Posts Tagged ‘impermanence’

Surfer Girl. Venice Beach, August 30th, 6:30 pm

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Venice Beach #1

Venice Beach, August 30th, 6:30 pm. I’ve never before ridden the bike path through Venice - too much work dodging tourists and roller skaters - but there was no riding in town due to the toxic air from the fires.

Never having ridden the path I’d no idea how different Venice looked from the perspective of 10 feet further south than the boardwalk. It’s a completely different viewpoint, an insider’s viewpoint maybe, and I’m always thrilled when something as simple as a shift in position opens up what is to me a complete change in perspective, especially of something I’ve seen so very many times over so very many years from the earlier seemingly fixed viewpoint.

If you click on it you can see it bigger. It’s like magic.

Zuma March 21 2009

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

This week’s beach update splits between two weekends. The idea here is to try to convey what this experience is like for me…which is not about a bunch of macho young man’s stuff in which one tames a wave and conquers nature and engages in Xtreme anything…it’s more about the fact that you cannot conquer nature, you cannot will the ocean to do anything, it’s not listening to you and really doesn’t even know you’re there. it’s about some sort of sense of one-ness with the whole thing. It’s sort of easy to get that feeling of serene awe when you are sitting on a board in the ocean with the dolphins swimming not so far beyond you, storm clouds building over the mountains…

It’s like the Buddhist mindfulness/Vipasanna meditation, which is a meditation not of blissed out, what’s-up-with-my-naval escapism, but of focus, concentration on specific aspects of the immediate here-and-now.

Guts board
My board, Zuma, March 14, 2009

Tere
Tere, Zuma, March 21, 2009