Under the Wave at Waimea.
I had an epiphany this morning that I’d like to share, if you’d permit me. A few weeks, maybe a month, ago I received an advanced copy of Paul Theroux’s new novel Under the Wave at Waimea. Included was a nice note from the publicist to read and, if I saw fit, share with this audience.
I’ve never been a fan as, for me, what we do, who we are, is far too ridiculous to ever fictionalize though maybe Kafka or Camus could have done.
Theroux, in any case, is a world-renowned author of proper acclaim and has many awards, titles, to his fine name including The Mosquito Coast which, I’ll admit, I never read but loved the Harrison Ford cinematic version.
And so I cracked the cover and read the first paragraph.
The one wild story that everyone believed about Joe Sharkey was not true, but this is often the case with big-wave riders. It was told he had eaten magic mushrooms on a day declared Condition Black and dropped down a forty-five-foot wave one midnight under the white light of a full moon at Waimea Bay, the wave freaked and clawed rags of blue foam. He smashed his board on the inside break called Pinballs and, and unable to make it to shore against the riptide, he swam five miles up the coast, where he was found in the morning, hallucinating on the sand. More proof that he was a hero; that he surfed like an otter on acid.
I closed the cover and thought, “Ugh. Don’t want to tweak ol’ Paul Theroux. Best let it slide.”
Later, thinking, “Paul Theroux is a heavyweight. I wrote Cocaine + Surfing. I should give it another shot…” re-cracked the book that had somehow become black due a soaking then drying and read…
Sharkey could imagine him sliding across the Pipe, cutting back, whipping around, the hotshot moves that won points these days…
And closed again.
“Ugh. Don’t want to tweak ol’ Paul Theroux but the Pipe?”
Best to let it slide.
This morning, though, I woke early, per the norm, rubbed bag out of my eyes, drove to the local Seaside Market for butter and canned cinnamon rolls because the gluten-free pancake mix was out. My daughter loves a Saturday breakfast in bed with the works and, inexplicably, gluten-free pancakes.
Canned cinnamon rolls an acceptable substitute, somehow.
So there I was shuffling out with my haul when I saw a man in nice, perfectly fitting pants, running shoes and a good tee-shirt. He paused briefly then turned around and approached me.
“Man, I just gotta say. I love what you do. I never read anything but somehow your stuff popped into my feed once and now I sorta search it out. Just keep doing it. There was this once piece that… you wrote… I can’t even remember, but it was so funny.”
I thanked him profusely, honestly, truly. Whenever I get approached it is usually prefaced with “I don’t read…” and I love that. I write for illiterates. Not a great business model but I am neither a businessman nor a business, man.
I got in my truck and twisted it to life.
The radio came on, NPR Morning Edition, with host Scott Simon talking something about surf.
I turned it up, listening carefully, and realized he was chatting with Paul Theroux about the new gorgeous, perfectly descriptive, luscious book Under the Wave at Waimea.
The two went back and forth, Simon lavishing praise, Theroux accepting, offering insight how his time living in Hawaii and paddling a canoe has given him unique insight into the ephemeral surf world. Simon loving every second. Theroux explaining the unique surfer ethos.
Real surfers, those who have actually sacrificed their lives for surf, are, by and large, illiterate and by “illiterate” I don’t mean “can’t read.” I mean we live our lives in the millisecond, paddling, popping, pumping, maybe a bottom turn, maybe a top turn, maybe a sneaky barrel, maybe a kick-out air.
All forgotten, every bit of it forgotten, as we paddle back out.
And back out.
And back out.
And back out.
Impermanence is the very core of illiteracy.
This impermanence, illiteracy, is not a commodity, though, it is anti-commodity, and senseless to the broader public, those who don’t surf, who need paragraphs like…
Out of the surf zone, he fell to his knees. All his strength was gone in the effort and exhilaration of that one great ride. He carried his board up a dry sand mound on the beach and gasped with delight. He was exhausted and knew that a good part of that fatigue was the result of anxiety when, in the middle of his ride, he had felt the ache in his lacerated toe and feared that adjusting his feet for the pain would put him a fraction off-balance and send him off his board. He would be buried. High, dense, and unforgiving, it was the sort of wave that would push him down, and the waves behind it would keep him down. The thought of it, together with his unexpected fatigue, kneeling alone on the beach, his lungs burning, made him briefly tearful.
Real surfers don’t remember the middle of a ride, much less the beginning or end.
But surfing needs to be a commodity, not an anti-commodity, when co-Waterpersons of the Year purchase for free and install Oklahoman Oprah Winrey SUPpers and CEO and so Walls of Positive Noise are built and literacy programs created.
Paul Theroux writing the handbook.
I have a good mind to write the most ridiculously absurd surf fiction ever.
Cresting monsters, the biggest, awe-inspiring, hand jams, tubulars that last an eternity, world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater etc.
Just to screw with the literates.