30.1

What broke open exposed an emptiness of little direction and no sense of purpose. But one thing was clear: I liked being in the ocean. Something clicked. Each day, the water made me feel better.

No doubt entire industries in fashion, film, and music have sprung from the California myth of feckless surfer boys and bikini-clad go-go girls. Yet it also may be that the Beach Party films mark, in a most unpretentious way, the vernacular language of a subculture at the very cusp of its breakout moment.

I’ll save the other stuff for another day. I’m having way too much fun just going out and riding a few waves that other people aren’t getting.

Interwoven with the story of Dungo and Kristen is the trajectory of Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake, which is its own sort of love story, and which works as a ballast as things get heavy for Kristen. It’s as if Dungo’s mining the myths that will hold him together once he’s left alone.

I almost died in the middle of the night. We were all woken up by a massive tree branch that fell and nearly leveled my tent. Greg and I immediately moved the tent and, in the process, my hatchet cut a 5-inch hole in its bottom. So much for a dry home for the next few days.

The waves would be all Jim’s again, but he had become if not indifferent, then used to them. The thrill wasn’t gone, but it no longer thrilled as much. We knew, at least guessed, he wasn’t long for the place. Sometimes even the fruit of paradise becomes overripe.

I try to imagine what is beneath me. Fish, big and small, that spend their days smeared in the mirk of the North Sea. Drifting blindly, occasionally bumping into other fish doing the same. I wonder how much of our own lives are spent blindly bumping into each other in the dark?

In recent years, I’ve noticed that everyone pretty much does it in the same pattern, using the same logic to solve the problem. The sameness weighs on me. While observing a lineup of, say, 40-plus surfers, it is very rare that anything new strikes me.