Saturday, December 17, 2005

Blessings and curses of community

Today K. woke me up calling to tell me she was going out surfing. I wasn't able to go, but after I talked to her I went straight to the surfcam and found out the waves were three to five feet. I'd never go out in waves that big (not on purpose anyway; I have found myself out in waves that big inadvertently). But she went out and later called to tell me she'd caught two rides and had fun. It's hard---OK, impossible---not to feel jealous. She hasn't been surfing as long as I have, but she's doing much better. I try not to compare myself to other people---I definitely don't consider surfing a competitive sport---but I do, anyway, all the time...at least to other women.

S., who started the same time as me, passed me by long ago and has gone on to multiple shortboards and head high waves. K. started a year later than me and is better. It's hard to be patient with myself when I want to be like them.

Yeah, they're younger. 18 and 12 years younger. So? What's the math on that? If X starts surfing at 28, Y starts at 31, and Z starts at 43, at what point, if any, do their abilities equal each other's?

On a more positive note, it's amazing how many tributes to my friend who just died on November 29th have been posted on blogs. And they are all over the place, in the most unlikely places---a blog from Arkansas when my friend lived in the Northeast, a sports blog when he was an intellectual. But they're all describing the same man we knew and loved. I've never been more grateful for the blog world. Because there were so many years when I wasn't in touch with him and I didn't see him again until he was about to die, there's a lot I didn't know about his life. But now people who've known him in different contexts, at different times in his life, have told me some of the story of his life that I didn't know. Even posted pictures of him (it's amazing how many incarnations he's gone through appearancewise, but I'll always prefer the cleanshaven look to the shaggy beard he grew in later years). All of this is precious to me and however much I bitch about the not-always-positive effects of internet culture, I'm so grateful for this virtual community (if that's the word for people who don't know each other), mourning and loving this man in the same way I am.

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