The author pre-epiphany : photo courtesy Lisa Polisar
The un-Zen of surfing
By Lisa Polisar
Good coffee, to me, like unadulterated organic medium-roasted freshly-ground Hawaiian coffee from Kona, is like experiencing sex and church simultaneously. While all your bodily senses are awakened and stimulated, a sense of rarity and purity puts you in touch with something higher - spiritual and otherworldly. I grew up a half mile from the Atlantic and, thus, developed a similar passion for the ocean. So surfing has been a logical obsession for me ever since.
The first time my obsession slid into the realm of reality was when my best friend bought me a custom skateboard. Skateboarding, he said, is a great precursor to surfing because it puts you in touch with motion, movement, freedom and balance at the same time. I knew right away that he was right. Having grown up as a musician, I was never athletic…except for skateboarding. As a kid, it was the closest thing to flying I could think of, short of jumping off the roof of my treehouse wearing my red and blue satin Wonder Woman cape (which I actually did).
So after rekindling my affair with skateboarding for a few months, my friend kidnapped me and took me to Ocean Beach in San Diego for a week…and sent me to surf camp. There were times, when I first got there, that I gazed out at the blue expanse with that annoying, rose-colored lens that affects all of us who have been separated from the sea for a long time.
I watched the slick, unclothed, rubber extremists riding the radical surges of spit and froth and thought, "Sure, I can do that." And then, as I watched closer, focusing on the opposing directions of current and the ensuing clusters of surfers getting knocked off their boards, a more righteous thought pervaded my brain. "There's just no way."
Surf Camp was a way of compressing two months' worth of lessons into a half a day of intensive instruction. I learned about balance, posture, paddling, turning and, most importantly, placement. My instructor told me that not only were my feet placed correctly but I also appeared to have a grace and agility that would serve me well. Let's put your board in the water, he said. No more fooling around on the grass…time to rock and roll.
