Under the Wave at Waimea.
I had an epiphany this morning that I’d like to
share, if you’d permit me. A few weeks, maybe a month, ago I
received an advanced copy of Paul Theroux’s new novel Under the
Wave at Waimea. Included was a nice note from the
publicist to read and, if I saw fit, share with this audience.
Surf fiction.
Ugh.
I’ve never been a fan as, for me, what we do, who we are, is far
too ridiculous to ever fictionalize though maybe Kafka or Camus
could have done.
Theroux, in any case, is a world-renowned author of proper
acclaim and has many awards, titles, to his fine name including
The Mosquito Coast
which, I’ll admit, I never read but loved the Harrison Ford
cinematic version.
And so I cracked the cover and read the first paragraph.
The one wild story that everyone believed about Joe Sharkey
was not true, but this is often the case with big-wave riders. It
was told he had eaten magic mushrooms on a day declared Condition
Black and dropped down a forty-five-foot wave one midnight under
the white light of a full moon at Waimea Bay, the wave freaked and
clawed rags of blue foam. He smashed his board on the inside break
called Pinballs and, and unable to make it to shore against the
riptide, he swam five miles up the coast, where he was found in the
morning, hallucinating on the sand. More proof that he was a hero;
that he surfed like an otter on acid.
Ugh.
I closed the cover and thought, “Ugh. Don’t want to tweak ol’
Paul Theroux. Best let it slide.”
Later, thinking, “Paul Theroux is a heavyweight. I wrote
Cocaine +
Surfing. I should give it another shot…” re-cracked
the book that had somehow become black due a soaking then drying
and read…
Sharkey could imagine him sliding across the Pipe, cutting
back, whipping around, the hotshot moves that won points these
days…
And closed again.
“Ugh. Don’t want to tweak ol’ Paul Theroux but the Pipe?”
Best to let it slide.
This morning, though, I woke early, per the norm, rubbed bag out
of my eyes, drove to the local Seaside Market for butter and canned
cinnamon rolls because the gluten-free pancake mix was out. My
daughter loves a Saturday breakfast in bed with the works and,
inexplicably, gluten-free pancakes.
Canned cinnamon rolls an acceptable substitute, somehow.
So there I was shuffling out with my haul when I saw a man in
nice, perfectly fitting pants, running shoes and a good tee-shirt.
He paused briefly then turned around and approached me.
“Man, I just gotta say. I love what you do. I never read
anything but somehow your stuff popped into my feed once and now I
sorta search it out. Just keep doing it. There was this once piece
that… you wrote… I can’t even remember, but it was so funny.”
I thanked him profusely, honestly, truly. Whenever I get
approached it is usually prefaced with “I don’t read…” and I love
that. I write for illiterates. Not a great business model but I am
neither a businessman nor a business, man.
I got in my truck and twisted it to life.
The radio came on, NPR Morning
Edition, with host Scott Simon talking something about
surf.
Surf?
I turned it up, listening carefully, and realized he was
chatting with Paul Theroux about the new gorgeous, perfectly
descriptive, luscious book Under the Wave at Waimea.
The two went back and forth, Simon lavishing praise, Theroux
accepting, offering insight how his time living in Hawaii and
paddling a canoe has given him unique insight into the ephemeral
surf world. Simon loving every second. Theroux explaining the
unique surfer ethos.
Epiphany.
Real surfers, those who have actually sacrificed their lives for
surf, are, by and large, illiterate and by “illiterate” I don’t
mean “can’t read.” I mean we live our lives in the millisecond,
paddling, popping, pumping, maybe a bottom turn, maybe a top turn,
maybe a sneaky barrel, maybe a kick-out air.
All forgotten, every bit of it forgotten, as we paddle back
out.
And back out.
And back out.
And back out.
Impermanence is the very core of illiteracy.
This impermanence, illiteracy, is not a commodity, though, it is
anti-commodity, and senseless to the broader public, those who
don’t surf, who need paragraphs like…
Out of the surf zone, he fell to his knees. All his strength
was gone in the effort and exhilaration of that one great ride. He
carried his board up a dry sand mound on the beach and gasped with
delight. He was exhausted and knew that a good part of that fatigue
was the result of anxiety when, in the middle of his ride, he had
felt the ache in his lacerated toe and feared that adjusting his
feet for the pain would put him a fraction off-balance and send him
off his board. He would be buried. High, dense, and unforgiving, it
was the sort of wave that would push him down, and the waves behind
it would keep him down. The thought of it, together with his
unexpected fatigue, kneeling alone on the beach, his lungs burning,
made him briefly tearful.
Real surfers don’t remember the middle of a ride, much less the
beginning or end.
Illiterate.
But surfing needs to be a commodity, not an anti-commodity, when
co-Waterpersons of the Year purchase for free and install Oklahoman
Oprah Winrey SUPpers and CEO and so Walls of Positive Noise are
built and literacy programs created.
Paul Theroux writing the handbook.
I have a good mind to write the most ridiculously absurd surf
fiction ever.
Cresting monsters, the biggest, awe-inspiring, hand jams,
tubulars that last an eternity, world’s greatest surfer Kelly
Slater etc.
Just to screw with the literates.
