I had in mind something a little more radical...

I want more life. 

So what the fuck does that mean exactly?

Does it mean less time spent working?  Does it mean more money?  Does it mean better health?  Does it mean a longer lifespan?  How do you quantify it?

Let me give a concrete example of what it isn't.  Is there a thing from the past, like someone cheating on you, or a bad accident, that when you start to think about it, your heart rate goes up, you feel anxious, and your mind begins to race?  Have you ever noticed that that thing, no matter how many times you turn it over in your mind, you never seem to get anywhere with it?  It's like a repeating loop of being pissed off about something and thinking about it never brings you any closer to resolution.

I bet there's lots and lots of those isn't there?  My head is full of them.

What is really living life then?  I think it's when your attention becomes fixated on your surroundings, your body, everything that actually exists, rather than memories of the past or projections of the future.  The more you find yourself doing that, the more life you claim for yourself.

Living like that does not come easy to me.  I have to pedal a bike for hours on end, or have perfect waves, or some other extraordinary external circumstance that breaks me out of the prison of all these reactive patterns that I constantly seem to be living out.  I think identifying negative patterns replacing them with positive ones is a pretty good start.  If you're going to live out a bunch of unconscious patterns, they might as well be healthy ones right?

When time stands still

Also known as the perfect moment.  No thoughts of the past, or the future, or of anything really.  100% in the the present, the now.

Saturday featured one of the better surf sessions I've had in Florida.


The morning sesh out back was nice enough.  After that I was futzing around and thinking about a bike ride.  Wind was holding offshore into the afternoon though..hmmm.  My tide watch said it was high tide...Normally north Jetty on a Saturday with a clean groundswell would be jam packed with surfers but we've had 5 days of swell and I had an idea the high tide might get some more to go home, what with it getting later in the day and all.  So I threw my board in the back of the truck and took the ferry over to the the island.  Timing was money, tide had backed out enough to drive on to the beach and there weren't many people at all for a Saturday.

Surf was substantially better than out back.  Lineup wasn't too crowded, was catching as many waves as I wanted.  Ran into one of my neighbors which was pretty cool.

Thunderstorm rolled through.  Nasty, violent, but not survival conditions.  Wind was so strong the rain was stinging and there was a lot of surface chop.  Some of us stayed in the lineup and kept surfing.

Before too long, the front blew over and the sun poked through the clouds.  Lineup was weeded of anyone who did not have a strong motivation to stay.

Wind completely died.  Water was like sheet glass, and the tide was just right.  The waves were a foot overhead on sets and perfect.  Not a drop out of place perfect, with a silvery mirror-like surface.  Catching wave after wave, taking off deep, driving through the first section, then turn after turn until kicking out in knee deep water.  On my way paddling out I would see other people catching waves and surfing them with unconscious flow and style, completely melding themselves with the wave - no layer of thinking between.  And so it was, like a dream.  A perfect moment in time.

After a time the tide wasn't quite optimal and the waves started to get a bit wobbly, and then the wind started to blow again, and the moment was gone.  I caught one in, put my board in the back of the pickup truck, threw a towel down on the front seat, turned the key, and drove back towards the park entrance.

Would have been a good day to have a nice camera.

That morning I pulled out a box of clothes that used to be too small for me.  In the box there was the bintang T-shirt I bought from a street vendor at Uluwatu.  I put it on and it fit.  Comfortably.  I wore it in the lineup at North Jetty of course

.

Tomorrow never comes

And I don't wanna be an old man anymore
It's been a year or two since I was out on the floor
Shaking booty, making sweet love all the night
It's time I got back to the good life
It's time I got back, it's time I got back
And I don't even know how I got off the track
I wanna go back, yeah!  - Weezer: the good life

It is time I got back.  But unlike Rivers Cuomo I know exactly how I got off the track.

It's called 'tomorrow never comes'.  It works like this:  Just one more vodka and cranberry.  Just one more Cigarette.  Just one more night on the town.  And it's sorta like groundhog day, every day is the same and they all just bleed together.  Tomorrow, I'll change tomorrow.

So sometime back in early April in 2012 I'm talking to my doctor.  The only reason I went to see him is he refused to keep refilling my asthma prescription without an office visit.  So we're going over everything and his two chief concerns were that:

1. I was going through asthma medication at an unacceptably high rate and maybe it was time to look at some other things such as supplementary oxygen.  wait, what!?! 
2. Then it was on to my rapid weight gain, which in combination with my deteriorating vitals were an indication that I may be on the cusp of type 2 diabetes. Wait, once you get that shit there's no un-having it, that's like permanent, right?!?  YES.

What the fuck is this!?!  not too long ago I was surfing in indo bitch.  This can't be happening.

Well, you're in your 40s, and your body doesn't bounce back like it used to.

I was in a state of shock.  I asked him about prescription quit smoking medications and he put me on chantix which makes you crazy as all get out. you may die from turning into a psychotic basket case, but you won't want to smoke.  Sounded like a fair trade-off to me.  Yes there were strong side effects no question, but I rather enjoyed them.  Is that kind of sick or what?

But let's get back to tomorrow never comes.  In my mind up until recently I had been kicking ass and taking names and this getting fat and being a smoker and drinking heavily all that was just a short term thing I was going to take care of any day now.

My passport says otherwise:

Yea, that says 14th of may, 2006.  six years ago. SIX YEARS AGO.

Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.

-s