Fire By Sea

Just got back to the country, being greeted by overcast skies, a cool wind and mizzle in the air. No people, no activity, no progress, no choices, nothing. Let’s face it: this sucks.

It’s good to think of our house here as our cabin — the place you retreat to in the country to clear your head, get in touch with things and get some peace from the dregs of the city.

This is how we want to live: in the city with our cabin over here. Right now it’s lopsided. All we have is the cabin, and no place in the city.

At this point our path is very clear, and we at all costs must follow it.

I consider all ocean activities involving surf to be recreation, meaning it’s more fun/pleasurable to do it than not. Running, on the other hand, is discipline. Yet both are exercise.

Over the past month in Honolulu, I spent most of my days in the waves. I loved every second of it. The few runs I did were hot, painful and hellish — but I needed them badly.

By the end of the month, though, I felt more out of shape because I didn’t run as much and chose the surf instead. Yet the surf help my attitude improve.

My conclusion: proportionally balance exercise with recreation and discipline activities.

Even as I stood there in the Apple store buying it, I still didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. Never before have I felt so undecided on something. Ever.

Part of the problem is that the iPad is like nothing before — it’s a new species of computing. I had a rough time justifying it for work because it’s not something I’d use for daily productivity.

Rather now I see it as a testbed to “get in early” into the soon to be saturated mobile (tablet) content channels.

Now all I have to do is start developing something for it before I get sucked into that fanboy culture garbage.

Sandys is a special place, now made even more special by the fact that I spent a month there with my son, teaching him how to bodysurf. He gets it from a novice level. He knows to set a reference point on land, dive under waves, watch for others on the take-off and best of all get into the heart of the barrel.

But there’s something much more than this going on. There is true power at Sandys — composed of raw nature and inexplicable mystery. It is filled, too, with a rich human history, of great individuals who spent their youth in the water.

Great people who have gone on to accomplish great things in the world.

Today is my mom’s birthday, and when I called her she didn’t even remember. Go figure.

Anyway she called me later in the day with another one of her shady business propositions where I’m supposed to feel incentivized by one of her deals that cuts me into some kind of business that frankly I’d like to have nothing to so with.

Nothing is different. But this time it reminds what a Korean cousin told me last October: there are Ko’s who make it in business and those who don’t. I hate to say I believe my mom is not on the favored side of the fence.

Then there’s me. Which side do I belong?

Being back home is like being on the tit. I’m paid just enough money to make ends meet (well not really enough), everyone has just enough to keep going, but there’s not nearly enough to burst onto a scene, to rise above and beyond and make a real difference.

That is why we have to move — to wean off the tit. If moving from Alaska represented an escape from certain doom, then this move to the city represents getting on our own two feet.

We have to know this and take the necessary steps upon return to actually get the movement started. In Alaska what happened is we got a call out of the blue for a house for sale, which somehow panned out.

What’s it going to take?

This ‘day job’ I have is ludicrous. Basically what happens is I start my day doing normal things, having normal conversations, thinking normal thoughts (or even extraordinary — it doesn’t matter, as long as they’re mine), and then it all comes to a halt when I make the call.

We start talking about going to the Moon and selling deadbeat banner ads to companies in an amateur-looking-read-by-no-more-than-50-people-worldwide web publication. How we’re getting support from people who are polite enough to give us attention but not assertive enough to tell us this is a big joke.

Then I look at myself and ask: what the hell am I doing with myself? All this for money? Isn’t there a more dynamic dignified way to make money? Is it really that hard?

Like being at the zoo with my family and having to cut out to a corner Starbucks to have these conversations…

Every now and then I get a flash — that everything in my collective consciousness—my dreams, ideas, complaints, visions, opinions, etc.—are so damn insignificant.

For all the pain and joy I feel from this trip to Honolulu, there are millions of people thinking the same thoughts. There’s a family in China torn between living in on one side of Hainan Island in the boonies or in the city of Sanya in the south.

I mean here I am fretting all the time about work and money and where city vs. country living and it’s all so petty, really. Nobody cares about this stuff. Should I care about it? Shouldn’t I be focusing on things that people do care about?

I had a breakdown today…a moral explosion so to speak, that was mean and uncalled for. I got mad about shopping and the hollow character of city folk — drawn to consumption and materialism and all the stuff money can buy.

This is an interesting subject, because as much as I want to live in the city I fear that hollowness encroaching upon me and my loved ones. After being here for 3 weeks, I’m beginning to feel that slip of self…the hiding of the core, the retreat from artistry.

This is a delicate subject because I’m torn between one life and another, when in reality there is only one life and one person that is me.

It’s not external location but internal direction.