Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25036
depends on a given sequence and on letting oneself go-and absolute loss of control. Basic training takes place on land and consists of shifting from a prone position to an erect one in a single motion, using your legs for leverage and opening up your chest. In surfing terms this is called Take Off. To reproduce this movement in water requires a certain synchronicity with the thrust of the wave. The sequence is: thrust of wave, rise and achievement of erect position. This is the Big Deal. Your limitations are determined by the wave: when to shift your edge depends on your resources (not all waves are surfable) and your position in relation to the chosen wave (not all surfable waves are yours). The greatest power, as Andy Martin has pointed out, is along the very lip of the wave's crest. There the gap between apotheosis and annihilation is as slim as could possibly be. THE PRACTICE OF SURFING AND THE BALANCE BETWEEN YIN AND YANG Consider Yang the position on the board, centrifugal and ballistic (like a ballerina spit from a cannon). It is opposed by the Yin trajectory, centripetal and circular. This is the orgasmic quality of surfing, a quality that seems modeled after a woman's orgasm rather than a man's. This explains why you often feel more worn out after the first half-hour than after two hours, when you've established yourself within a glorious rhythm. One revealing phenomenon is that if a surfer is asked to choose between good healthy sex and a session of surfing, she or he will rarely admit to choosing the first. Surfing has a noble history and beginning. It was the seasonal fertility ritual of the sworn king, heading off on his first journey. The breaks on the North Shore of Oahu begin very far away offshore. Surf ethics insist that we accompany the waves right back to shore. This was the duty of the Hawaiian kings. Legend has it that a group of Polynesians were driven 8,000 kilometers northward in their canoes, guided by divine inspiration and a shining white shark. The surfboard evolved from these mythical canoes. From the very start, surfing was an erotic practice. Legend tells us that if a man and woman ride the same wave, this sanctions their physical union. (Fresh!) Physics teaches us that a wave is not a mass of water in motion, but kinetic energy being released. Attunement is the harmonization of that kinetic energy with our own energy as we accompany the wave back to the water's edge. Like Zen meditation, attunement centers us. The sound of water breaking on the beach (a white coral beach) has an immediate resonance with the internal sounds of the body. But since your listening comes from the land, it is combined with various stimuli that fuse into an overall mass of noise. The sound of the water on the shore, moreover"has to do with how used to listening to it you are. Obviously you can hear it, but it's much easier to take it for granted as white noise. But if you arrive on the shore from the sea , accompanied by a wave, you hear a sound that still maintains all of its wonder. The sound is literally a part of the listener. Being one with the sound, whether you're conscious of it or not, is cathartic. This catharsis occurs in a Wipe Out, which is not a move but the object of terror. Wipe Out-to topple over or to "get worked"-can occur when take off is too late and you're captured by the lip of the wave. The risk is being tossed to the bottom of the ocean. This is the basic fear, the total loss of control. Paradoxically, this also represents the basic blessing. Once you survive this experience, mystical fear grows blurry and becomes an essential principle of your reality: you can't have everything. The potential for wipeout is to surfing, what the potential for failure is to artistic experimentation. It seems to be the only possibility for a strategy of survival. •