There’s always that one last wave, the one you’ll ride as close to the shore as you can get. It’s only fitting that my last one was on the last day of what, if you’ll forgive the foul language, was a fucked up year, a real (please fill in your own adjectives, I just got a bit more depressed and pissed-off considering my options) doozy of a year. PLAGUE YEAR- During which we discovered each of us is a potential threat to anyone we come into contact with, or are even in the same room with. CULTURE WARS- During which the divisions in our population became increasingly clear, with or without bumper stickers and big-ass flags and FoxNews Addicts identifying anyone more intelligent that they are as Elitists. POLITICAL YEAR in which the cruelty of the power elite has only been matched by its cynicism and cowardice. FISCAL YEAR (yes, I know it’s not a complete match)- During which the stock market went up and the jobs dried up.

Wave image taken from Google or Bing; not an exact match to any local waves

NOW, on the political side, here’s an image I can’t quite shake. Imagine Mitch McConnell. Okay, now imagine him supposedly throwing desperate and drowning AMERICANS a lifeline that is just not quite long enough. Yes, he’s got that gleeful smirk/smile any politician representing one of the poorest, per capita, states in the Union might have when he’s claiming a two thousand dollar stimulus check might just accidently go to someone who doesn’t really need it. Possible caption: “Come on now, just jump for it.”

To be clear; I don’t believe McConnell to be cowardly; a cruel and cynical power broker who, I hope, makes no claim to being a Christian (anywhere on the radical spectrum of claimants), hell yeah.

I DO APOLOGIZE, to those who believe you aren’t, for getting political. I will try not to get too religious EXCEPT to say that I have come to interpret that commandment about not using God’s name in vain as meaning we mortals (sure, you could also put an asterisk on this) don’t have a right to give commands to whatever God is (and, since none of us really know, I would be considered liberal or blasphemous on this, considering how cock sure you are). I do believe it’s acceptable to make requests. As such, and realizing we are all hypocrites in some way, we are all infidels to someone, we are all sinners (if sinning means breaking some part of your own code), and many of us have been taught that there is some sort of overriding and final judgment and that vengeance is not ours; I do have a few requests in the disabling-if-not-damning category.

SO, GOOD FUCKING BYE to 2020; I do have some optimism for 2021; but heading into it is like, if I can compare it to my last surf session, yesterday, in which I took off before dawn, knowing the recent rains and tides and other factors have altered (and not for the better) my favorite reef; and then, heading up Surf Route 101, checking the buoy readings, discovering the swell has moved too south for anything to work on the Strait; then discovering a long chunk of 112 is closed due to the usual landslides; and, with the surf always fickle, rarely matching the forecast (unless it’s for flatness and unfavorable winds), and… and I kept going.

It worked out. Kind of. We adapt. We hope. Maybe the tides and the rivers and the waves will push the gravel and the rocks, reshaped and reformed into a different reef, one that turns chaos into a peak and a running shoulder. Change is constant. Keep going.

TWO LAST THINGS: One, two thousand dollars is ‘walking around money’ for some, desperately needed for many. If you don’t understand true desperation, ‘lucky you.’ Two, since, all of us being masked and dangerous has allowed the true dickheads to be much more open about it. As such, I have made it my first NEW YEAR’S resolution ever, to be as nice as I can bring myself to being in public (properly distanced) situations. EXAMPLE- Getting gas at Costco, I told the guy gassing up his big-ass SUV with those big-ass rims that those kind of rigs always remind me of covered wagons. Negative response. I turned to see some other dickhead had just said something rude to the attendant. I said something nice. No, actually I said that some people are just dickheads. Then I said something nice, like, Happy New Year. “Thanks, man” was his response. Then, just to prove that I (well known for being a wave hog) am a hypocrite, I had a chance to share the three bucks in my wallet with a couple at the stoplight (sign, dog, both smoking). I didn’t. Might have been the smoking part. Still, dickhead inaction.