There is something about being small, genuinely, cosmically small, underneath that orange monument to human hubris, surfing Fort Point, while the Pacific tries its damnedest to kill me. The water’s so cold it feels personal, like it has a grudge. My body’s screaming at me that this is a terrible idea, and you know what?
My body’s probably right.
I’m out there anyway.
Waiting.
The bridge looms overhead, this massive contradiction, permanent yet somehow fragile against the fog and the relentless ocean. I’m just another mammal in a wetsuit, fighting against millennia of evolution that says I don’t belong here. The salt stings. The current doesn’t care. And for maybe twenty seconds when I catch that wave, none of the noise in my head matters. Not the mistakes, not the regrets, not tomorrow.
It’s not zen. It’s just honest. Raw. The only thing that’s real right now is this cold, this bridge, this moment of being gloriously, stupidly alive.
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on the city at dawn…
How to Paint Sunlight: Lyric Poems & Others