'much maddness is divinest sense' emily d
Monday, October 24, 2011
Sea LEGS, Eli's kiss, sharks and the key to never giving up.
a few years ago, i packed up my VW BUG, left a job in fashion, a life in boston and drove. i left in the middle of the night, shortly after my 28th birthday. My father Henry, the man the mark the mission, got up in the middle of the night and decided he would be the man to take me through the night past NYC to VA beach. HE did. My VW lost the front end somewhere in Maryland so we simply DUCKtaped it and then someplace in the Bronx the bug let us know, if we shut it off it wouldn't keep going. BUT i had my map, and I sure as anything was going south. I was thinking maybe I'd end up in Savie, GA and have a little white house with a porch and I would write about all the things i saw and all the things i imagined and then even sometimes i would play around with the idea of Hilton head, and getting my speed-boat, moonshine and Great Gatsby mantra really rolling. Maybe starting and under the table poker night, that would lead to the import export of moonshine... i would ride speed boats, smoke Cubans and wear fancy fedoras and pin-stripes.
somewhere in-between the white southern dress, the ice tea, the southern charm, the broken bug, the excitement of something different and speedboats, i was off on a new adventure.
some other time, i will talk to you about VA beach. the training and truth i received there. not today.
when i got to Florida. a few romances and a few nights under the stars driving a golf cart from party to party on a secluded beach. i could never run for politics due to this little stint, but you know, it works out. politics are over rated.
the time came. when i went out with the big boys. on the boat. fishing for the marlin. this was some redneck, hill-billie-past the gators out into the deep fishing. this was not typical. i was on a little boat. no one was baiting my hook and there sure as anything was no, put on your sunblock and drink water going on here. i mean, i think i may of drank whiskey and dipped before noon just to prove, that a female yank could go out with the BIG boys and hold her own.
i was SO SICK after twenty minutes. i went into the small bathroom and everything was upside down. the whole universe was spinning. i kept puking and swallowing it back. this was NOT the first time i was on the ocean, BUT on a boat this small. they kept yelling, you're getting your sea legs. between the puke i would yell " i sure am" the side of the boat only came up to my mid thigh-stomach region and i am only 5'2. it's my personality that gives me the height. i was used to the deep sea fishing off the east coast, on the HUGE boats. not this.
i cast my line. into the deep. it was marlin hunting time and i was with the BIG BOYS.
they kept calling 'em something, but i knew marlin.
the thing i caught on my first drop was stronger than me. he whipped me across the boat into the rail so hard that i threw up when it hit my stomach/ribs. i swallowed most back and let some just go, it was a pain i had never known before, and i had known pain. i knew the bruises would be much. i was being pulled fast and having it being broken on my own body to stop me. try that a few times and you may not think you are so tough.
i caught 8 marlin in under two hours. the sea was so bad because a tropical storm was moving towards us. it was the hardest water they had ever fished on and i was the lucky cast.
every marlin, destroyed me. things ripped and pulled. i got yanked across that boat so many times, that the BOYS starting to cheer every time i hit the rail. When i got off that boat, i couldn't hear from the impact and the ocean's power right before a storm, i couldn't walk and i couldn't breathe. i felt like i went 12 rounds and then got beat thru the middle body region.
the next morning, i had the day to learn to surf. it was going to be the only time i could. i was so bruised and beaten from the fishing, that i went to bed almost immediately. i woke up very early to surf, was in the six am hour. i met my teacher and he looked at my bruises and said "are you bleeding anywhere, the sharks are out."
oddly enough, i was so tired, i just said 'don't think so'
it didn't even register that the sharks are out. i will tell you when that registered, when i was paddling out and that quiet hit me for the first time that i was just a body on a board in a BIG OCEAN. that i was just a small person, in the vast blue. that paddling out was harder than that catching marlin' and that the thought of dropping in and standing is ridiculous right now. then he of course handed me a rag... i was like, what will this do? he said "if a shark attacks he is attacking because he thinks you are a seal and once he bites you HE will leave, because you won't be fatty enough. so he will just maul you. you can wrap yourself if you get hammied" then he said the sharks don't really look like sharks out here. my mind had already melted, so you can imagine i embraced the conversation and i paddled right next to my teacher. i wanted to be near someone if this was really what he was saying. at that moment i decided this paddling out and waiting on the board was not really my style and that i would GET UP faster than anyone in the history of surf lessons. stuff was too raw. there was a storm, sharks looked different and i was wrecked from the fishing with the big boys.
who wouldn't? at this point, i better listen to this person, seems like he knew alot more than i did. i was out where the GULF meets the OCEAN right on the cuff of a storm before 7 am on an obscure week day because it was my season to learn to surf...
I fell over 30 times. I got knocked down every single wave i tried to paddle over for 3 hours. it was not until the 4th hour, i begin to get the paddling down... by the 6th hour i was dropping in and on the 7th hour i stood for the first time.
when we came in after i stood. i walked across the sand. Eli ran to me. i was so tired i couldn't stand, so i squatted into the sand and his kiss was so glorious at that moment. it was that moment where i worked so hard and i had got it.
I think the character of a man, is really shown when their pot is boiled over. When then are hard pressed on every side. Who they show you, when the sharks are there. When they are getting hit so hard by life, they are puking and holding it down. When they have to continually fall down and keep getting up, not because they have too, because they want too. Because Courage is with them.
It's not how the man falls, it is how he gets back up. They key to not giving up is not in the fall, it's in the rise after the fall.
had i not gotten back on the surf board, had i not gotten my sea legs, when the storms of life hit, like that storm, and the sharks THAT are always swimming while we are paddling, i never would of learned the BEST cast and how to ground my legs and how to drop in and ride a wild wave in the midst of it all.
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