Yesterday there was a tsunami where I am living, and I think I might have broken my foot. Now I'm feeling bad for Japan, angry at myself for being stupid, and worried about things I have no control over.
I keep thinking about this little girl from one of the classes I often substitute teach. She is about five years old, part Japanese, part caucasian, and just the sweetest little person I have ever known. She has single handedly made me a better person, just with her little smile. Well anyway this little girl was born completely deaf and has recently had an operation that has allowed her to hear. She wears her hair back and has these little antennas that stick out behind her ears, which connect to her head via magnets placed beneath her skin. She can hear and talk almost perfectly with them on, though she is very shy and hardly says anything until you get to know her. Without them she is completely deaf. Anyway she is fine and she is going to have a great life as her Father is a teacher at a prestigious private school out here (and a surfer I might proudly add!) and her Mom is a really nice and pretty little Japanese lady (not sure what she does for a living) and she's just a really smart, really bright little star. Anyway what I'm getting at is I have come to really care about this little one and it's killing me to know how many children like her have either lost their lives or are living in suffering over in Japan now. I keep having visions of kids like her over there and it's just really sad and gnarly what has happened to those people and to many other people across the world everyday. I think it's pretty easy to sit back, eat a snickers, and just flip the channel, or flip off that part of my mind to that part of our reality. This is how I've lived and looked at the world for a long time, but I'm finding it harder and harder everyday. Especially as I make myself more aware, but then I get to this point where I'm like shit, what the hell can I do about any of this stuff, and do I want to do anything at all, can I handle what that entails or do I just go on the way most of us do and quietly think about something else. I know what happened was a natural disaster and thats just a part of life, and that life is just really hard sometimes, and that it could easily get a lot harder for me and mine, I don't know, I guess I'm just ranting.
Anyway I was surfing small pipe with Cave brother yesterday thinking about all of this stuff and trying to impress the heavy hitters in the water at the same time as they were the real deal pipe crew and I am always striving to improve on my spot out there. I took off on a deep left kind of from aints, (aint pipe-aint off the wall=aints) a spot that runs into really shallow water in front of backdoor and anyway I tried to hit the lip on the inside and dug my nose and went over the falls into dry sticking out of the water reef. I guess I'm happy I didn't go face first and like rip my face off or something, but I went down on my feet and just racked them across the reef with a lot of force. At one point my right foot cot caught in a little crack and twisted and I pretty much smashed it really hard. Now it's all swoll and I'm not sure if it's broke and a huge northwest is going to hit in a few days. I really wanted to surf Himalayas on this swell, been dreaming about it, but now it's not going to happen. I guess it could be worse.
But thats ok, because now I have the opportunity to make a really good little film about surfing without worrying about missing any surf because if my foot still feels like this in a few days, there's no way I could handle 10ft plus Hawaiian surf. The film will showcase the skills of my little brother who is on his way to becoming quite the waterman. The screening will be availabe on the blog shortly after the swell, please wear a tie when you watch it.
(Cavebrother age 9, watches closely as Caveboy age14, bottom turns on a nice little right at the lighthouse in Buxton OBX NC)
Adam Grew up having to watch me surf. Now it's my chance to watch him. No pressure bradda.
