just finished reading a pretty cool book, in search of captain zero. basically its the tale of a surfer's road trip from ny to costa rica, combined with flashbacks to the author's days of smuggling weed. i recommend the read. entertaining.
perhaps my favorite passage is allan weisbecker's description of being on the north shore of oahu in 1969, when the biggest storm of the 20th century hit the island. (side note: if you haven't seen this storm depicted in the amazing documentary, riding giants, you must. required surf camp reading.) anyway, on that fateful december nite, he and his surfing bud christopher were sitting in their beachfront home, smoking bowls of hash while homes around them were being evacuated. so he writes,
around midnight . . . christopher opened the door, which faced side-shore, then stepped onto the porch and looked seaward. like a bad actor in a low-budget horror flick, he immediately sprang back inside, slammed the door and spread his arms against it, as if attempting to bar the entrance of an approaching monster. there are moments in one's life that become frozen in time, images hung in the gallery of the psyche. that tiny fraction of time, that image of christopher leaning backward against the door of our house on the night of december 4, 1969, his mouth hanging open in dunderheaded disbelief, is surely a masterpiece of my collection.
i love that concept of images hanging in the gallery of our psyche. a quick review of my psyche's gallery reveals a few beauties. in one wing are images of eric and d.a. riding harleys into an impossibly large new mexican sky. my son experiencing the pacific ocean for the first time. jeff and dale paddling their yellow surfboards with great urgency up the face of a massive 15 foot wave in mexico. watching ted's feet slip out from under him on stage. sharing a high altitude rock and a prayer with kris.
what's hanging in your gallery? what's your masterpiece?
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