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.

My board, Zuma, March 14, 2009

Tere, Zuma, March 21, 2009