Surf and Sydney
If good looks was a minute/ You know that you could've been an hour- Smokey Robinson, 'The Way You Do The Things You Do'
A quick wet before the day begins.
For all of us suffering from extreme cases of cabin fever in the chilly Midwest, More Intelligent Life has an essay on the joys of surfing in Sydney. I’ve always been fascinated by surfing. As a teen, my friends and I watched Point Break repeatedly not because of the award-winning filmmaking, but because of the surfing. To Midwesterners, surfers might as well be Marvel Comic intergalactic visitors. The grace and skill displayed on the edge of pure natural violence takes your breath away. No wonder Malcolm Knox loves it.
Sphere: Related ContentInside myself the layers of history behind a wave are even more important, because whenever I start paddling in front of that green wall of water, hoping I have timed my line so that I will arrive at the exact point and angle to maximise my speed and stability on take-off, I hold within me the years of having admired surfers before I did it myself; the defiance of doubt that such a complex act, balancing on a moving fibreglass board upon a moving, shifting shape of a liquid substance is possible at all; the years of practice and frustration; the aches and injuries; the disappointment of so many crap or crowded days; the clashes and intimidation from tougher surfers–all of this lies behind me as I paddle for this wave.
The ecstasy can be distilled to a moment: when you rise from your chest onto your feet and you see before you the face of the wave, slanting cleanly across you, reaching out ahead; it’s when you know that you are on a good one, forming a wall for you to draw your lines across. Surfing can present the thrill of survival–when the waves are big, and you hold on to escape the churn of the wave breaking behind you, heading for an escape hatch of clean green water–or it can be a thrill of artistry–in smaller waves, you can scribble a graffiti of foam, literally writing on water. The great surfers can write this script even on the big, heavy, frightening ones.
O'Hare Arpt., IL
