Rocket Man

Truth is an unpopular subject. Because it is unquestionably correct.

That was the line on my fortune cookie tonight. I like the idea of it, but I wonder about the execution of the sentence. Unquestionably seems a bit over the line, and yet more importantly, why not just make it one sentence? As in: Truth is an unpopular subject, because it is unquestionably correct. It’s fair to start a sentence with because, but really, only if you have just cause. Did the writer of this fortune have such a cause? Not in my mind. And I would have quoted the line, but without an author to assign it to that idea seemed over the top.

But that was my fortune and mine alone. I would think that it applies to no one else as that is how fortunes work.

And that above paragraph, shouldn’t that be all I submit to BCC to become a Comp I professor? Do they have people there that take two hours and deliberate the sentence structure of their fortune cookies? Probably not. But just as likely; there’s seventeen grammatical errors so far in this post, and see if you can find them all. And once I get those little sweethearts tidied up I’ll submit a resume without being condescending to the good people at Brevard Community College.

What? Where I am? Ah yes, here. Here, here, here. Watching Star Trek III: The Search for Spock at 5:30 AM on a Monday morning (a Sunday night in my book), and trying to justify Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon (it cannot be done, and by the way, for shame, Klingon, according to Microsoft Word, is not an official word).

And I apologize to everyone who had to sit through the first part of that writing. And I thank everyone who woke up early and paddled out with us Saturday morning for Mike and Pat. It went perfectly. Swell was small, water and sky were clear and blue, and the people were friends and true. It’s a strange ritual that I think everyone in this area should appreciate in its rarity as it’s such a localized and recent tradition.

Surfing has only been around in the America’s for barely a century and of course for many more centuries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans of the world. But that ceremony, to paddle out and sit with a piece of a person you’ve lost, and to return them to the waters that we feel like we were all born from seems eternal. And it felt incredibly important.

Where do these ocean currents take us and how do we dissolve into them. It’s not a question, but a thought based on our Saturday ceremony. We are, in the small space of time that takes up the generations of existence that we identify ourselves with, doing something ritualistic that may be looked back on as an artifact. Like an arrowhead, like Stone Hedge, like Machu Picchu, like Jamestown, and like every other piece of the narrow human history that we fear and investigate.

But to me, and for all of us, there’s no doubt that what we did out there Saturday, and what we do out there every time one of our own goes down, will stand the test of time. Not in history, but in the rotating pulse of energy that makes up existence as we can believe it to be.

And now I’m leaving on a Jet Plane, and I don’t know when I’ll be back again (could one of my musically inclined readers tell me who’s lyric that is?). Tuesday I’m flying up to John F. Kennedy Airport with only a backpack, and I will slowly migrate back down the East Coast like a solemn slug. Looking for passage, writing, drinking like Andre the Giant (word has it he drank 119 beers in six hours; seems impossible, but if you want to dig up his 600-pound corpse and ask him yourself feel free) and just wandering. I’m a born wanderer, so it’s something I take to naturally. If you’re on the East Coast until about early November, drop me a line, via the Long Sunset MojoWire (or just e-mail me at spbuc5@yahoo.com), and I may just visit you as well.

But I must say, I may be natural wanderer, but I am far from natural right now. And I doubt I’ll ever be again. I’m more of a comet, as we all are, briefly moving through the atmosphere. A sandcastle that falls into the sea eventually. I’ll try to keep the TLS updated as much as I can, as I’m often at my best when on the road and pushed against the wall. And yet like all things in my life right now I can’t promise much other then that I’ll do my best. And maybe it’ll be good enough.

For me this time in my life is a tricky subject. Because it is unquestionably midday in this Long Sunset.