Part 2: And the Clock Asks for Patience

SAT 5: Puerto Malabrigo/Chicama

To read Part 1: Please click here.

This post is augmented by the photography of Charlie Kavanagh. Charlie is a Wildlife and Nature Photographer from Western Australia. You can check out more of his work on Instagram @charleskphoto.

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8.23.24

Wax on wax off, says Surf Sensei.

Guided by Renato’s gentle suggestions, my surfing took off; swap boards, change fins, scooch back on your take-off. Subtle changes that brought strong impact and my surfing began to take off. But this was all superficial in comparison to the root of this shift. The real energy came from a focus on a more intangible variable.

As I’ve reconnected with surfing, I’m reminded of how it reflects life and vice versa. I’m coming to think that a devoted commitment to anything becomes a manifestation of the internal state of the devotee. Regardless of whether the goal is to lose, or to find oneself within a pursuit, there’s no avoiding a collision with your psyche. Slowly but surely, the ego will rise to the surface.

This statement drips with cheese, but it's true; the wave leads and you follow. The ocean is no place for impositions of will. Gritted teeth and stubborn chins are met with cold maritime justice and reminders of our ultimate weakness. Impatience will be punished with bad, ugly surfing.

As children, we learn that patience is about waiting. Waiting for Christmas, for dinner, for Mom to come home. Impatience is demonstrated to us as frustration with the rate at which time passes, how time stands in the way of our desires. We’re presented with an immovable object; something you can play with, but not against. It does no good. And it does us even less good to chastise ourselves for our natural frustration. That just elevates our waste of energy to the second power and to waste energy is to waste time, and to waste time is to waste money, and that is just goddamn un-American.

So, for profit’s sake! Be patient.

None of that is a problem in Peru because time is not currency; it's the forgotten machine that hums along unnoticed. I planned to stay a week, and now it's been more than three. When pressed about my future plans, I shrug. There’s waves here, new friends, a mellow town. I do what I want when I feel like it. The freedom is intoxicating and it’s nice to wield it by staying put. And, as this is not New York City, I don’t have to fight for peace. Here, they give it freely. There is almost enough that you can pick it up and hold it in your hands. If Chicama is a batting cage for goofy-foots, then Puerto Malabrigo is a practice field for the aspirationally peaceful.

Because patience is a bit of a meta concept, I’ve done my best to break down the process of its actualization. I think Patience is made up of these parts: Awareness, Release and Presence. Awareness allows me to catch my impatience, not to quell it, but for the sake of acknowledging it’s there. We exchange nods, and then I do my best to let those feelings be. The release. After a while, and only if I’m lucky, I’m left with an empty presence. I’m available and unattached; I can see the world as it is, rather than how I want it to be. There is no fight, no frustration. I see a kind old man, waiting in the shade with a smile on his face, and in his eyes.

Before each session I’ve been setting an intention for myself. To be patient. Whether or not it looks better is one thing, but my surfing feels better. With patience comes flow, its joyful byproduct. You click in, the wave leads, and you follow as its grateful servant. There is a new precision to your timing because the action is no longer an imposition of a conscious choice. And at the risk of sounding like a cocky bastard, this is what the whole week’s felt like. Riding along on one big undulating frequency as the seams of my life fall away and everything connects.

We’d wake in the dark to watch the sun rise on the flat sea off El Point. We’d drink Mate, suit up anyways and round the rocks to 3–4 foot peeling surf. I’ve reviewed my session log, and my entries are all the same. They are love letters to surf and my old magic board with subsections of short technical notes of progress. If I was not obsessed before, I most certainly am now. But as the days passed, I noticed a growing, aching impatience for more waves and newly budding seeds of doubt in my abilities. I began to wonder when this would end.

I packed two boards with me for this trip. One, a 6’6 Shitaake from Panda Surfboards. She’s a speedy twinzer with a pulled in, swallowed tail. The other, and hotly contested by my peers, my 18-year-old first ever real board. A 5’8 Fish shaped by Jack Sykes of Line Up Surfboards, given to me by my father on Christmas Day 2007. This board transitioned me onto thrash about thrusters before being passed into the hands of my sister and finally coming to rest in a long stint in the rafters. We rekindled our love in 2020 on a summer afternoon in Laguna Beach. She is old, she is beaten, but with her lies my surfing roots and she is my favorite board I’ve ever ridden. I brought her knowing these would likely be our final days together but was there any better place to spend them?

I’d only ridden her once since I’d gotten here until Renato suggested I take her out. And there began the magic week. There was no space between us, she was an extension of myself, taking us where we needed to go before I knew we were going in the first place. From 8/6-8/13, we surfed an approximate 23.5 hours over 12 sessions.

And then Renato and Virgilio left.

And the next session, on the first wave, she sang her last song. My bottom turn brought a pop and there went the fin and its box. The beautiful run had come to an end and my surfing, and self, was bumped back into reality.

Over the next few days, I crashed out. The double sessions caught up with me and I was in a weird, tired mood. I saw a brief clip of my surfing, and, man oh man, not much has changed. So, I’m practicing some patience. And like I’ve said, it's not so hard here.

There’s a swell, a coming, and all I have to do is wait.