William Finnegan: Learning Curves

Here's a paragraph from Finnegan's excellent memoir Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life:

The ocean itself was another story.  I waded into the waves at Will Rogers, diving under pummeling lines of foam, thrashing toward the main sandbar, where the brown walls of the big waves stood and broke.  I couldn't get enough of their rhythmic violence.  They pulled you toward them like hungry giants.  They drained the water off the bar as they drew to their full, awful height, then pitched forward and exploded.  From underwater, the concussion was deeply satisfying.  Waves were better than anything in books, better than movies, better even than a ride at Disneyland, because with them the charge of danger was uncontrived.  It was real.  And you could learn how to maneuver around it, how long to wait on the bottom, how to swim outside, beyond the break, and, eventually how to bodysurf.  I learned actual bodysurfing technique in Newport, watching and imitating Becket and his friends, but I got comfortable in waves at Will Rogers.

--Barbarian Days -- page 71

Penguin Press, New York: 2015

Jack Spicer: Of Fools, Goddesses, Heroes, Oceans, Love, and Memory

ANY FOOL CAN GET INTO AN OCEAN

Any fool can get into an ocean   
But it takes a Goddess   
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming   
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
    water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

--Jack Spicer

(Thanks, JP, for the suggestion.)