But you finally do manage to get untangled without miraculously getting hit on the head by another board and quickly paddle out of the impact zone and shallow water, and you make your way to the channel, the safe zone where the waves don’t break because the ocean floor is deeper there, and you gather yourself up and together. Since there’s a more than greater chance that everyone just witnessed that, you brush off the humiliation and slow down your paddling gate, a sign that your confidence is resuming; one deep pull of water with your right arm followed by the next deep pull of water with your left arm, head raised up, eyes focused on the horizon and you find your place back in the line-up, the small patch of marine geography where the surfers wait to catch waves, and you locate yourself close enough to be in position, but far enough away to not incite commentary and you wait, heart pounding against your chest and hungry to do it again.
In that moment, there is your desire and nothing else. In the moment that you are about to drop in the next time, there is the scramble of words and thoughts, and the fear in your blood, but you go anyway and always. You drop in because it’s primal. You perl because it’s human; and you seek waves relentlessly because you’re both.
