I am not sure about the title. It’s sort of a reference to my most recent surf adventures, in which I frothed way too much, and suffered some embarrassment. Not what I am trying to write about at the moment, but I can’t help imagining how many surfers are asking, “Hey, did you see that asshole in the water?” And then… No, another time for that story. BUT, I must mention some old dude on the beach, while I was complaining about all the rigs pulling up, just had to tell me he used to get all over amped like I was, but then, when he got older… “Hey man, I’m 71, how old are you?” 73. “Okay.”

Dude did not go out.

Anyway, this might be the last thing I write for the Quilcene Community Center newsletter. The guy who runs it is leaving and… Here it is.

   Check it out:

              Theories on Time and Money and Doing Absolutely Nothing

We’re sliding headlong into October with August weather (pleasant, if you like warmth and dislike rain, drizzle, fog, or moisture of any kind). Unusual, when it seems like last year we had October weather in September, with a repeat in October, maybe a few October-ish days in November. It’s hard for me to remember exactly what the first full month of Autumn brought last year, but it somehow doesn’t seem like a very long time since the leaves started changing color and falling, the dawn coming later and the dusk earlier, and there was a sort of worry or wonder when our latest round of Daylight Savings Time would end.

I have a theory for why, as we age, time seems to move more quickly. It’s not like I spend a lot of time contemplating time and space and your or my place in the universe, and it is definitely not that I can prove this or any of several other theories.

And yet, sometimes when I’m driving a half hour here or there, and sometimes while I am painting, I get to thinking…  

TIME may or may not be infinite. Humans couldn’t have invented time; we do try to monitor and measure it. Some submultiple of a wink, perhaps, some length of time it takes to take a footstep. Time and distance. We have lifespans that are finite, definite beginning and end (as in our physical, corporeal beings, not arguing before or afterlife here). Even if we make it to one hundred years of age, we are, sorry, a mere bleep or blip on, say, a thousand-year chunk of the presumably infinite line. If we go to a larger length of time, ten thousand years, for example, our existence is an even smaller blip. I don’t want to do the math. It doesn’t really matter. Smaller.

IT MAKES SENSE that, if summer vacation when you were twelve was 3/144^th of your life (or 1/48^th), and seemed long and glorious, but you’re now, let’s say, fifty, we’re talking, um, uh, calculating… 3/600^th (or 1/200^th) of your life to this point. No wonder this summer seemed so, let’s say, fleeting.  

Neither our longevity nor our size in comparison to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe means we’re insignificant or unimportant. What our relative nothingness does mean is each of us has a certain (and mostly unknown) chunk of time to be cruising or snoozing or working or binge watching or shopping or worrying or being angry… whatever we chose to do with our time. 

HERE’S WHAT got me thinking about some of this time allocation stuff: I surf. Surf on the Strait of Juan de Fuca is fickle. When there is a chance of waves, a surfer desires to go. I work. Work is important. I do not, I must insist, live to work. However (see above) work is important and necessary. So, did I go recently when the surf, in a sea of flatness, was forecast to be rideable? Yes. Was the surf great? No. Worth the time and expense and the lack of the money that could have been earned? Hmmm. So, the question I have asked others enjoying (to a lesser or greater level than where I was on the guilt-to-bliss scale) this session: “How much money would it take for you not to go?”

A more accurate question is, “How much money have you taken not to go?” Probably not enough, though this varies, related to the quality of the surf. Fill in with your own leisure time activity.

MONEY, it’s what we trade our skills and our hours for, theoretically.

Another factor in my overthinking time is that we are in another election season, with ads for opposing candidates jammed together like an unmoderated debate Voting is often referred to as a ZERO SUM GAME, a vote for one candidate taken from the other. Time may be the ultimate of these games.

I don’t mean to suggest that having an “I’ll sleep when I die” attitude is appropriate, but it would seem being bored is not a good use of our time. Rest, sleep, recreation, gardening, sorting out our tools, doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING; these non-activities are sometimes the very best use of our time. I spent part of a day recently binge-watching the latest “Game of Thrones.” I was exhausted. Many speak highly of the rejuvenating effects of meditation.

I have thought about it.

If our earth, rotating and revolving, it seems like half of us are in the darkness and half in light. It also seems something like a third of humanity must or should be sleeping.

This should explain why I don’t, purposefully, meditate. Accidentally, yes.

THE GOOD NEWS for those of us who are farther along on our blip or bleep is that our stashes of memories and stories grows ever larger. My last theory is that remembering a story once helps to bring out the deeper cuts (album talk here), little, “Oh, yeah” moments. Then, in remembering or retelling the story, we have the advantage of remembering the original event and the edited, possibly enhanced, and/or embellished version. Helpful.

Thank you for spending some submultiple of your life reading this. Happy October.        

Wow. Hurtful. I want to be clear. I thought it was amusing.

SURFERS surf, of course, but we also hang out on beaches and in parking lots, chatting. In another setting, or if chairs, and fires, and favors, or darkness, or lack of actual waves are involved this might be described as ‘partying.’ Since I don’t often ‘party,’ this has become my description of partying. Chatting, schmoozing, talking story, or playing my favorite game, “Who do you know?”

I had, indeed, on this day, before and then after surfing (‘Practicing’ I call it when the waves are minimal but uncrowded), participated in several enjoyable rounds of ‘WDYK.’ Let’s see: Reggie (took a nap, took off for elsewhere), Omar (able to fit three big boards and himself into a stealth rig/car- didn’t surf), Kendall (who surfed) and Natalie (who didn’t). Kendall knows Darren, others I know, though not Reggie, a ‘maybe’ on Adam Wipeout, and some guy who thought he was surfing, and walked over as I was ready to leave in a wetsuit and a hat, ready to chat. “Hey,” I said, as I pulled out, “is that wetsuit really that… short?” “He rolled up the legs,” Omar said. “I did,” the guy in the hat said. “Oh,” I said, and drove away.

Party over.

THE MYSTERY- As I almost do, partially to mitigate the expense, mostly as an excuse, conveniently timed to coincide with some hope o a swell, I stopped in Sequim. Armed with a cell phone rather than a list (though I usually have, and need, both), I got the stuff and headed back out. That’s when I discovered the note under the windshield wiper of my surf rig.

Now, in every mystery, there is a RED HERRING. It was weird that, the moment I turned around with the just-discovered note, a woman was approaching me. It was Jen (might be Gin, depending or her real name). She may have recognized me, as she said, from little videos Reggie Smart (look him up if you care) posts of me on Instagram. OR, as she also said, I had spoken to her in a parking lot. I THOUGHT it might have been the time, and she may have been the women who, when some dude, several rigs down the line, was complaining (to others, not to me) about my wave-hogging (topic for another day), and after she noted that the lineup is sometimes a “Sausage-fest” (Funny), she told me that she told him, “That’s just what he does.” Not a really good defense. But true.

That might have been a different woman. Jen, when I asked what I had said to her, said, “You said you thought I was a boy.” Oh. So, maybe I’m not necessarily that perceptive. Rude. As it turned out, Jen knows, like, everyone. Ev-er-re-one in the surfing community (such as it is- if it is). Part of this is that Jen worked or works at HOBUCK (not bad-mouthing Hobuck here). I mentioned ADAM WIPEOUT. Whoa! Jen had worked the just-over weekend at one of the constant events they have down at the Hama-Hama. I called Adam to verify. I gave Jen the phone. I loaded up my Costco loot. Jen invited me to her wedding, upcoming, at, surprise, Hobuck, to someone I may or may not know.

Forgot his name. Adam knows him. Of course.

So Jen, who seemed to think some of what I was saying was humorous, particularly that Hobuck is where the hipsters who deny being hipsters hang out, took the photos. She sent them to Reggie, he sent them to me.

Dru showed me how to get them on this computer.

Jen is, at that point, still a suspect.

BUT THEN, because they had both been surfing on this day, Aaron and Randall and Reggie became suspects. I actually texted Aaron. Denial, but he said the note was genius. So, still suspect. Reggie? “No; not me, dude.” I called Keith. “Hmm. I think Randall does the Costco thing… sometimes.

Now, the note could have been written by someone I don’t know, maybe not even a real surfer. Possible

Next time: Reveal.