JacobBlog!

Photos: Me, at surf!

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.

Bonus alternate ending!
Sitting at peace in the stillness between the hollow waves is but one tributary of the vast “stream of power and wisdom” that animates me, the great river of physical and spiritual truth that emanates from nature. Running my hand along the ice-glazed needles of the fallen pine, inhaling the green-diffracted God-thought-breath of the morning forest, laughing as I hold wide my windbreaker and lean euphorically into the rushing torrents of the rain: this timeless rapture is my inspiration, this intricate, organic splendor a sanctified model for my thoughts. This is why I paddle out, never knowing exactly where I’ll return to shore.