Life is like surfing. I know this because I watched that movie Blue Crush like, mad times, and because I am one of the five people who thought John from Cincinatti was a totally awesome show (that number includes my dad, my brother, and two open slots for people I haven't met yet but will probably totally click with if I ever do). Watching people surf on a television or computer screen, I am always struck with the thought that these are people who fully understand my relationship with anxiety. Surfing is a little bit like going on and on about the calm before the storm, or the calm within the storm, and then going outside to do an overstated rain dance to illustrate your point. The ocean and its waves, for a moment, seem almost under your command, and you are like a little fish with a big name: Poseidon. For just a few of those precious seconds that feel like hours, you live up to your name.
At least that's how it looks from the shore (read: couch). The wave that curls over its rider and yet somehow fails to swallow her is so perfect, and seems deceptively gentle -- it is almost possible to imagine that this is an isolated gift, completely disconnected from the rest of the ocean and the forces that created it. But then it crashes, she crashes, I crash, wave becomes sea, horizon connects and there is nothing so lonely as being tossed about and spit out. We crash.
Sometimes I am riding the wave, and sometimes I am on my hands and knees in the wet sand, coughing while I scoop handfuls of sand out of my bathing suit.
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