Daily Muse - A Surfer's Guide to Life

When life gives you mangoes.

I should be properly blogging instead of uploading photos and videos but Musefeed is dedicated to OTHER inspirational people so whateverly, Beverly. Plus I'm grossly uninspired again. Shout-outs to the quarter-life crisis. I’m launching my own business and I’m terrified. Another day of inhaling taramosalata, facebooking, boredom and being dumb has passed. Dumb. Dumbedy… dumb dumb dumb…hey! I know someone who’s dumb! My thoughts drift to halcyon teenage days of ‘dating’ pro surfers on Spring Break in Bali. My girlfriends and I would eagerly collect quotes from our moonlit walks on the beach with the crème de la dumb of tanned, gorgeous surfers. Why? Because we were anthropologists.


One of them, an Australian who I'll call 'Plankton' to protect his identity, had just been surfing in the south of France. He had a horrible mark on his leg. I asked about it. ‘Ah yee, oi got a beeern on me leg from roiding me motahboik and the engine loik hit it. Ah yee not to worry, eets only pa-tiiit.' What? It's only what? 'Wattsa matta, darls? You don’t spoik French?’ Genius. Then there was the one who was as luminous as Brad Pitt. I was 18. He sauntered up on the dancefloor shooting testosterone darts in to my Malibu and pineapple heart. I asked him what he did for a living. He pointed to the floor. ‘Sorry?’ He pointed again. I still didn’t get it. He pointed again and then let out an Amazonian mating call, ‘toooiiiils’. Quoi? ‘tooooiiils’. He meant ‘tiles.’

My favourite of the lot was truly Darwintastic. His name was Mango. He once sent me the following email along with the above photos of himself riding a killer wave:


emma.

Here is what I have been up to. For me riding these waves puts my level of perception on wavelenghts most people must live several lifetimes to comprehend. One day, maybe I will be lucky enough to feel your skin up against mine.

M

He never did feel my skin up against his. But today, years later, he has inspired me and validated zoning out of the business plan to look at stranger’s personal photographs all day. Why do we wallow in anxiety? Grimace about the economy? Or get scared about not being on the property ladder and getting hired at some swanky agency? What happened to trying to kill yourself and then celebrating victory when you don’t die on a bunch of barnacles? Sort of like starting a business. Maybe life is like surfing? Or maybe you don’t get it. Maybe my level of perception is on wavelengths you’ll have to live lifetimes to comprehend. Maybe if you hit your head on the seafloor a lot and like toke another doobie you'll get it. Brah.