I’ve been thinking about surfing.

I don’t, by the way.

Surf, that is.

I shy students away from the word “can’t” but invoke it when it comes to my ability in navigating water where I am unable to touch bottom.

But the look in a surfer’s eyes.

Brings to mind Freire’s “patient impatience.”

One doesn’t consume a wave. Can’t own it. But space is carved, claimed, challenged on lurching canvases. Improvised rhapsodies of pecking order and unspoken code.

The passing of one, a hunger for the next one.

We’d do well to learn the lessons of letting hair get tussled and sandy. Of the bite of frigid confrontation with the sea. You can’t read convincingly about the brackish aftertaste the ocean leaves. Or the way language twists back upon itself when describing the journey with a wave – into, along, within. Do we teach these lessons or hope they are experienced? A knowledge lost as we lay waste to the experiential in our race to the top.

We disregard the self-guided learning communities on the ground, toweling off next to PCH.

You chase waves hungrily like an endangered species you want to savor before extinction.

Each tide a microcosm of loss,

A “tiny apocalypse”

Lips set, pursed, tightened,

In determination.