Will Tommy Ihnken remember this turn? Photo: Mike Incitti
“Did you see that turn?” I shout with my eyes. I don’t say it out loud, but the guy who just finished watching my wave says it just as clear with his own silent, awed expression.
“Yeah I saw that turn. That was awesome!”
The grom sitting a little further down the line gives me a hoot. Yeah, I know it was a good turn now, but a question still lingers, “What DID I just do?” I can remember the approach. A long drawn out bottom turn with my eyes on the lip for what felt like fifty yards, a brief few seconds that somehow stretched beyond their slim bounds. I find this temporality is a general precursor to such a critical strike, a fresh reminder that time is more subjective than we regularly assume. I vaguely gauge the surroundings, sensing a checklist of visible things. A few scattered surfers in my periphery, their forms fade from conscious recognition as my full focus deepens into the penetrating crest arching skyward. A final subtle bank off the bottom as I coil into position – and then black. I’m back at the bottom of the wave before I’ve realized what has happened. I kick out. My mind races. My eyes blatantly beg the question, “Did you see that turn? Because I sure didn’t.”
I’m not quite sure what induces these moments in me. I’ve asked other surfers if they’ve shared similar experiences, and yet none I’ve asked so far know what I mean. I see references occasionally, Gerry Lopez’s essay “A Big Score,” Joel Parkinson struggling to describe to the world via web cast the details of his 9 plus barrel-ride at Haleiwa a couple years back. I’m not alone, but the experience is too frighteningly subjective to justify with anecdote.
The feebleness of objective rational is so apparent at times like these. To be clear, this is not the fuzzy memory of a 300-yard wave at Rincon where sheer fatigue wears away at the features of five near identical roundhouse cutbacks. This is much more pronounced than the simmering vague recollection of an absurdly long wave. This is meticulously negated consciousness. I search for reasons. Maybe it’s because of the murmur I had in my heart until I was twelve. A strong circulation was not in my birthright and becomes painfully obvious on days where the water dips below 54-degrees Fahrenheit and more than three duck-dives make it obvious I have to catch the next blast of whitewash in and wait for a break in the swell before trying again. So I toy with the concept that mid-turn, a weakened blood flow to the brain due to all my blood rushing to support my legs could empty the space of conscious recall. Maybe another explanation is the possibility that I could be an undiagnosed mild epileptic. Moments of intense focus that trigger a localized storm of a neuronal non-consciousness while leaving my motor coordination intact seems a fair stretch but I can’t rule that out immediately. And yet the science never seems fully satisfying. These moments of emptiness don’t feel like malfunction. The turn was perfect, flawless. The stunned faces on casual surfing acquaintances admit the shock they feel in seeing me as the executioner of such a marvelous thing. I may be known as a decent surfer, but that usually ends in an ungraceful fins free top-turn. These famously timid torques of mine have all the pizzazz of a pinpricked buttocks and a blatant disregard for certain undeniable symmetries.
A brief study in physiodynamics would probably fault a misplaced hip somewhere in the bottom turn, maybe a lack of commitment with my contra-lateral latismus, a reduced dysrhythmic flange, whatever – because what all this science fails to recognize is something deeper, something within the greater myth of what makes us all surfers to begin with. Contained in each surfer’s mind is a quest. Like Knights of the Round Table we mount our trusty surfboard-steeds in search of the Holy Grail. And yet, like the Holy Grail itself, the goal of our quest lacks a clear definition. It travels somewhere in the distance, following the extensions of thought inspired by the first angled ride, that first floater, and becomes truly lost to verbal expression around the time of that first mystical view from inside the barrel. How does one describe such rapturous glee? We come to realize that the empty space of the barrel is not something we can possess, but rather it is that which we become possessed by. It is then the act of possession that switches roles as our surfing quest continues; possession by the wave rather than of the wave. Suddenly the aquatic dance snaps into trance, the most ancient and trusted devotion to the gods of nature. Trance is not a place of internal recall, or memory, and for that reason the role of trance and possession in society has never been one of egoistic satisfaction. Trance empties consciousness. A void forms so that higher states may take control of the physical frame, usually in order to deliver a message or to enact the universal myth of good versus evil, a reminder of the constant flow of energy from positive to negative space, always in flux, always changing, always feeding life and taking away.
Trance is the state one assumes in order to give a message to the people, to give clear vision of the direction that must be sought – so that the contemporary direction of flow may be more visible to all. The clearer I remember the apex of a turn, the ruder that turn becomes. Blankness seems a futile goal, but it has become my personal marker of success. This is not some religious, spiritual faith that leads me, but simply the tried and true values of trial and error. A blank turn, as I have found, is a good turn. I have ceased future attempts at possessing the perfect turn in my surfing repertoire (not as easy as it sounds…). Up there with my favorite descriptions of God is Tom Blake’s “Nature = God,” but I also have another that comes from the Hindu texts of The Upanishads: “God controls ignorance, man is controlled by it.” If I dictate the occurrence of episodes of ignorance by a careful dedication to natures flow maybe, just maybe, I’ll be on the right track.
