Today Wonder

every day has wonder, 

you just have to 

put in the effort

to look hard, 

to listen hard 

and to smile soft

Today Wonder

is also a song

by the former Saints guitarist

Ed Kuepper

If Lenin surfed

If Lenin surfed, he would probably wave to his salty comrades while gliding on his log as demonstrated here by Noosa Mal Club elder,  Mick Henderson. No idea whether there would be a revolution or not though.
Maybe he'd argue for surfers to give up the shackles of commercially dependent product and embrace the purity of body surfing.

Monochrome Monday (down to the sea again)

 Some salty snippets of memories and verse

 for my siblings of the sea and assorted lurkers.

"I must down to the seas again, 

for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call 

that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day 

with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, 

and the sea-gulls crying."

John Masefield, Sea Fever: Selected Poems

Noosa Part 2

Crazed, Dazed but Unphased

The points are going to be very busy this weekend. 

Get some. Share some.

And for the rest of us amateurs, have some respect and wear a legrope. Nobody thinks you're cool swimming after your log as it bashes its way shorewards when you fall off the nose after that hang 10 in the barrel.

The Festival - Part 1

Couple of snippets

Snaked twice

How times have changed. 

Snake story one: I'm jogging along the concrete track beside the creek at dusk when I see another jogger coming my way with a crazy uncoordinated gait, arms flapping and shining one of those blue-white LED torches at me. (I got a half busted red bicycle light flashing n my hand, so the lycra Caddell-Evans-wannabes don't mow me down).

He's a bit freaked out apparently because he just saw a snake on the concrete bike/walk track. I'm surprised by his reaction. This is a bushy section with dense stands of mature eucalyptus (gum) trees,  a creek and the nearest habitation is a good 300 meters away. I tell him "yeah, I see them around here all the time. Thanks for the warning" and keep going. All of asudden, all I can think about is snakes and I'm on hyper-alert, gingerly navigating every large crack and every small gnarly branch on the darkening track lest it be a snake.

Snake Story Two - I'm visiting Nana Brine at her beachside abode. We've seen lots of big fat red bellied black snakes on the concrete track she talked the council into building - the one that curls from the esplanade to the beach, between two multi-million dollar houses. 

She's nearly 90 and tells me about when she was a young girl living near a mangrove shrouded creek, there used to be a lot of snakes, so her father would kill them with an axe and then hang them on the fence. I'd love to know why, but she doesn't remember that part. 

Maybe next visit.

The Bluff

Backhand

Same same

Bottom turn.
Same move.
Same town.
Same same?

Song for Dora

Harrison Roach x First Point

Word on the coconut telegraph is that The Who (or what's left of them) might be coming to our barren island this year.

It's part of what they are calling, the Last Tour Ever.

They'll keep making albums, but the logistics and physical toll of touring are now too much for a bunch of old geezers from Shepherd's Bush, London.

I for one, will be trying to get tix.

"I can go anyway, way I choose

I can live anyhow, win or lose

I can go anywhere, for something new

Anyway, anyhow, anywhere I choose"

"Nothing gets in my way

Not even locked doors

Don't follow the lines

That been laid before

I get along anyway I dare

Anyway, anyhow, anywhere"

from Anyway Anyhow Anywhere by The Who

Monochrome Monday (King Tide)

Midday at the Oasis

The Day started out innocently enough. I was dusty and sleep deprived from a BIG night. 

The dawn check revealed a nice new swell had arrived with the faintest of offshore breezes. 

A quick text or three to the tribe, followed by strong coffee and I'm on it, floating around the rock shelves of The Point on the multi-coloured Seasurf Seahorse log below. It was not the right board for that day, but the only other one I had on me was the red 6 foot quad. Ohh how I would discover the folly of bad equipment choice.

It was one of those rare swells where the wind hung offshore most of the day and there were plenty of waves to go around. Everybody was buzzing that the next day was going to be even bigger. So I stayed out way longer than I should have like an addict getting way too much of a good thing. Telling myself that I would shoot instead of surfing the next day when The Swell would peak.

Even when I was exhausted beyond what my body thought possible, I stayed out, telling it that we would rest the next day. Just a few more. Too much fun is never enough.

Unless you have a bad wipeout.

Like a really really bad wipeout, where you are flung in front of a 6 foot wall of whitewater and as you hit the surface on the way down, in a most inelegant manner, the air is punched out of your lungs and The Rogue Set cartwheels you dismissively across the big rock shelf like a baby seal being tossed around by a killer whale.

And that's what happened.

But that's the easy part.

When that stopped I could not get to the surface because I was wrapped in four foot of boiling foam and instead of swimming to the surface, I'm clawing at foam that has insufficient density to get me to the top. I can't touch the bottom to launch myself upwards.

And I start to think I may not make it. And instead of looking back on my life and all that, all I can think in disbelief and shock is "this can't be happening".

Somehow that extra blubber I'm carrying finally earns it's keep and I slowly rise to the sweetest sensation on earth.
Fresh air.

To whomever was watching over me on Tuesday December 3, 2013 thank you.

Grain

Gertrude Stein vs Neil Young

I don't set out to procrastinate or get distracted.

It just happens along the way.

For example, I'm cleaning up my desk. There's a pile of official documents, computer hard drive cables, business cards, shirt buttons (??), a funny note from my staff and other scraps of paper with stuff written on them - ideas from friends on where to buy silk for surfboard fabric underlays, repeat medication slips from the doctor, financial statements and then I spy a post it note with just this written on it "mexsgarage.com.au".

I have no recollection how that came into my possession, so I fire up the computer to investigate it via Google.
It's some sort of automobile website for a crew who do impressive classic olde cars makeovers.

I stare at the post it note again. Is it even my scratchy handwriting?
I decide not and turf it.

While the web is up, I check my email and there's something from one of those online travel agents promising bargain prices. Maybe I can afford that return trip to WA and catch up with Corey at Margaret River, I ponder.
So I send him a text to find out when he's flying out of that mining site in the middle of the desert - the one where he gets paid to blow stuff up and shoot critters like this.

In my distraction, I have let the water for the morning coffee boil and gone cool. I start to reboil it. The water here is suss in summer anyway.

While that's happening, I spot an interesting email from Byron Bay, the epicentre of the surfing rainbow. Ohhhh look at that! Jim Banks has a sale on and the photos of his new Indo board range have me dreaming of exotic locales.
Meanwhile,  the water for the coffee has boiled and cooled again.
I have lost an hour I'll never get back.

The photo below sums up my shifting focus and distraction perfectly.
I bought some beautiful little roses at the markets, thinking I'll do a macro Tina Modotti style shot. I got distracted too many times and now the blooms have gone belly up. Since we are having a heat wave I end up getting some nice shots of rosarian decay.

This is what they should have looked like.

"A rose is a rose is a rose" - Gertrude Stein

I'll probably get distracted and go off on an artistic tangent all the same again in 2014.

It's not all bad, though.

Sometimes artistic deviation can lead to interesting results. As the great sage Young once remarked when commenting on his various stylistic changes away from Mainstream Music:

"Travelling there was really boring 

so I headed for the ditch. 

It was a rough ride 

but I met more interesting people there." 

- Neil Young