fathom I’ve always been intrigued by the mere sight of a wave. The effortless perfection of a wave gives me a sense of freedom, love, and happiness. That’s why when I heard the sound of bubbles fizzing ever so quietly become an elongated tube of water, rolling intensely towards that final door, I couldn’t wait to enter that world. I find myself reborn, nestled in a sanctuary of solace.
I behold the ocean before me in what still feels like a dream. I remember this. This is the day I…
Miraculously my memory starts returning. A glass of whiskey I can slug straight back would calm me right about now. My entire life is rebuilt within my head like a set of Lego blocks. Each memory stacking upon the former, flashing before my eyes with no longing for understanding the puzzling dimension I hardly escaped.
When you die your life’s said to flash before your eyes. I suppose that’s what’s happening with me now. Yet somehow, I’ve become entwined in the netting of this singular moment. “Relax,” I tell myself, splashing some water onto my face and cleansing my head of such ridiculous ideas. “I’m alive?”
I take a deep breath and then quirk my head to each side cracking my neck joints. I take notice of my surroundings, sitting on my hollow wooden Ubermotion surfboard. All wooden Ubermotion surfboards are made from reclaimed wood. This one in particular I believe was carved from a redwood hot tub. I’m sporting highlighter yellow board shorts that reach just an inch above the knee. My skin is no longer the pigment of a dusky fluid ink.
I can’t help thinking that I might be in denial of what just went down. All of it, such as how I arrived here in the first place. After getting shot on the balcony and before pulling myself up through a door to get here is all a blur. That Lego piece is still missing but I know it’s somewhere at the bottom of my memory. Under the rubble of a nuked city, locked within one of many coffers. Somewhere but it’s surely there. I verily try to remember but nothing. I must find it.
This is the day I went surfing with my brother and some friends. It’s about one week prior to my sister’s wedding. Exactly five days before my death at the hands of an impenitent heart.
Here I sit on my surfboard, out in the ocean looking out at the western horizon as the sun begins to set. I think to myself whether this is real. Not the view but the moment of pure serenity. Lost within a moment in time, I look down upon the water that lay before me in the form of a divine all–seeing mirror, grasping my image among its surface. I reach out touching the reflection of my face upon the ocean with a single finger and the still water slowly begins to ripple into a series of expanding rings that’s just impacted the image of me into the distorted reality of a bygone.
Is it possible that this whole life I’ve lived, a life that was mine to create, is at its end? I wonder if there’re any similarities between my life and that of my ancestors. Looking back in time I often sought to understand who I am but now, staring at the image before me as it comes back into a poetic vantage point on this clear ocean skin, I see not who I was but instead I see a lifestyle with character. An image undeniable of a good vibe and seldom overcome by the anger and hate around which the people of this earth have assembled.
In the latest years of my life, I never once thought that living could be so simple. Being that for the last few years I was a con in a game of murder and war. No such bloodbath have I ever dealt with like Erik’s experience in Iraq yet when I say murder and war, I’m referring to an inner struggle in which I’m at war with who I am. Killing off the parts of me I dislike and deem as bad. That part of me where I’m greedy, where I’m tempted, where I lie. An evil side that time and time again I believe every human must deal with and face. An evil side that I’ve conned myself into defaulting to when I’m weak in the mind.
Confronting that side of me is very conflicting because it’s easier to get tangled in what the world is doing than with what my heart is telling me. I’ve lived in this world of war for so long that I figure I’m blessed to no longer be a part of it. I’ve no need to be perfect.
Being seventeen has had its company to grow and learn but I never let my age stop me. If I’m honest with myself, I was afforded whatever it is I desired because of my wealth. It’s important for me that I live for every single breath I take and for every strife I face along the way. I learned at a young age that life can come with its own set of broken hearts and complications. Especially when you’re exposed to people who just want to take from you and dispose of all you hold dear. Those are the people I try to keep from my life, cautious not to drink of their poison.
The cream archetype of these people is Luciana Barenclave. Our maid for ten years and reputed lover of my father, Daniel Califf, in the scandalous newspapers of my childhood. She had conceptualized a thought from the very beginning of her work in our home that she could turn her story into a rags to riches tale. In spite of their bruited romance, my father never put a ring on her finger. I’d got used to her youthfulness with her petite figure, auburn angled bob, and French maid outfit knowing her my whole life.
She’d begun working for the Califfs at the not so tender age of twenty–four when I was but a one–year–old. The French maid dress was a self–evident and ridiculous attempt on her part to seduce my father. Though her ostentatious caring and motherly nature, apart from looking like a slut when my father was around, would end the minute he died at the age of forty–three. Making her the only adult in a legal position to care for his three kids.
Three years later, when my sister turned eighteen, her decade reign as a stereotypical stepmother in fairytales was over. Luciana disappeared and the lengthy saga to secure the rights over our family’s assets reached its conclusive end. Foreseeable, the year she packed her bags and ran away, she was convicted of first–degree murder in the death of Daniel Califf.
I forgave her for all those years of pain, but I can’t be happy in that act of forgiveness because while she may be gone, I still haven’t forgotten her. I admit that while the world has had its own faults, I too have had mine and I know…
It’s a crooked path to heaven but I think I’ve made my peace with the person I’ve become. I may not consider myself a part of civilization but sitting here on my surfboard, just outside the city and out on open waters where no buildings are in sight back on shore and only black sand caresses the land, I come to feel sorry for those who are lost in the millions as a part of the wretched civilization our species has evolved into. A great mass of people who just can’t see or progress from who they’ve become.
I take a moment to look up at the sky thinking about how close yet how far heaven really is. There in plain sight is the most beautiful rainbow I’ve ever encountered. It’s layered with the most radical splash of bright colors. Each one bleeding into the next due to the saltwater in my eyes. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet lie upon one another. Above it is another rainbow. I’d never seen a double rainbow till this day, but it’s magnificent and not only does it make me feel like flying but it makes me feel just that much closer to heaven and that much farther from earth.
Amazing what nature can accomplish, painting such a masterpiece on a blue–green velvet sky. I guess that’s the outcome of it all after a couple hours of the heavens crying. This was one of the best surfing days I’d ever experienced that reliving it once more is no worry at all but a gift I’ve been granted and must cherish as one.
Earlier this day, on the spring of May 24, 2012, it’d been raining quite hard, and the waves were being harsh on my most modest attempts to tame them and ride them off to shore. However, I didn’t grow weary of the powerful ocean because right there and then after catching my first wave that day, I formed a connection. A bond linking me to these waters. Something I couldn’t explain but just grasped in the moment. The bond was unbreakable. The proof lies in consistently seizing every wave that had arisen, standing in my way and knowing them to be mine to conquer since their inception. I could swim out and catch a wave with my eyes sealed and not be scared to fall off my board because I was at balance with the water.
Truth be told is that I’ve felt this internal connection to the ocean ever since I was a little tyke. When I was four my dad sent me adrift on some three–foot waves with my newly begat orange–yellow octopus surfboard that’d never been ridden. While it took some time to stand up and learn how to ride the waves, I came to relish the sport for what it was. By that age my dad had already carved me four surfboards out of redwood and cedar. Those times were the best of my childhood. Just me, my dad, and the open ocean. I didn’t actually catch and ride my first wave till I was seven, but bodyboarding is what I stuck with in my earlier years of learning the sport.
It became a habit of mine and since my dad passed away it’s something I’ve always carried with me as fond memories. Looking back on it, I figure that everything happens for a reason and it’s ok to move forward when life gets you down because I know one day I’ll be with him, surfing the clouds of heaven with him right by my side. Maybe the day has come where I’ll see him again.
The second door that opened. That first voice I heard. It was my dad. I remember now. He was saying I’d get the hang of it when teaching me how to surf. I believe I was five at the time.
I remember this day perfectly before arriving at this destination, looking up at the double rainbow. It was a tremendously challenging surf session I’d went through on this day. There I’d stayed catching one wave after the other as the rain came pouring in copious amounts. The clouds spit lightening out into the private grounds from which my brother, Kosta, stood and watched afar.
We arrived in Costa Rica before sunrise and broke into this private beach to get away from all the chaos back home. All the wedding preparations kept Jade in a permanent fit over everything. The wedding planner was fired just a week earlier as she’d proven useless. We figured we’d be deader the later we went back. The more time Jade had to soak in the thought her brothers had abandoned her, the greater the scolding we’d get. We were supposed to be sending out last–minute invitations to political bloggers and we hadn’t due to brotherly laziness.
I, selfishly uncaring, wanted to enjoy four days freedom surfing. Hurricane Raziel wouldn’t arrive in Florida till Sunday afternoon, so the ocean was dry of waves in that part of the world. Malia would bring the big news of our spontaneous trip to Jade. Come what may of her initial reaction, I could care less the outcome. Jade perpetually forgives us for our defiance for she loves us indefinitely.
I could hear my brother’s voice echo through the strength of the wind, yelling loudly, urging hard for me to come ashore. He looked like a jumping springtail from where I was. Moving up and down, waving his arms and hands erratically to catch my attention. I could go back, I thought. But that’d be no fun. Besides there’s no worries when it comes to a pro handling a little danger. I waved back at him, feigning a smile and acting as if I didn’t have a clue at what he was hinting at.
The thrust of the ocean had a hold of me forcing my board and I to gyrate through the water in a series of twists and turns. The motion discombobulated my body. What looked to me like a jumping springtail before was now a total of seven springtails, all jumping, trying to snatch my attention. Still, I fought having little sense of coordination. I continued to paddle my arms in a swift but strong circular motion. I conquered the storm by overcoming what’d become its waters and launched myself in every direction a wave would push me.
I was able to glide atop a wave and pull back to prepare for the next one. After four hours of this routine, the rain came to a halt and the sun was roused from a deep sleep by the slap of God’s open palm, out of the gray mass in the sky, giving off a lucid view of that wondrous double rainbow I’ve been staring at now for the past five minutes.
In the past, that storm was what had brought me to where I am now. Out here, about forty yards from land waiting patiently for the next wave to come into my reach. I realize I’ll have to go soon. This memory of mine that I’m inexplicably reliving isn’t real.
It can’t possibly be real. Can it?
It’s almost dark anyhow. Every world that’s not tidally locked has a finite rotation before day’s end.
The light warm heat of the setting sun compresses against my skin. I soak up the last bit of fresh air before night begins to approach, ending my day here at what I consider my second home. I look onto the beach to reassure myself that Kosta’s still there. I laugh giving him a thumbs up as I already know he’d been worried, tensely watching me ride these waves the whole time.
I take on the smell of the salty ocean breeze with a gluttonous pride for all things clean before deciding to head back. The afternoon here at Playa Hermosa had been one of the nicest I’d experienced in my whole life. But why did that door lead me to today specifically?
I take my days as a blessing, and I never once thought I’d have another day to live life after death. That is if death has already found me. Maybe I was brought here because I’m meant to do something but right now my muscles are taking on the exact same strain I’d felt on this day after being at the beach since eight A.M. I’m beat. I want a hot shower and a good sleep.
“Koa, a wave! Catch this one with me bra!”
That voice. The same voice coming from that last door I’d pushed my way through spoke again with the same mollifying words it had before. I’m caught off guard by the sound of my friend calling my name.
The universal thoughts of the departed are interrupted by my best friend who I’d forgotten had been with me on this day, right by my side since this morning. Through the storm too. Lucas Farnham is just ten feet away from me in fuchsia pink boardies, lying flat on his white short board designed for down the line speed. He calls out for me to hop on the next wave.
Sometimes when I surf, I build a mental shield and get lost within my thoughts, forgetting the people near me. I’d like to think of myself as being the only person in the ocean when I surf even though that’s rarely the case. I smile not thinking about the recollection of events that’s led me here in which I’ve been dozing off with for the past few minutes. I decide to see how long this memory of mine will last and I’ll appreciate the moment for every second I’ve left of it.
I start paddling on my surfboard towards the beach aiming to catch my final wave for the day and across from me is Lucas going at it, paddling hard for the same wave. When the wave first hits us, we both look to one another and nod as a sign that it’s time to stand up. Keeping my balance, I grab the edges of my surfboard as I warily stand up and lean forward. Meanwhile, Lucas simply jumps onto his board and manages to catch the wave with me.
Bro along my side. My hands reaching out into the open air, he makes it so his arms are spread wide enough to reach mine. We clap each other’s hands and hold onto one another by the forearm till the wave splits and shapes itself into a barrel. Inside the barrel of tunneling water, I bend my knees and keep steady exiting the wave. Behind me is Lucas with concentrated, saturnine medium–brown eyes staring out beyond the shore, into the abyss of the crabs that scurry inside. His short chestnut brown hair with blond streaks pushed back is evidence no matter which way the hairs on his head fall, the outcome is always as though intended by the most meticulous of studio photographers.
Stopping myself from riding the wave is going to be a difficult task. Lucas is taken by the wave onto the beach and I’m turbo–boosted in the direction of a natural rock barrier. Looking at the road ahead of me I maneuver my surfboard to the right, away from the rocks. As the wave begins to break, I start losing my balance. Reaching land, I see and hear my buddy Ramze Daji shouting, “Surf’s up!”
I quickly spring off my surfboard and fall into the water before hitting the shore. Ramze reaches out for my hand and lugs me onto the beach. He’s wearing his wonted board shorts that have a graphic print of lava oozing over the glassy black rock obsidian. Bound to his left wrist is a triple tier bracelet made up of spherical black volcanic rocks.
Ramze is a barrel–chested, bull–necked, tall and tan champagne blond with chin–length curly hair and deeply eloquent chocolate brown eyes. His full, thick, and ducktail caramel blond beard give the impression of an avant–garde homeless man; decidedly urban, gritty, and at times sophisticated.
His back is as wide as a barn door and the sinuous contours of his back muscles arch gracefully, resembling the poised stance of a scorpion ready to strike. His shoulders are boulders and his biceps—small mountains. It takes three of my quads to make up one of his and his thick calf muscles are a famous topic on his internet blog. An entire section of his blog he dedicated to his legs and what his ex–boyfriend christened the Hebrew hammer. That section of his blog he calls for grins, ‘Between My Two Tree Trunks.’
He trims only his neck and lip above the mouth. His attempts to grow a beard throughout high school had never borne fruit but after bucking through the tough times of his teen fuzz, today people could mistake him for a Scandinavian Viking.
Shortly after getting on the beach, I see Lucas in the ocean paddling back out to catch another wave, but the waves have settled and with no more waves in sight we decide to call it a day.