Love.

I want to think people in love with other people are stunted in growth, low-level chakras or maybe just simpletons on the evolutionary scale.  I want to think this because I've never loved anyone, and I want to feel good about myself.

Sometimes you make decisions in life and don't know what you are giving away.  I mean,  you sit around and drink vodka and stare blankly at a TV and think about shit and decide something might be a good idea. 

Like you think, well, maybe you should just sell your surfboard because you haven't surfed in a bit and it's taking up space and it's a lot like a carcass, and lugging carcasses through life serves nothing, whatever form they might take, like surfboards, so you opt for the rational thing, you decide to sell your surfboards.

I mean, I was hanging out with George at the dumpsters and George is probably a controlled hoarder.  Not I, I'm more like in denial about life.  I think I might actually rejoin life one day and LIVE IT.  But then I lie in bed at night and sweat through that night and feel my heart struggling through that night and then secretly allow a reticent nod towards my folly.

This is life, right?, all the little subterfuges. Or lies.

And George said that day, by the dumpsters, you don't surf anymore, get rid of your surfboards.  I think he meant throw them out.  Because I have two of them, over eight feet, and five wetsuits and two sets of booties and gloves and surf racks for the car.  That's it, pretty much. Oh, and a travel bag, 100 inches.

George, fyi, who has hallowed out the space between the ceiling of his apartment and the next floor up to store and yet more shit he hoards.  Is all.

But it stuck and I started thinking about it, that maybe he was right. I don't have a car, I live far from the beach, I haven't surfed in years.  I have limited space in my tiny apartment, and much bad art competing for it.  Yes, maybe George is right.

About two months after first posting on Craigslist, today I sold my surf stuff.  I did the rational thing and sold it all. 

I carry the crap downstairs with the guy, he goes to bring his car around, and I'm standing there alone, looking down at my beloved board. Suddenly I realize I've made a HUGE mistake. I was wrong, carrying carcasses around is a good thing, especially your surfboard! The precise mistake I made was this:  two boards, a carrying case, five wetsuits, two pairs each of booties and gloves, and surf racks... all I needed was the one board, the very thing I fell in love with at all, The Board. It wasn't everything surf that was excessive, it was all the excessive stuff that was excessive. And then he showed up with his car. I loaded everything into it, and that was that.

Love is a strange whore and has lived in my life pretty much via bicycles, outside, paint, and surf. 

Twenty years ago I got the bug, decided I needed to surf, and sucked at it seriously. I was living in NYC and flying out here to California to figure it out, back and forth a couple of times and flailing/failing miserably.  But the bug never waned and after a deep lack of progress for a very long time I found what would be my board in a surf shop in California. It was buried in the back, old and low-performance, a real boat in a tank kind of way.  A virtual eyesore. It was love at first site and I bought it and taped a couple of bicycle boxes together and flew it back to NY.  This was winter, and I tried to be patient but wasn't, so I rented a car and drove it down to Cocoa Beach. I paddled it out late afternoon and first wave, I stood up.  There was no greater moment, no greater love, not ever.

Living in New York was me, my board, many subways, and Rockaway Beach. But my vacations were renting a car and beach-hopping my way down the east coast.  I'd drive to a town, surf the day, get some local eats, stay the night, and do it again the next day.  Seaside New Jersey and Cape May, Ocean Beach, Maryland by the moonlight, the dirty surf in Virginia Beach, the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  I'd paddle out, sometimes talk to people, mostly just hang out on the water, and it was everything right. I drove out to Jones Beach one day and walked its length until I found my own spot, just me, and then I surfed it for hours.  Wave after wave.  I could have died there and no one would have been the wiser.  I remember that one day at Rockaway, holding onto the rail while leaning into it, the sound of the board cutting through that wave; I'll never forget that sound.  Sitting out there so many days, legs dangling in the ocean, waiting for the Godots while not really caring because the water smelled so good and all lesser things occupied the land behind me. 

I want to believe I've done something good for that board, that I've returned it to the ocean where it belongs, even if it's not with me.  But the truth is I gave away love today.  How many loves are in a life?  Mine, hardly any at all, and today I gave one away.  I sold my surfboard. The worst thing about love is the part you don't get until you fuck it up, eternally.