or throw a rope over a rafter. He imagines dying will be
like finally breaking the tape after an endurance race. He pictures
a heaven, paradoxically he thinks God is a hoax, where his legs are
strong and his arms power him and his surfboard through the
water.
I write about Michael only to serve as a reminder of how lucky
we are to be able to go surfing. Happiness, I’ll agree is relative,
but I see guys slapping the water, yelling at everybody to fuck
off, flicked boards, grommies throwing a fit because they lost a
surf contest heat, punches thrown at even imagined slights and
grown men nearly in tears because the wind or the tide is wrong and
I think…
Jesus, if you only knew…
