Pet Cobra

Sunday Morning: On The Beach

I had a brilliant run the other day; it was hot, blazingly so, and I was laboring. Every pore was pouring. Still, ambience: the iPod's volume was perfect, the music in two-part harmony with the crashing surf, and the songs, while on Shuffle, fell into a progression that seemed intentional. I got soul but I'm not a soldier. It's been such a long time, I think I should be goin'. I've been there, I know the way. My feet were a percussion section accompanying their own soundtrack. I passed kids mining for sandcrabs, tourists absorbing the final rays of vacation sun, and lots of surfers. 

That crashing surf: the high pressure that's brought murky Cabo heat to San Diego county has done wonders for the waves - the dead hot electric oven air has made for glassy conditions, and the swell mix has kicked up the size. As I pounded down the shore, past the knotted lineups at Grandview and Beacons, I rode those waves - paddling out on the Bonzer, the 6' 10" rocketing into peeling lefts, my hand outstretched, fingers slicing through the wave face, liquid roof blotting out the overhead sun. 

That was in my head, of course. Even if I wasn't running, I'd still be on the beach.

This week I'm visiting my doctor, who is going to examine my right shoulder, which has been hurting for the past...6 weeks? More? Not a debilitating pain, although there are moments - picking up Zoe, reaching to unscrew a burned-out light bulb - where it feels like I'm taking a bullet. The words rotator, cuff, and surgery roll in my head, a constant loop, a whisper reminding me of what's been left behind, all those mornings waking before the sun and spending hour and hour digging through choppy water and scratching to get up and over board-breaking closeouts, a combined tally of thousands of pushups and bench presses, and before all that all those afternoons spent pulling myself up the faces of burning rock faces, cracked fingers with a crust of climbing chalk and blood. All these things that I have done. I don't do them nearly as much as I did, but still.

So I wait. The appointment is on Wednesday. The shoulder. It could be nothing. It could be everything.

Resolved:

I poured myself out of bed this morning, the kind of awakening where you don't feel like you really slept, only idled, like a car waiting in the grocery store parking lot, the passenger running in to pick up a few much-needed supplies. This was a boozy sleep; the Chargers having won an improbable victory, during the course of which a bottle of leftover Prosecco was downed, after which more was consumed. (I'm a fan of a different sort, that's for sure, but hey, there was cold pizza and Nacho Cheesier! Doritos).

It occurred to me as I made the coffee that for all intents and purposes the Holiday Season was over. We will be breaking down the tree, putting glass balls in their fragile box-cocoons for another year, wrapping up plastic garlands. Lucas will, of course be sad; one can only wonder what Zoe will think of it, although now when you ask her what a duck says, she goes "Qwah! Qwah!", which might be a window to a mind deeper than we expect. There is accompanying melancholy, not so much for the end of parties, presents, and waaaaay too much food and drink, but at watching another milepost speed by, another year gone, and don't they seem to go by a bit faster every time? The leisurely winding route becomes an autobahn of sorts.

So. More surfing, more reading, more writing, more connecting with new people and reconnecting with those left behind, more playing, more thinking, more exercise, more rest, more music, more cooking (Indian, because I've never, and Spanish, because I've gotten rusty), more everything.

Sunday Morning, Evening Edition: Storms Miles Away

Yesterday I surfed. First time in weeks, for an hour or so, in bright blue sunshine and wonderfully crisp water. This morning I woke up feeling like I'd been beaten with a broom handle. The sky was full of clouds, thick, low, a terse indicator of things to come? Surfers live in many places at once; in the here and now, and thousands of miles away. We think of the other side of the world, where distant storms swirl, form swells, bring waves and their attendant joys. Sometimes those storms make landfall.  I spent Sunday with one eye on the roiling skies; after yesterday's time in the sunlight ocean, rain...well. By midday, my mood was as black as the skies. I was downright morbid, glowering, desperately in need of some sunlight.

It didn't rain.

What passed for morning: a cinderblock sky, bricking in the sun. The ocean was lifeless; a few surfers adrift, feeling an optimism that I didn't share. I sat and watched for a while, thinking this: time is the only enemy. It slows a distant swell, it marks the tide, it is darkness when there ought to be dawn and sunsets come too soon. It's all there is and there's never enough of it.

Up before the dawn, as usual. I took a drive up the coast, this time to the grocery store. There was coffee and milk to be bought. The weekend routine, and driving back I looked out again at the ocean, the tides rising; no surfing this morning, but the day's just begun, and there's a hint of promise in the air.

 

Sunday Morning: Time

What passed for morning: a cinderblock sky, bricking in the sun. The ocean was lifeless; a few surfers adrift, feeling an optimism that I didn't share. I sat and watched for a while, thinking this: time is the only enemy. It slows a distant swell, it marks the tide, it is darkness when there ought to be dawn and sunsets come too soon. It's all there is and there's never enough of it.

Sunday Morning: Shot In The Arm

Up before the dawn, as usual. I took a drive up the coast, this time to the grocery store. There was coffee and milk to be bought. The weekend routine, and driving back I looked out again at the ocean, the tides rising; no surfing this morning, but the day's just begun, and there's a hint of promise in the air.