Dead Sea

by The Deep Water Breaks

The surf drought that has plagued the California central coast for most of the summer hasn’t kept me out of the water. It has a cold bite, even in July. Here in the silence of an un-undulating coast, I float. My board hardly stirs a ripple at Surfer’s Point. It’s times like these when a surfer can actually reflect on the cultural white-wash about how we experience peace and harmony with the ocean. We feel a part of it. Not so much like a molecule of water, but like stalks of sea weed.

Die-Hards watch the horizon awaiting the second coming of a swell they heard was here yesterday, was promised today, and has yet to materialize. They keep the faith. Gristled old men with brine in their beards and weathered crows’ feet under their eyes lean over the cold aluminum rails of the Ventura Promenade. They don’t move much. They’ll be there every morning in flannel and jeans. They’ll smoke cigarettes and drink strong coffee black from styrofoam cups. Their mustaches will yellow. The old men will die. The Die-Hards will age.

Salty: the flavor of the air you breathe; the texture of the particulate oxidizing aging automobiles; a sea-dog’s voice; your mouth’s bitter flavor when you bail off your board; the corrosion of the coast; this way of life.

We embrace it. We let the salt seep into the crevices of our skin. It settles into our lungs’ bronchial tubes. We oxidize. We rust. We become pillars of salt forever looking back at the sun setting and rising like the flickering flames of Gomorrah. This is a dead sea in the summer.

Somehow, this is peaceful.