The Absence of Light: a chronicle of surfing
It’s amazing what the absence of light does to your senses. I think we often take for granted the ability to sense visually. If you get deep enough, it’s incredible how we see the world through our eyes and process with our brain and make thoughts and judgments and ideas out of our sight. I’m not sure why I never experienced this before, I can hypothesize it was due to the peculiar lighting we experienced tonight before sunset. Although, the sun never did set, well it did, but we never saw it. It was one of those times when the waves melded with the sky. You could barely see the coming swell, and so you almost guessed the time to turn around and paddle. But, so bizarre it was that when you turned around and began riding toward the oh so wonderful continent of North America, and more specifically the Sunset Cliffs of San Diego, which are a part of San Diego County, which is a county of California, which is a state in the United States of America and has a star on the flag, the visibility became more clear, and you were able to slide along the Pacific, which borders North America, fairly normally, but I guess maybe not so normally. My brain knew it wasn’t able to see well, and so it told my eyes to focus, and such allowed me to lose worry about what was in my peripherals and centralize on the wave ahead. I felt as though I was in some sort of twilight zone. My senses were off, or not even off, but focused differently than I would normally recognize. And that was actually the biggest difference – I recognized my senses. After a few waves time of analyzing what was happening to my ability to concept my surroundings, I realized it all had to do with the absence of light. The hazy, foggy, gray smitten sky disabled, although maybe not disabled, more altered, my vision, and from there my hearing and touch, and I assume my smell as well but I am still recovering from a recent cold, were all enhanced. And as the darkness crept further towards the horizon, my alternative senses (I say alternative in that I believe our sight is most significant) took even stronger control. I could hear my hand penetrate the water. I could hear the movement of liquid as I stroked my arm behind me propelling the tablet of resin and foam beneath me. I could hear the glide of my board across the ocean. I could hear the waves fold ahead, and crash behind. And it’s not that I have never heard this before, I surf almost every day, but this was so different. It was comforting, it was soothing, it was pure, I was alone and free, yet warm and consoled. That warmth had a lot to do with the magnificently crafted wetsuit I was wearing -so smooth and stretchy and warm. Oh how I love those Nineplus wetsuits. Ha-ha, it wouldn’t be fair not to plug that in. But it all came together at that moment and it inspired me to write how I felt. So there it is. Go surfing when things are weird and different and abnormal, you never know what you might discover.
Photo: Bryce Johnson, http://www.brycejohnson.com/blog/