in the face of drink and smoke I run

these are no longer disthymic times. the clouds have lifted and with them the figurative fog has given way to sunshine. a cold northeast wind still blows and the ocean is lake calm with lucky low tide sandbar sessions here and there but mostly smooth silky surfaces on the horizon. is it spring or strain of will that lifts the greys to lighter hues? I can’t say but one thing is certain, one step in front of the other gets me somewheres.

each day I try and try to remember. eleven years ago I asked skinny Rob to stop his Santeria for a moment and use his tattoo machine to etch a simple statement on my calf. “will transcends fear” I said to him proudly, displaying a mix of symbols, some as old as three thousand years. what did I know about transcendence and wills and waning idealism's in the face of drink and smoke so thick that for years I would not escape the fog?

what do I know now? nothing more than there is only one step in front of the other. legacy? that’s for sculptors or perhaps scientists. written words are no longer a path to remembrance for futures. written words are like so much dirt, so many opinions loosed upon us with disregard for thought or person or creed or even crude human decency. Burroughs knew it in his drug addled middle years as he led his ragged troop of beats into oblivion and shitty parenting –unwittingly (or perhaps not so much) outliving them all by decades.

surf? it is transcendental but we can’t write about that now can we. oh no. if you’re not producing you ain’t shit mister. “sit down and shut up.”

I grabbed a number ticket from the red dispenser and sat in the stale waiting room. H1N1 signs and sanitizing stations every 12 inches like sentries. who are the swine anyway? is it not we who are ruining it for we?

“again sir I will not ask you again. sit down and shut up.”

so now I run. at first from fear and, lookin behind my shoulder knee jerk reactions, left over from those early sleepless nights in Isnotu. could I blame it on my Tia? she took me at a tender age to see the old soothsayer in his dark dank home to see if he’d cure me through shitless scare tactics out of sucking my thumb again. after the celebration with the superman piñata I slept less and less until 13 years after she didn’t come that night I lost it completely and then it got foggy.

surf? not to be underestimated in terms of power to reconnect those synapses loosed from the ether. like it or not we are beasts with intrinsic needs. we can philosophise our ways out of thinking we’re not needy but sooner or later the thin veneer that is our vanity vanishes and then what?

I run. for ego and self image and I can’t say it’s not a draw. I run from what I would be doing otherwise. sloth or time wasting.

I said it before and I dare say it again. I have these muscles and tendons and bones. and well honed they can move me through space with the grace and fluidity of any wild animal. fail for just one day to use them and I forgo the greatest gift I’ve been given. the gift of self propulsion. some praise our ability to think. but how amazing is it to ride the swells upon the ocean and then forget?

I run to surf.

surf? because you can.