Currents

The cliffs of Pacifica are slipping and I can feel myself slipping too.

There is this uncertainty in the air that smells like fishy sea fog and doom. Turn on the news and watch politicians go to battle as a category 5 hurricane touches land. Log on to Twitter and see Jacob Blake get shot seven times in the back. Open your window and welcome inside the wildfire smoke. Laying in bed last night I told my girlfriend, Cindy, that I can’t help but feel like this world is crumbling, bursting at the seams. With a one hand on my shoulder and one against my back, she whispered, “I know. I know.” 

A new morning is announced with soft grey light framing the edges of my curtains. I can tell it’s cold before I even get out from under the covers. I don’t feel any better than I did last night.

When the sun sets in San Francisco, it is rarely on the horizon. Hidden clouds sit patiently and quietly at the base of the sky. They eat up the fading light minutes, even hours early. No matter how many evenings I spend on the water, I’m always surprised when the red, burning ball of light dips behind a cloud that I didn’t even know was there. A chill comes with this betrayal. It’s a cold reminder that the dark drive home is near, and that I may have less time here than I thought. 

We play so many tricks on ourselves to maintain a comfortable level of ignorance. We pretend that Great Whites don’t swim through the lineup. We convince ourselves that the flight home is worth the carbon emissions since the plane is going to fly with or without us anyway. In the very same sentence, we can say that our vote is the single most important yet useless liberty we are granted. To strip joy from this world is to willfully ignore all of the red flags that line our path forward. 

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This past weekend I surfed at Ocean Beach with my brother. It was a fogged-in morning and we stopped at a few streets to check the surf. Eventually, we settled on a peak just north of the San Francisco Zoo. Despite the poor visibility and grey conditions, the water lacked the anticipated frozen sting. We paddled out patiently, jumping over foamy walls on the knee-deep inside sandbar, before the quick sprint outside. 

As is often the case, our expectations were wrongfully skewed by a few, really good, first waves. Although we didn’t say it out loud, our body language screamed “it’s kind of firing!” This feeling of elation quickly changed as we watched a rip current travel south down the coast, eventually turning our dream left into a river.  For the next hour we fought a tidal current to a reeling right that was always just a few strokes out of reach. The glorious morning quickly turned annoying, and, ultimately, deeply frustrating. 

I’ve been thinking about this session all week long. Watching wave after wave break before us as we paddle on powerlessly, as if trapped on a treadmill or a bad dream. I’m amazed at the ocean’s ability to mimic the outside world as my powerless feelings extend inland, far from the coast. 

There is some current, some invisible wave pulling us backwards. Every day we open our eyes to a new world, but also the same world. A world where people are killed or not killed due to the color of their skin. A world that is burning up so quick that I can see, and notice, physical changes even in my short life. A world where, come November, we are asked to vote for two parties that have seemingly abandoned all of us. 

I’m not sure where to go from here, or if what I do will even matter, but for now I’m going to keep paddling forward towards that mystical right sucking up on the sandbar. I’m going to keep making phone calls and donations for Joe Biden. And I’m sure as hell going to vote. But I have to admit that things are feeling grim, dare I say hopeless. 

The cams at Ocean Beach show wind-torn slop and knee-high sets, but I think I’m going to give it another go.