Surfing in the Fog
by Jacob Cole on Oct.17, 2009, under - Favorites, - Show All Posts
It is my personal belief that paddling out into the lineup through a bank of heavy mist and suddenly finding yourself unable to see the shore is among the most surreal experiences a person who is both sane and sober can have. Emerging from the thickest part of the onshore fog and into the realm of brighter sunlight that streams through the oculus in the clouds and sparkles across the water outside is like crossing the border into a parallel world utterly isolated from that which we experience in our daily, land-lubberish lives. The feeling must be akin to that which drove explorers and sailors of old to risk their lives and endure harsh conditions and low wages to embark again and again. It must be similar to that which brought Jacques Cousteau to explore the deep, what carried Charles Lindbergh to the skies, what drove early astronauts to fly to the moon. It is the euphoria and mystery that greets those who dare to leap where no one has ever looked, who realize that there is no emotion truer than that which comes from floating adrift in a flimsy, tiny capsule through a chaotic universe unimaginably larger than they. It is only when we are lost that we finally find ourselves…
When you are surfing in the fog you are very directly prompted to think philosophically. I inevitably ponder the counterintuitive truism in quantum mechanics that states that all you do not see could indeed be – and in fact is – anything and everything it can be. As fellow wave riders – strangers and friends – wink out of your sphere of sight and consciousness, as the steadfast constructs of society become transient and melt into the muffling grayness, you lose all standards for comparison and preconceptions of perspective and your thoughts branch out unfettered as you ride (or duck dive beneath) the waves that without direction or premeditation appear before you. In this contemplative state of mind, concepts that have long eluded you suddenly coalesce. The massively parallel algorithm that underlies my project for the Intel Science Talent Search came to me not in a laboratory or classroom but when I was observing the patterns made by the rivulets of water running down my surfboard as I emerged from underneath a wave. Oftentimes, I find it more productive to empty my mind to the ocean’s meditative lull than to study…
By the end of the session, you have no idea where you have drifted to because it is impossible to even tell if you’re moving, much less which direction. You could very well end up at a different beach, or for that matter a different country, than where you paddled out. In fact, you half expect to. Doing otherwise would violate the mysteriously adventurous aesthetic sense of the universe that, for all the protests of the existentialists, again and again proves itself to be law. And it is law. No matter where you end up (which is never exactly where you expect), the sanctity of the surrealness of the session persists long after, transcending time. Those who embark on a voyage into this realm never fully return, nor do they desire to. The experience that I here describe happened to me three years ago and yet I write about it as if it were today. It also happened to me what on my watch (which I left in the car) appeared to be three hours ago, but I know wasn’t because I could feel myself traveling through eternity crammed onto a pinhead in that minute instant that my feet retracted off of the sand and onto my shortboard.
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Bonus alternate ending to Surfing in the Fog! - JacobBlog!
January 18th, 2010 on 11:08 pm[…] Jacob Cole on Jan.18, 2010, under All Posts Bonus alternate ending! Original post can be found here and here. Sitting at peace in the stillness between the hollow waves is but one tributary of the […]
October 18th, 2009 on 11:35 am
I may actually be crazy enough to read this, my friend. Have fun fighting off the spammers. A friend of mine did so by having the email field, but making it invisible. If someone enters something in that field, they are filtered.
October 18th, 2009 on 6:30 pm
You say that you transcend the bounds of society by doing something that society recognizes and approves of?
Even bona-fide rebellion is only a switching of bounds, into another society altogether of slightly scarier people. The only way to go past the bounds of what is societal is insanity, by definition. That is, the definition of insanity is straying from societal bound.
October 18th, 2009 on 11:13 pm
Hmm.
October 20th, 2009 on 5:55 pm
if you think that Saturday afternoon was surreal, then I have two stories for you. There was a time when I was surfing trestles after the Boost Mobile CT event a few years ago with a friend, when a fog bank rolled through so fast it actually outran people jogging. It was so thick that I literally could not see more than 20 feet in front of me. So imagine yourself in the water at one of the most photographically iconic places in the surfing world, unable to discern yourself from gray. That is a surreal experience. There was another time where an almost identical fog bank came in and kept us from seeing more than 20 feet around us, but it wasn’t think enough to block out the sun. This led to the most surreal orangey-yellow mist, with a distorted orb of bright yellow mist representing the sun as our only reference point. Soon the fog lifted just enough for us to see out over the horizon, still through the thick fog, and view a friend on a stand up out at see, in the most ominous fashion. At this point we thought for sure he was going to be eaten by a shark, just to stay consistent with the mood of the fog. How’s that for surreal?
October 20th, 2009 on 6:29 pm
THAT IS EPIC! Make a blog and write about it!
October 21st, 2009 on 12:23 am
DUDE, Saturday night… I was at the playground by Solona Highlands with my girlfriend. 9:30 at night and, surprisingly, there were Mr. and Mr.s Naturalfibers walking their dogs anywhere, not even stoners that are usually at that playground. anyways, so she was singing some song in Japanese and I was pushing her on the swing. Nothing can be seen beyond the silhouette of the jungle gyms; there was only occasional crunches of leaves and branches. the fog was so thick at one point that i felt as though the world around me was one of the images in a rorschach test o_O. and then i blanked out. I swear, I transcended my body and became one with the fog and song. in my mind, i could see everything in my vicinity through a 3rd person view. and you know one of those movie special effects where the image spins for a second and morphs into another scene?? yea like omg, everything was just gray and i felt, without seeing, as though i was in in medieval japan or something. after idk how long, it ended and i was stunned to find myself still pushing my gf on the swing o_O. talk about surrealism… i dont think you can beat that. (i admit i was super tired that day and my brain was probably going haywire from the lack of sleep, but man…) my brain was sending images to my eyes instead of the other way around. maybe im just going insane? hmmm…