tired boss

winds 14 G 18-N 34/34 6'@ 13 seconds

the Doc and I met Blacks for an old time session. check two spots and decide on a secret location. no one out. north-north east winds. a few peaks here and there. paddle across the headland and get some lefts where there shouldn't be. swell straight out da east makin for some funny angles at the usual spots. no one out. two hours and our feets is numb. the Doc just in from out yonder freezing from lack of acclimation. two hour nap at noon and already had a full day.

no seal and hawk sitting like yesterday but I did manage a sub-zero sunburn on me face.

my.

B and are making food for birthday Doc.

on the menu: tacos 'al pastor with roasted pineapple and home made tortillas. salsa the agaucate picante with chips and scallop ceviche with cucumber and mango.

orale güey. dame tres por favor.

thinking ahead

street art in one of it's many forms does what it does best here. social commentary for the masses. too bad we seldom learn from our mistakes. more from Vinchen here

"the traditional teaching of the Church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids".

Pope Benedict XVI

only one conclusion can be drawn from this statement. the world we live in is absolutely absurd and paradoxical. there are over 22 million HIV infected people in Africa. that's two thirds of Canada's entire population. and the best way to deal with it is through abstinence and prayer?

Nico's Lunch

Nico is one of those guys that makes surfing look easy. He's got a keen sense of positioning on the wave and hell of a lot of skill. I can't say that I know him well but the times we've been in the water together he definitely has a positive vibe and is well respected by his peers. Here's a short film done by local filmmaker Aaron Jackson featuring Nico and B.C.'s Pete Devries. These two are probably Canada's best surfers. Although the footage here is mostly from late summer early fall, it blows my mind to think of the hours these guys have put in in the most extreme cold conditions, wearing pounds of neoprene rubber and braving conditions that are outright dangerous.

Nova Scotia is arguably one of the coldest places in the world to be a year-round surfer. Yes colder than Norway on the average. The level of commitment from these guys who dedicate their lives to surfing is unparalleled.

Beware -> Tarrus Riley

been a long time now since I left Jamaica. one of the important lessons about living in developing countries is that I’ve learned how resource rich my life here is. it’s hard to be grateful sometimes. it’s easy to get vexed about trivial shit. but dammit at least I have a future filled with food, shelter and safety. that’s more than heaps of people have in Jamaica.

Jamaican music is a music of protest. I didn’t really understand that well until I’d lived there and learned to understand patois. many of Bob Marley’s songs are in patois and it’s funny to hear them played on advertising or at parties and people don’t understand how aggressive the lyrics are. or perhaps we don’t care, were oblivious to what’s happening outside of our culture.

but what Jamaican people may lack in resources they make up for with a passion for life and music. you can hear sound systems all over the island blasting the latest big tune. each month a new riddim will come out and every top dj will write lyrics and before long one or two or sometimes more versions of the riddim will be on everyone’s lips. taxis always blast the radio. in the country or in Town little kids rock and wine in front of the huge stacks of speakers. youths lean up against the sound and smoke spliffs and cigarettes and if there’s money they hold a Guinness. grown men play dominoes under mango trees on makeshift tables as the music from the nearest sound fills the steamy air with pulsing baselines. grannies make rice and tin mackerel on the coal stove and sing old church songs as if on stage. and the people live, survive and sing.

when there’s no future there is still music and community. that’s something. give thanks.

bajan diy

style + speed.

Zorba is recession proof

in times of bankruptcy and failing governments, and rising sea levels, and depleted fish stocks, and poisoned rivers, and suicide mass murderers in Germany and the US, and religious zealotry, and pollution, overpopulation, and consumerism over humanism -there's still always hope.

flow like water, subvert when necessary and be like Zorba, full of love of music and dance, fueled with a passion for good food, drink and friendships. this one goes out to Matty, the good Doctor and most importantly my dear Dad, who's always taught me the value of integrity and to avoid the love of things. for as Malcolm Johnson quotes from Snyder in his last entry : "the best things in life are not things."

the virtue of ego

on my way in to work this morning I was thinking about the ghetto boys. I felt like my mind was playin tricks on me and I was wrestling my way out. what kinda tricks? dirty ones. ones that make you feel like you know where you stand when in fact you’re about to sink in quicksand.

a while ago Foulweather wrote an insightful piece on community and the Internet.

“I fear people are seeking community here at the expense of real community, taking social risks 'online' but barely able to have meaningful interactions with their neighbors. It is going to catch up to us. There's nothing better than going a way from computers, cell phones and all that shit and having to actually interact with real live physical people.”

the internet gives us a false sense of community. I say false because although we do create some sort of community through our blogs or forums or the scourge that is social networking sites such as fecalbook, it is all based on words and images which may or may not reflect anything about our individual day to day lives. knowingly or not we build these virtual persona and social groups which exist primarily in our heads and fingertips.

you may ask what is wrong with that. isn’t it the way of the future?

remember that sci-fi film a while back when the guy goes into the future and meets a girl. he thinks that they are about to have sex when suddenly she sits him down and hands him some sorta helmet with which they will make a virtual romantic experience. the irony of course being that they are in a room, alone, sitting mere inches from each other –the perfect conditions for a true intimate experience.

the point I’m trying to make is that we are already separated enough from the natural world tucked away in our offices and cars and malls. and now with our “internet communities” we are separating ourselves even farther from a natural experience. humanity separated itself from nature a long time ago with its “taming” of nature and creation of the scientific method. this intellectual separation from nature has had many ill side effects which have been written about and documented by the same said scientists. however, this current separation that is taking place from natural human relationships is still new and can have massive potential downfalls.

in the immediate I write these words as a didactic self exercise –exorcism. I want to remind myself that what gives me meaning is making dinner with B each night, or meeting a certain dark one at the crack of dawn for a dip in the turbulent north Atlantic, or making lots of double shot espressos with my co-worker all day long to see if we can hallucinate from too much caffeine.

this space is no more than a sounding board for my ego, a way for me to learn to express myself with the ultimately ineffectual written word (more on this topic some other time).

I leave with the classic from Bushwick Bill and crew.

kalle lasn (monkey see -do)

L.A.: But what about the good ideas? Do they really come from cyber these days, as some people are saying?

Kalle Lasn: I don’t know, I’m from the old school. I don’t see it yet. I see a lot of frenetic activity in cyberspace, but a lot of it is like the postmodern hall of mirrors. It’s just people sending email messages to each other, hand on the mouse, and you think that you’ve done something great if you get some big idea here and send an email to your friend, and pass it on, and you think you have made some sort of a big thing for the day. I don’t actually see too many really new ideas coming out of cyberspace yet. I see a lot of new ideas still coming out of philosophers, musicians, thinkers, sociologists, a few economists. I think that the big ideas are still coming out in the traditional way, and then they start to reverberate within cyberspace. They are amplified there in cyberspace.

for the rest of the interview go to adbusters

soundbites for this reading provided by dub.com dubcast #6

Halifax -morning views

photos ras

going back to Hali

from PDX to Halifax and back. weird seems like deja vu. hope you guys out there in Stumptown are starting to feel spring. speaking of lack of spring, surfed this evening in -8 C air temps. unbelievable session, alone out there with reeling rights coming through head high. no one out. I made some sketchy ass drops on the 9`6`and then out to the nose for the steepest nose rides I`ve ever done. funny how different a chest to head high wave can feel on a log.

tonight`s video is josh martinez and other Halifax crew doing a play on L.L.'s classic tune. shot mostly downtown and on the McDonald bridge. rad.

my old Jamaican roommates les and hi-C grew with L.L. in NYC. lots of blunts in that Orlando apartment. they always looked at me like I was crazy headin out the door, six two 70's single under one arm.



oh and one more thing -I`ve surfed 4 out of the last 5 days. think I`m finally reaching the top rung in the ladder of success. workaholism is for the birds and boring folk.

"creation plantation"

another rad cy sutton film! peep Christian W. ripping on an alaia.

Tom's Creation Plantation Trailer from Cyrus Sutton on Vimeo.

sometimes all you need is a little ink.

weekend surfs

surfed the past two days. on saturday I waited all day long for the wind to come around as forecasted. and it did come around but the waves were tiny. I brought my fish and should have had the log. the dribbly knee high waves were barely rideable and I paddled around for an hour just to stay loose.

yesterday after making B some bacon and heart-shaped pancakes I got online to check the buoys. 5' @ 8 seconds meant that there should something somewhere. I grabbed my log this time and went for a drive. as I walked out over the bluff I could see way out to sea, the coast to the east zigging and zagging into the many bays and inlets. there was no one out, no one in sight at all for the matter. a three wave set rolled in at what looked to be waist high if a little smaller. perfect. I suited up and scaled the bluff,careful not to loose footing and end up with a broken neck.

the water is still ridiculously cold and the air temps was around -8 C. I paddled out and waited for a few moments for the first wave and it came, they came. for two hours I surfed mostly alone. the only memorable wave was a waist high wall that actually had some form. as I bottom turned the board drifted up into the lip as an egg railed sled will and I walked out to the nose. it felt locked as I was in the cheater five stance so I brought my left foot forward and stood tall, two boot tips over and the wave face below.

it seems crazy to go surfing in this terrible cold when the waves are barely big enough to push you along. but what else am I to do? it's too cold and icy outside to do anything else and the thought of sitting around all winter getting stiff and old is not comforting. at some point B and I will have to look south again, to somewhere where wearing a t-shirt outdoors is the norm. I don't care if the waves are tiny or sketchy or huge as long as I can surf. but for now I am in love with this cold place, its view-scapes, its customs and its people.



I like Tyler Warren's style. He's not too epileptic and yet not to easy.

bull bay

my good friend Felon used to keep two boards at Billy's place. he'd come outta the Manchester hills once a month or so and go down to Bull Bay for a surf and some reasonin at the Mystic house. I went down once. we paddled out at the zoo. hadn't surfed in over a year -bloated like a dead dog on the side of a sunny road from too much shitty livin. I caught naught a wave. meantime Felon and Icah and some of the other youth were ripping the little A-frame beachie.

in the evening after gettin some food on the street we had a little jam session. me on the bass and Felon on guitar. one of Billy's sons on the drums and the other on the keys. without a doubt one of the most interesting days I ever had while living in Jamaica.

Jamaica is a place of beauty and paradox. for young men growing up there in poverty there's little if any hope to make a living and support a family by any legal means. Zulu, I hope everting is alright me brejren inna Morrant Bay seen. respec.

counter --> culture

I have been alerted that we are in the midst of standardization boys and girls. yes, me and you are all lookin alike, with a few minor adjustments here and there. like the tract houses where you can get different paint colour and a round or hexagonal port window in the gable, we are all the same sane worker bees. and where's the counter culture?

-hell if I know. I got my sweater at the Gap. the home of weaves weaved by little fingers. yes, I am a supporter of homogeneity and ill will in the workforce of imperial money mongers.

where do we go in these dysthimic times?

"well Mr. Butrin let me tell you what. You just sit right there and let me get you a glass of water with that and in time you'll be feelin all right."

so I get on the bus with my headphones on and look over the harbour. in the corner of my eye I can see my fellow passenger. a downward twist in the corner of her mouth betrays her tension, her inability to feel at ease at all.

I see the stacks, newly painted in their red and white stripes. the three plumes today are moving up and then slightly east. the surface of the harbour oily near the dry docks and with a small ripple breaking the sky's mirror for the day.

my head is filled with thoughts of paddling into steep faces. I can visualize flexing my upper torso musculature to lift my chest from the deck and bring my feet under me, shoulder width apart in a parallel stance. I can see the nose of my board inches above the curve of the water and after an instant I can feel the pull of gravity one way as I redirect the sled up the face pushing water with rail and fin.

then the bus halts and I get up, adjust my bag on my shoulder trying not to squish my lunch and apple into a pulpy mess. as I step onto the sidewalk bordering the ancient cemetery I look up at the trees and the church steeple. blue bird skies mean minus something cold and the twiggy leafless branches appear crisply in the light.

I walk up the street and listen intently to the music piped into my ears for the last fleeting moments of free thought.

counter what? who? how?

offshore winds

photo ras

alone at an A-frame

wow. sometimes my luck is so good that I don't even wanna tell you for fear of sounding boasty.

the alarm went off at six I awoke startled and completely lost. after an instant I remembered that I was going surfing. I slipped into my wetsuit and booties and loaded up the blue flame after putting out the garbage and recycling. the drive was uneventful, if a little gray. the stacks were plumbing west but lightly so.

I arrived at the A-frame and took a peak. one guy out but in the wrong position, too far east. I watched it for a minute and then drove down to check two other spots. a small crew was floating out back waiting for sets. the horizon appeared flat. I went back to the A-frame. from the lot the left looked small. it always deceives.

mitts on and down the rocky icy path. I paddled out through the flat bay towards the peak and a little past where I thought I should sit. one came through and peaked up, wrapping towards me with speed and threatening to put me in too deep. I popped up to instant high speed down the face. bottom turn and tuck into the steep wall, always too far in front of the barrel. stand up straight and point the nose down for massive speed before compressing and whipping up into the face. I carve off the top, the west wind sending the spray like so much jet steam behind me. I pump down the face and compress on the bottom turn and right back up into the lip. a few more top to bottom speed pumps and kick out. stoked.

I surfed by myself for over an hour. the sets were overhead and the third wave in the set would swing wide and line up towards the west. there were barrel sections on the set waves. I tried a few, saw the lip above me on one but didn't get that fabled sound. foiled again. as I write these words my body is cold but completely relaxed. what an amazing opportunity I have to able to surf. for this I humbly give thanks.

jesus malverde protect us

it’s easy to demonize the cartel boys from Mexico as they slay each other by the dozen. how could they be so brutal, so inhuman? why have they allowed the drug trade to take over their communities? perhaps it’s better to break it down a little.

•during the mid to late 1800's the US fought a dirty war in attempt to capture as much Mexican territory as possible. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian gives us a graphic, albeit fictional account of how that time transpired
•completion of the Glenn Canyon Damn in 1963, effectively robbing water from Mexico -“the Colorado River Delta in Mexico is deprived of silt and vital nutrients, which has changed a once lush environment to infertile land.”
•NAFTA

oh there’s a lot more in the history over the past 100 years that can help explain why Mexico is in the state that it is today. the war on drugs in Mexico is nothing more than an economic struggle. the people from the north of Mexico have no way to make a living. the lands are not arable. factories have closed due to cheaper labor in Asia.

the cartels exist because in North America and Western Europe there is a huge demand for drugs. at what point will we take responsibility? are we not to blame for the violence which happens in order to maintain the flow of drugs north? it’s the same with diamonds and hard woods from the Congo, or coal from Colombia, or garments from sweatshops in South East Asia.

at what point do we accept some responsibility for the slayings, the desertification of once fertile lands, the indentured servitude of millions of hands, deforestation, starvation, human trafficking, and on and on? I don’t mean to navel gaze. I’m completely aware as to how I benefit from our taking and taking. I just want to be honest, and see myself as no different than the cartel boys. the only difference between them and me is our weapon of choice. mine is my wallet while theirs is the pistol.