Ferry rates have gone down significantly... so much so that I might be expected to want to travel more often to the mainland.... but I really don't want to go anywhere anymore. I just don't want to leave. I had been thinking of going to Hawaii for some warm surf this winter... but I've now decided against it. It seems like such an ordeal, having to pack and go through airport security (and customs and immigration... blargh... can't stand customs and immigration... and mostly on the way back).
So I'll be here all winter. Surfing, diving, reading Schopenhauer, playing guitar, baking brioches, translating poetry, playing Dance Dance Revolution, and maybe, if I get around to it, work on updating my website which should have been updated last month. Maybe put in a new floor in one of the rooms? Maybe repaint a few walls (or paint for the first time, even... I've had this "new" wall for over a year now... it's only got primer on it... but no one seems to have noticed that it's a different colour than all the other walls)...
I started implementing my new plan this past weekend.
I went for a surf on Saturday. It was rainy and windy but turned out to be an awesome day. I hadn't surfed in so long that I wasn't even sure I'd make it out past the break... it was looking pretty big... and I had my little board (which yes, we all agree, is huge, but it's _my_ little board, so there). Anyway, I got out without difficulty... twice! (definitely too tired by the third try though... and too too too tired to go again on Sunday... hadn't surfed in a month and ouch... I felt it in my arms)
I wanted to tell you all about how amazing a surf day it was, but the thing is... I'm just not that good a writer. I don't even know whether it's possible to write that well, that is, to be able to convey any of what surfing is about with words. In _Wild Geese Flying Backwards_ (or whatever the title was), Tom Robbins had a piece on kissing. And what stuck with me about that particular piece of writing was how disappointing it was. I had been looking forward to hearing what Robbins had to say about kissing, he who can make me care about a can of beans and a dirty sock... I remember understanding from the piece that Tom Robbins likes kissing... but it wasn't so much a piece about kissing as it was a piece that says "kissing is awesome" over and over again... but I guess kissing is one of those things that you can't really write about, even if you are Tom Robbins. Surfing is like that... you can't really describe what it's about... you can't really get into why it's so wonderful... you can't explain why you want to spend huge chunks of your life doing it. Surfing is as inexplicably great as kissing. (no, I don't think they're comparable... but, I think we might be mostly able to agree that a good surf is better than a bad kiss, and a good kiss is better than a bad surf... but maybe not)
Sunday was all about reading and playing guitar... tried to re-teach myself songs that I had forgotten (and now cannot really believe I was ever able to play, even poorly, never mind passably). I had my gigantic dictionaries out with my Rilke and Desnos and Eliot and Pound and Seidel... and, I decided that if I make my way through the tough books (recently got an out of print _On The Fourthfold Root..._ from MacLeods), I would reward myself with the rather expensive two volume _Parerga & Paralipomena_. I will not allow myself to read (or buy!) P&P until I'm done FRPSR and WWR 1&2. Will not. Will not! WILL NOT!
Monday was for diving. We went over what looked like a crab killing field... everywhere were broken crab bits (carapace of crab). As I was thinking about all the death and destruction in the sea, we came upon a starfish, draped over an overturned dungeness crab twice its size, obviously in the process of killing and eating it. I was reminded:
"The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other."
Ouch. Okay. No more P&P until I finish FFR and WWR. Not even the free bits of P&P on the internet.
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I recently got a NEXUS card. It's brilliant except for the fact that I still have to deal with the US customs when going down. Being Dutch and all I still have to fill out a I94W form. Stupid Americans. On the way back, I use the machines. At most 1 minute, no lineups and I'm done. If I'm travelling light I don't have to wait at the baggage thingy and I'm out of there. The US thing may change in the near future as they are making it electronic as well. At least I'm hoping. Then the only hassle is the bloody security screening. Damn that dumbass who had a bomb in his shoes.
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