Another Weekend at Home... Diving... Headlong into the Pit of Schopenhauerian Enlightenment

Spending a weekend at home isn't so strange, is it? But I suppose I'd gotten so used going somewhere on the weekend that remaining at home still seems remarkable to me. Of course, when I say "at home," I don't mean in my house-- I mean Tofino. "Going somewhere" usually involves loading up my car with stuff (skis, boards, packs, food, water, &c) and driving somewhere far away to do something... there would be highway on ramps and off ramps and junctions and exits, and planned and unplanned stops along the way. Here, I could pretty much walk to do everything that I do. The reason I don't walk is because of the stuff I have to carry, not the distance.

Yesterday was a good surf day... not too big, not too small, and one could get rides of a reasonable length... unfortunately, I had forgotten how to surf. It happens sometimes. I had simply forgotten. I tried to remind and convince myself that I can surf by thinking of all the excellent, memorable rides I've had this year. It didn't work. I couldn't figure it out. Perhaps it was because I was supposed to go diving yesterday, but it was postponed until today. Maybe I had been looking forward to being underwater so much that I couldn't quite get the hang of being on the surface. Whatever it was, I'm sure it'll be temporary. I've experienced this before.

I am going down to the dock in a few hours to go for a dive. I'm really looking forward to it... but am still so paranoid about surfer's ears that I'm a little worried about the ride back... cold, wet, in an open boat. Maybe I should get earmuffs. I don't want to have to get my ears drilled.

Despite the vow I made at this year's Martini Migration to never attend another social event in Tofino, I went to a Christmas party on Friday. I survived, and am now a pricked porcupine instead of a cold porcupine. I think I may have to invest in a heater.

And... speaking of porcupines... so much for my resolution to not buy P&P until I finish FRPSR and WWR. I saw that P&P vol. 1 was on sale for about half price at Oxford University Press USA... so I ordered them both. I also want a copy of P&P in German... because it would be super fun to try to read it in German. There's no way I could do WWR in German, but P&P I could probably work on. The first time I heard "Hélène," I didn't understand a word of it, and now I can read Desnos... I've got to start somewhere... and Schopenhauer is probably an age appropriate idol... I should get posters of Schopenhauer and hang them all over the place. Rilke could also do... but he's too much of an artist.

Miracle

He actually sat by himself and looked at the camera. Was this my hallucination?
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Onshore Today

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

North after work

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Weekend at home...

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.

Apparently I haven't been using nearly enough data transfer for my Blackberry plan...

Walking the dog after work. South.

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Heartbreak

It seems true that a little heartbreak every now and then does one some measure of good, making one feel more alive &c... but tearing one's heart out and dashing it repeatedly against the same brick wall to the point where one ends up feeling sorry for the wall for having to suffer the repeated impact of a flung bloody internal organ doesn't appear to be at all constructive. Why do it? Especially since after not too long, you are forced to recognize that the sucker is unbreakable anyway (the heart, not the wall)...
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network