

Walk on Water

a Surf Saga

# by John Geyer

## Published by John Geyer at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 John Geyer

## Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### Part one

## JAKE AND THE NEW HEBREDIES

## A Surf Story

CHAPTER 1

Jake, balding, and Osley, thick silver ponytail down the back of her dress, sit quietly at the open air bar of the Novotel in south east Lombok. Savoring beer over ice.

In walks Gee; 51, Aussie, tall, tanned, muscular, curly light brown hair, aviator glasses and a crisp white undersized T shirt. Jake smiles thinking, 'I know this guy, maybe once was like him, the kind who would steal your girlfriend, not consciously, not even on purpose it's just in his DNA.'

The three of them and the Indo bar tender facing the sea in the late afternoon.

Gee says, "Have you guys been on the island long?"

"We live a valley west of here." Osley smile

"You have a remarkable smile" he says introducing himself as "Gee" a heli pilot from Vanuatu.

Jakes brain cracks a smile as he remembers dramatic times on a northern island of Vanuatu.

"Have you been?" he direct eye contacts Osley, who is 10 years his senior.

"No, but Jake has."

"Ya I was there in '66 on an extended surf exploration, sorta..."

"Really where?"

"Well, doubt you'd know it, a little sand wrapped atoll."

"North east of Espirito Santo?"

"Ya?"

"Big lagoon, with a perfect longboard wave rolling down the north side?"

"Really?" Jake's thinking, 'dude you got to be kidding me'.

"Funniest thing, I just flew the new French owners up to check it out last week"

"No way?"

"True, Anne and Jean Paul, and while they were frolicking in the lagoon I walked into the jungle and found three abandoned huts, one with a rusting tin roof."

Jakes head starts to rocket on all the memories he'd wisely forgotten. Gee continues, offering Osley a smile

"Ya amazing but up in the rafters of the shed was a beautiful 3 stringer longboard! And it has a 1966 surf license sticker from Newport Beach, California! I will go back to get it."

Jake looks at the guy, shakes his head to clear the voltage careening around in his skull, and says

"I'm from Newport and that's my board. A Hobie, Phil Edwards's model, three redwood stringers with a light green tint in the glass job."

"No way?"

"Yes way. That board's been waiting for me for 50 years."

"I got to hear that story."

"You buy the beers"

"Coming up! Do you guys really drink beer with ice?" Gee orders in perfect Bahasa

"We've had our share of warm beers." Osley laughs and smiles at Jake with that unmistakable graciousness that says 'you are my best friend'.

CHAPTER 2

Jake starts,

Ok in May '66, at 19 years old, my friend Larry Porter, I occasionally crewed on his big family yacht, graduated from Orange Coast Junior College. A California thing; first two year of Uni. Porter came from a long line of old money yachtsmen, so for graduation he got a Cal 36, fully rigged for soloing. That's just tradition in his family; 36 foot yachts. Porter tries to get Dave Ullman, a great sailor/surfer from our town, Newport Beach, to go on a summer adventure down through Mexico. Ullmans got to many regattas over summer so Porter asks me. Didn't really think, just said yes!"

Porter says "Great we leave two weeks before graduation, take your test early." Porter was a bit focused.

My idea was to maybe make it as far as Mantachen Bay a good 1200 mile trip. But it was a fresh North Wester all the way down Baja. Got a few waves at San Carlos, Punta Abreojos, and killer nose rides at Scorpion Bay. But within two weeks we were setting anchor in Matanchen Bay watching mile long rights roll through. Longest wave in the world.

In those days the local town of San Blas had one bar, Torino's, no electricity but lots of ice for cold beer. So I'm hanging over the low rock wall that has the fake alligators in it, only when the bar tender threw meat they trashed to life. So while I'm freaking out about the reptiles next to my table, Porter is at the bar talking to this totally beautiful, seemingly out of place blond European lady. Anne from France. She was just that bit older than us, maybe 26."

"Do you think?" Gee lifts his glasses for direct eye contact with Jake.

"No way of telling but...? Anyway Anne and Porter join me and the alligators. Anne is that kind of blue eyed beautiful where eye contact makes you feel like you're swimming in too deep, maybe shark infested, waters. I think Porter fell in love right there.

Anne had to get out of Mexico "now". Tepic prison was close and she was pursued by the Federalies. Accused of masterminding marijuana smuggling without paying bribes, plus she was the last person standing from the deal that had landed her less-than-loyal accomplices in prison and her accomplices had friends in town.

The bar tender has been especially nice to us, well Anne, and is serving the three of use ahead of the local guy with tinted glasses and that bad vibe of "third world and drugged", who yells something obscene to the bar tender and us, Anne interprets, something about little whores, and he leaves. While Anne is explaining how she has to get out of Mexico ASAP the tinted glasses guy returns with mates and a gun threatening to shoot the bar tender and us. Everyone in the place dive under tables while the bar tender curiously grabs a meat cleaver somehow thinking it will deter the guy with a gun. While they are screaming at each other in a classic Mexican standoff, the bartender's big fat Mexican wife comes up from behind and blindsides the guy with a folding chair and kicks the gun clean out the door. The guy gets up, tries to grab Anne, I step in the middle, he swings I drop him jump on him and start punching for all I'm worth. In the middle of the fight tinted glasses guy's friends start kicking me in the back.

Anne says she wants to go to Tahiti now, Porter says OK.

Right there I could have left but she smiled at me as nice as she did Porter. It was one of those feminine smiles that says 'I have a secret for you'. I fell straight into it. Plus, I'd heard of the waves on Huahini from Joey Cabell, so I didn't really think and said "Yes."

4000 miles, 22 days later, summer half over, I'm meant to start a wrestling scholarship at UCSB in September and somehow Anne has been able to sleep with both of us without animosity or sense of attachment. As we drop our hook in Huahini bay I know Porter would like me out of the picture but whenever he's ashore or even asleep she'd hook up with me. I kept smiling and kept my mouth shut. Four days of lefts and somehow she has us sailing for Fiji.

2000 miles, 12 days later we are moored off a small isle on the west side of Fiji, Tavarua. Porter and Anne are bonding over 'conserving natural beauty', heritage and other lofty ideas. With me, mainly I'm getting good waves, and misunderstanding the difference between lust and love."

Gee brings more beer and says, "One of my main problems in this life". Osley gives him that 'you're a lost kitten' look and she say

"Guys can get stuck right there;' lust equals love', or even the next faze where you have a so "cool" relationship that you never argue or stretch the edge; not committed to two as one ...or you can get lucky like Jake and me, I thought I was over it, winding down but here we are constantly glued by the spirit and stretched in every direction by the will. What about you and Anne Jake?"

"Well I loved surfing with the same intensity. At nineteen somehow it all seemed the same self-indulgence.

CHAPTER 3

I think Anne had the New Hebrides in mind all the way from Matanchen Bay. Back then Vanuatu as it is known now was ruled by both the French and British in tandem. Anne knew a white accused could choose to be tried by either. The British had good jails but the French had good food, and any international investigation into Anne's potential drug bust on the other side of the world, Mexico, would bog down in a, "condominium", dual ruling party malaise.

Porter was an amazing navigator but on our way to Espirito Santo, the biggest island in the New Hebrides, Anne and Porter got deathly ill, Ciguatera, reef fish poisoning from a barracuda Porter caught for a candle lit table cloth dinner with Anne. Porter was a romantic at heart.

So I sailed us from Fiji to Vauatu as they both vomited deliriously. I thought they might die. It took me 5 days instead of 4 and I missed Espirito by 90 miles. So when I pulled us into the lee of this uninhabited atoll. I needed timeout. Went ashore, walked around the corner of this brilliantly white sand jungle area and stared northeast at crystal clear chest high top tubing 300 yards of longboard perfection. Grabbed my board and hit it.

Screaming my love/lust for Anne as I knee paddled out.

It took another week for Anne and Porter to get close to normal. I'd tend them between glorious surf sessions. Anne said she could just stop here and live on the atoll with me... not sure what she told Porter but I had moved to the isle, combined some old shacks into one nice place with a tin roof. I expected her to join me. I justified manipulating the situation because sex seemed like love. At least you think its love as you lay there breathing deep draughts of satisfaction.

So, after a heat exhausted day in the shack with Anne, she said she had to go tell Porter about staying with me. A day later they both just sailed off. To this day I don't know what happened except Porter circumnavigated arriving back in Newport alone.

I surfed another week trying to get rid of the bitterness a women can do to a man's soul. I screamed at her as I paddled out and I gouged the waves like a Chicago blues harp player. Then I vowed to never let a woman get to my heart like that again. I was skinny from only fish and coconuts and I'd surfed her out of my head. So I stashed the board in the rafters, hailed a copra boat and got to Port Villa, flew to Suva, got a flight to Guam, then a military flight to San Diego. Got to classes a week late wondering how I was going to avoid Viet Nam."

Gee says, "You know I saw you two oldies pull up on that shinny white motor bike and assumed you were recently retired from "normal life". You never know the stories inside people. Sorry for stereotyping you guys.

"It's cool" Jake laughs" mate that isn't the half of it."

Osley smiles at Gee, grabs Jake's hand, pulls on her faded denim jacket and says, "Let's go home Jake."

## Part two

## THE HOLY GOOF

## A Year of Surfing

Transitioning from the late '60 into early '70 didn't find every twenty four year old at the disco..........

CHAPTER 1

The waters of Wiamea Bay are deeply disturbed by the thirty foot waves exploding toward shore. Billy's been watching for an hour, his mind's eye riding every wave. It's do-able he thinks just don't get caught by the close out sets. Excitement mixes with fear, his warrior instincts scream yes, and his mind's eye rides every monster. He visualizes his blond, sinewy body from fasting and relentless surfing, jumping to a crouch and sliding across big green ocean sheet music.

"I'm going for it Lloyd" He tells his black and white hound dog in back of the Jeep. It's like a short step across a cold line, "I'm going for it."

The only FM radio station, KPOI, is playing "Going up the Country" by Canned Heat.

Course sand underfoot yellow board under arm, and Billy seamlessly morphs into the instinctual animal waiting for the moment to jell before sprinting down the sand incline to jump on the back of the last receding wave of a set. The water is violently awash, total focus is on getting past the board snapping shore break. At the edge of the reef he sits, back erect and searching the horizon; and then it comes big, black, like a herd of stampeding elephants under a huge Persian rug. Reminding himself that this is the real deal, awesome, but realizing the approaching mountain of water is going to break on his head. It takes way too long to get prone and begin paddling toward the horizon every sinew about to pop as he scratches up the face of judgement praying to God that he'll get over the hissing lip.

Just over and the surge tries to suck him back, heart in his throat, keep paddling, just made it.

Cautiously moving back into position as the warrior in him screams 'I want one'. It's not just courage screaming it's a lifetime of being in the ocean, challenging oneself, whether being eleven years old at the local break, or 17 and scouring the coast, discovering waves from Mexico to Panama, which almost smells illegal, or moving to the islands to invest oneself in the art, the power dance; surfing. "I want one."

So it comes. This is his one, damn it! Sucking in powerful breaths he turns his board toward shore. The years have told him the only way is 100% committed, 97% won't get it, 97% leaves room for the intellect and this is bigger than that, this is heart committed instinct. With decision clenched in his teeth, and deep even strokes he attempts to match the speed of the approaching energy. Excitement mixes with fear like tequila and limes. The tail of the board rises as the angle of this morphing giant quickly gets steeper. Billy is forcing for release; full focus, body on the electric line. Instinctual action no thought just jump like a cat into a crouch, aim down between the stress lines, racing down the incline, vision is the whole mind, the bottom is only thirty feet below. Such complex forms of motion; wave moving toward shore, jacking up, throwing out over head, stress lines from wave energy dragging on the reef below, pitching out threatening to crush him as the rider slides down adjusting to it all without thinking, instinct only, heart on the line. The multiple forms of motion compound the illusion of speed yet to the observers on the beach he seems glued to one spot because the speed of the wave rising matches his decent, he is almost going backwards until board/man overcome inertia and force to the bottom where he shifts weight to the inside edge of the board and carves through the g's like squeezing a bar of soap through your fingers. It's a grand arching turn carving up across the dark wall of water. He only senses the fringing lip above and the grinding churn of white chaos behind. To the observer he is a flowing line across God's sheet music. For Billy he simply arrives at the other side of thick sticky time where sliding into the safe deep blue waters of Wiamea Bay is shocking, almost absurd, as if he should check his pockets for identification. 'Was that really me?'

After three more waves, each unique, like totally different lovers, Billy moves for the deepest possible take off where the upsurge can twist a board around. The position is critical. He is down the line the deepest heart of power where the waves first begin to fray, hiss, and threaten. 'Just cross the top and drop down the right stress line', but his position is too critical and he is stuck to the pitching lip. It's like holding on to a cement mixer that's tipping over a cliff.

With fear-filled slowness his mind records the event. First weightless then skipping like a flat stone trying to penetrate, then the cascading lip of the wave drives his board into his back. Finally he is pulled under the surface by a sucking swirl of pummelling after-wave. To those on the beach he is like a high diver back flipping off a waterfall and simply disappearing. For Billy its down, down and breathless; so deep it's dark. Pressure in the ears, eyes, and groin, there is no leverage against the chaos. "Relax" his mind screams in an attempt to conserve the remaining oxygen in his veins. Lungs on fire, body about to explode, indifferently, like turning a radio dial, things get cold and objective. 'A man is drowning.' A thousand moments in a moment, time is sticky as cold and darkness close in. Yet one open eye sees daylight above and a cumbersome last effort scratches for the surface. Life is just a few inches away; desperately he breaks through, eyes bulging, greedily gasping at the foamy atmosphere and feeling like a rock. He needs ten breaths but survival only gives him four, he must dive in a panic of tears for the reef below to avoid the pounding swirl of the next wave. Frog stroking with a heart screaming for oxygen, ears about to burst; looking up through swirling columns of after-wave he knows he's finished if it gets him. But his body is screaming "Up Up" and he must obey, power stroking to fight the last surge before breaking through to the surface. A good series of breaths, the next wave is smaller; he will live.

Swimming to the middle of the bay to pull himself onto his passive yellow surfboard; rest, get it back together, let gravity return to chromosomes, and paddle in to stick his feet in the course sand. Yes, the static serenity of land is almost nauseating, like a sailor too long to sea.

Walking toward the pick-up, buzzing, feeling sort of high, almost off balance, pulling it together, so many spectators have lined the road ... Musing the in-articulable answer to, 'what drives a man to do these things?'

CHAPTER 2

All right Billy!!

It's Jake.

Once, Billy's best friend from university, from the days when they were soldiers, from when Billy, the puppy Lloyd, and his ex-wife opened their house to soldier-surfers so they could escape the khaki threat of Viet Nam. The thought bubble of her, the dog and the house on the sand got him home from Nam... Billy, like Jake, was an all American athlete, said the pledge of allegiance every day of his school years, but unlike Jake, Billy's father and uncles all fought in WW2. So when Billy got his orders; Monday morning Russian roulette, stand at attention in the dark tropical morning, random roll call to Nam, like a spear thrust into his chest; Billy grabbed his M-16 and went to Viet Nam... so simple to say.

Jake went on a fast, for fun, expecting them to let him go home, but they wouldn't so he crossed over into malnutrition, and they said he was faking it but he passed out a lot and finally didn't want to eat and forgot why he was doing it and got so damned depressed until he realized that if they commit him, he won't have to go to Viet Nam. Their RA Ranger company commander said Jake was faking it so Jake embodied a case for neurosis because psychosis was too hard, but then he caught neurosis like a virus.

Psychiatric ward #37 was filled with crazies rejected from Vietnam. Some couldn't stop laughing or just felt most comfortable barking like a dog and crawling down the halls to lunch, or the over drugged sniper guy who got fat from the downers and talked like he was a wound down clock who woke Jake by holding hands to pray, and there was the guy in the padded cell who was patrol "point man" in Nam. He didn't sleep and in 'therapy softball' played 1st, 2nd, short stop, and third... with no problems.

So when the time had passed Jake got out; unfit for Viet Nam but back to the RA company commander, who knew he was faking it. Jake smiled, out ran him out push-upped him, and wore pink paisley stationary as liner for his helmet because when the commander bellows "What is the essence of the bayonet?!!" the troops yell "To kill without mercy sir!" but Jake would just tip his helmet and waited for discharge papers. A very strange game of 1969.

In the end Jake worked it all to his advantage.

Two day before Billy returned from Nam his wife left with one of Jake's friends ... and the passionfruit vine grew high and gnarly around the house, Lloyd stayed, and Jake became a surf star... but truthfully, Jake is a pirate and Billy is a hermit.

So here's Billy buzzing like he's been reborn, thankfully feeling every grain of sand between his toes, and savoring breath like fine champagne! It's a long smile before Billy says

"Hi Jake."

Typically Jake is being followed down the beach by two drop dead gorgeous bikini clad women. Julia, the blond yet dark skinned girl under his arm makes green eyed Jake and her look like Vogue models. Women and dogs love Jake. Women know Jake won't let them into his soul, so they trust him, dogs sense his innate primal-ness. Along with Jake and the girls is a tall smiling guy with a massive camera lens slung over his shoulder, who says,

"Man you were going for it out there, you're Billy huh? I remember you from

California."

"That's right," Jake cuts in, "God I never see you anywhere Billy and here you are riding waves that made me a spectator!"

"Well Jake most time I'm just riding the break at my house." And Jake's eyes flash enough to say he remembers it all and will leave bruised times in the past.

To Billy the other young women seems more in focus; shorter, curvy, beautiful breasts, high Tibetan cheek bones that smile a fierce independence, oddly she wears a wool lined denim embroidered jacket over her bikini ... and the cameraman is speaking

"... well I got some great shots for my movie so thanks for putting on the show."

Billy smiles but only the young woman is in focus because his brain is still pausing, 'I'm alive'; only the hyper connect of a woman could crash through.

Some part of your brain wonders if she could fall with you into some rabbit hole of chemistry that mixes mind body and spirit, all the potential is there yet it could as easily evaporate; perhaps into another reality you choose not to inhabit, or the connection will just flat line from the beginning. Potentials is just potential.

Jake introduces the cameraman as Hap and she is Nicole who is looking straight into his eyes and asks in a South African English,

"Was that wipe-out frightening? It looked frightening."

After an awkward moment of uncontrollable gaze he answers rather dumbly,

"It hurt down to my testicles." Immediately thinking how weird that sounded.

Driving home feels good. "I'm lucky to be alive Lloyd. Dinner for you, I think we'll celebrate with a beer, and watch the sunset. We weren't always alone were we pal but I love the simplicity, you, me, and the sea? ... It did hurt down to my testicles, but what a dumb thing to say. "

CHAPTER 3

Some guys are a party just by their presence. Jake is that guy.

Standing at the entry landing at his house on stilts Billy looks out to the vacant waves and wonders, 'What is it going to mean having Jake back in my life?'

Because when Jake tells Billy, "a few friends, maybe a couple of girls, are coming over to play guitars", Billy had to smile; and put away every breakable thing in the house.

Above the sandy cove the fading yellow shack perches on the seawall; glassless storm shuttered windows on the fifty yard line of a football size ocean arena cloistered at each end by jet black lava rocks; sentinels or perhaps bouncers.

The house was like a broken toothed street person that the world has trained the eye not to see yet holds the answer; simplicity.

The tall overgrown fence separated this hidden sanctuary; a coconut palm growing business.

In the grassy area between the house and seawall Billy parked his time worn Jeep; window cranks usually worked, the towels on the seats hide the split upholstery, and the muddled grey paint was once a shiny black but years of tropical sun and scrubbing with Ajax voided any real color into a nondescript grey. It could jump start in ten feet.

Billy's castle. He has nothing of value but owes nothing as well, not money or lip service. He is a self-made hundred-aire.

On the weekend Jake arrives with a beautiful guitar under one arm and the young third generation local haoli Julia, under the other. They are a couple that just look good together; like models in a photo op. From Billy's point of view, by the grace of God, Nicole follows with two cold Chardonnay.

The four go to the sea wall to watch the beginning of sunset. Billy throws his legs over the wall next to Nicole who says,

"We met that day you rode the big surf, remember?"

"Ya, I do." Nicole has a smell that is subconsciously familiar, 'maybe she wasn't offended by the testicle comment'. She speaks, he heard what she said but really, it's a moment of magnetism. You don't even know how much willpower it would take to escape. What is the cost for a moment or a year of magnetism? It doesn't matter what words you are using or hearing. It's the magnetic glow and if it pulls away for fifty years it will dance before you if you again get close. When you get sucked into that, you ought to go there; it is a dance.

"Awriit Billy. The place looks great! All the plants have grown into trees. No wonder I don't recognize the place when driving by. It's like a garden instead of a car park." Both men smile into bruised times.

To cover Jake pulls out a joint. "Got some killer gonja form Jamaica here Billy."

"Ya, no thanks Jake. It'll just make me feel like I'm falling off the planet." "Gonja from Jamaica mon." Billy chides.

"Billy you got to flow with the times, and I know what you mean, like in the '60's it was an anthem; freedom from the machine, plus it made us laugh until we'd almost pee our pants. Now it's social and that's ok with me, I'm keeping things light, uncomplicated, I'm determined not to let anybody or anything bring me down. No more depression, no neurosis, just surfing and loving life".

"I hear you're front man for the Hui. Jake that's got to be complicated, or at least dangerous. As for the joint, for you pal, I get ya but for me... well I'll just fall off the planet. So, no Gonja."

"Billy mellow out man, come with me to get the beers out of the car."

"Jake where did this new Mercedes sports car come from? Pro surfing couldn't be that good! Like, cars like this don't really belong on the North Shore do they?"

"It's Nicole's man. Mine's the van."

"Oh"

Jake says "So Billy Nicole's really a good person. The love of her life, her husband, was my friend, a good South African surfer sort of political activist type surfer; he was shot dead by the people he was trying to help, life is weird man. Died in her arms in Joburg, and honestly you're the first person I've seen her light up to. He left her a lot of money and a big heart ache. She's educated, travelled, fiercely independent, did I mention really rich! Now Billy, I know you've been basically soloing it since Nam."

"Well Jake you'll have to let me handle this one... but ya Nicole is nice."

Nice! You holy goof, this is a hot chick. Right?"

"Right."

"Billy the whole scene on the North shore is changing. It's no longer, if you don't have a girl with you there aren't any. The place is crawling with them! And the surf scene has changed since they started putting up big money for contests. Guys are becoming national heroes' man. Like subculture rock stars, and along with that action comes well, a different way of doing things. Do you see what I'm saying Billy?"

"Ya Jake, it's the machine again, and man, insidious."

"Insidious, nobody uses insidious! And plus there is no sin in making money surfing." "Insidious I say. Man something changed in the years between '68 and '74."

"Ya I'm making money surfing and love it!"

Right... Or wrong but... I still love those days when being an amateur was a virtuous choice, contests where purely for the ego and for your club, tribal ya know? Like in Mexico, each club camped together and the comp turned into a sky rocket war and we blew up boards and cars and somehow it was ok. We didn't care if anyone knew who won because it was for the guys who really know the passion. I think Mike Doyle won, but anyway that's where I'm coming from."

"Well Billy the deal is different now and you've got a bit of a reputation from California. I mean we used to think you were the most soulful rider out there, which of course is why you never won any comps." Jake says like a big brother. "But since your little insanity at Wiamea people are beginning to ask 'who is that guy?' Now Billy we all deserve a little return for those years of canned soup on rice and Opihi picked from rocks. Can you see what I mean man?"

"I hear ya Jake. Go for it. Pro surfing suits you, but its' not me man."

"Well here comes Nicole and THAT is where you should be going man!"

Nicole hands Billy a beer and some of the others arrive and take up places on the grass or seawall. Lloyd sniffs everyone like a gentle bouncer, but shays away from Sunny Boy and his entourage. There is talk of old surf days and guitars are passed round, cold beers, ninethy rhythms, burnt orange horizon fades toward light green blue. Hap is taking photos of Jake and Julia, acoustic music and sunset.

"Really!" Jake enters the little space Nicole and Billy had and then artfully speaks through to everyone on the lawn. "I never see you anywhere and there you were riding waves that made me a spectator!"

"I don't know if I'd do it again Jake."

" Hey Haoli," Sunny Boy a well-known Portuguese Hawaiian surfer, "You were just lucky, if tried that nine more times you'd drown them all Brah. A lifeguard could have drowned trying to save your houli ass." Glaring bleary eyed Sunny says "Eddy Aikau came over for the afternoon session when things mellowed out brah. He's the ten out of ten guy!"

"Sunny you don't even know Billy." Jake defends

"I know this frickin' houli. This my dead auntie's house he's renting from my lolo Okinawan uncle. That house is for family brah... and this fricking houli wen cut the family koa surfboards to make tables!" Dead eye stare at Billy "I know you, you frickin' Houli."

Polynesians, have deep warrior genetics. "Be cool Sunny" Jake say

"You telling me be cool?" Sunny's warrior is rising. "I'm telling you this nobody Haoli is too lolo to know he has no right to even be out there, he hasn't paid no dues."

"Hey Sunny, Billy been around a long time, just not in anybody's face." Jake counters.

"I'm in your face brah...and Sunny steps up to stand nose to nose with Jake, their eyes lock, for the moment all sound and peripheral reception melts, green eyes locked on black, been there before, he doesn't know you're shaking on the inside, then the moment returns. Jake is "akamae" enough to not step back until you're ready to fight; the warrior will just advance. Stay cool.

"Eye to eye, calmly Jake asks Sunny, "Do you want to fight?"

Sunny is still ranting, as if he didn't hear, Jake repeats,

"Do you want to fight?" Sunny puffs up, raises his hands, Jake takes one clean step back, stay cool keep eye contact. Been here before, get him to charge with blind anger.

Sunny takes off his shirt, screaming "Fricking houli!!", then he takes off his pants and goes into a dramatic karate pose in his boxer shorts! Jake smiles. The moment melts again, eye to eye, Jake says,

"Come on you fat fricking Hawaiian! You afraid?" get him out of his stance, Jake quickly eyes all of Sunny's entourage who with most of the party have formed a circle around them.

"Come on you lap dog fricking Hawaiian!" Jake's into it now, a bit of alcohol and adrenaline coursing through his veins.

"You come to my friend's house, insult me and him you chicken skin frickin Potugee!"

He doesn't know you're shaking on the inside.

Sunny face turns red and he drops his head, arms out stretched and charges like a bull , like a bull fighter Jake smoothly slips into a duck under, goes behind locks Sunny around the waist, kicks the back of his knee and drops him like house of cards. One punch in the head then eye Sunny's circling crew. Been here before, keep punching and you'll get kicked in the back of the head. Jake lets Sunny up; one punch no harm.

Sunny senses bad timing, 'fix it later'.

Sunny looks around, confused like everyone's speaking a strange language.

"What am I doing with you frickin Haoli's?" Sunny downs his beer, shoots a "stink eye" glance at Billy, throws a beer can against the wall and leaves with his boys carrying his clothes.

"Hum," Billy says handing Jake another beer, before smoothing the vibe by refreshing everyone's drinks.

A clean acoustic melody line from Peter Moon dances into the night sky, Jake pours everyone drinks, and the Hawaiian sound of Gabby Pahinui pours into the melting pot of world music. Jake rolls cigarettes and flutters his 'harp' like a bird gliding over this still tropical evening, and the party is back on. Nicole pulls Billy into her space simply by opening her smiling amber almond shaped eyes. He thinks,' it's good to honestly return, a smile'.

"You guys handled that well."

"Thanks, but crap I'm still shaking more than Jake.

"Doubt that" Jake says as he jumps onto the sand with Lloyd. Jake and Lloyd talk geo politics and Julia lays back in the still warm sand.

Billy says,

Hey Nicole would you like to walk down the beach to that big rock?"

"The one with that ghost of a skinny tree on it?"

: Yes, it's my neighbour, Nikido San's, mango."

"How can it live out there? It's salt water."

"Roots of steel" Billy smiles quoting Nikido

CHAPTER 4

"Well," she pauses as if doing some sort of soul math and says, "OK." As they walk Nicole takes him by the hand, more like a kid in school he thinks. The sand is still warm, the humid air, and the lapping sea to a last light horizon. There are moments like this where nothing can be added, whether you are independently wealthy or a gardener for estates on the hill.

"Half moon rising Billy. I love the silver light on the sea."

"Yes, she's beautiful."

"The sea?"

"Yes."

"She?"

"Yes"

Nicole simply smiles. The slapping surf surges up around them and they play tag with it. Like children dancing on the shore, like lovers, like an old married couple with too many good memories to have room for bad ones. Playfully enjoying Nicole's South African banter before taking her waist and pulling her to the sand; they wrestle into a simple kiss. He pauses to smell her skin and to touch her neck gently with his lips then simply brushes his lips across hers, light pressure, a moment, not sure if there might ever be another, but it feels like the center of the universe none the less.

As they pause she says, "I liked that." She kisses, gentleness lingering.

The ocean rhythm around their ankles; everything is body temperature.

Holding hands they walk back past that bus size rock with the 'roots of steel' mango back lit by the moon: wet jeans, and smiling. Billy says,

"Years ago Jake and I spent a whole day on the big lava rock getting a feel for time."

"Hum, you are not getting hippy on me are you?"

"Uh hard to explain that; explain that it's easier to look forward with a friend from the past, at least for me it gave me perspective on the rest of my life; life truly is short, and sometimes uncontrollable; did you know I went to Viet Nam? "

"Yes, Jake described you as 'reclusively unsociable; but honorable'." Nicole looks at him and decides to reveal, "For me Billy life is, delicately uncertain, so sometimes I just reach out and grab the right now with all the energy I've got because I know you can... lose things, good things pass no matter how hard we hold on" She says, "and it put a hole in my soul... so our kiss, that was just to grab hold of time, the moment. Do you understand?"

"I get that, and the hole in the soul. Viet Nam. But that rock is older than Plato, or Abraham it almost watches us blur by but ya, the only workable time is right now... so how do we participate in, now, with truth, honor and courage?. Like Mandela says, 'courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear', Mandela was imprisoned for life in '64 and he's still impacting the world."

"A surfer who knows African politics? I expected the "shine the light now because that's all there is", very hippie sort of pick up line Billy." She laughs

"Well I read a lot. I bet there's a better way to say this Nicole, but," Billy bites his bottom lip, "I would like to make you breakfast in the morning"

"What does that assume?" she chides

"That you like eggs, papaya, coffee and toast." Smiling and kicking a bit of wave surge at her

"I should say something coy but the honest answer is 'that would be nice'. Billy, you might be as crazy as I am."

"Everyone is crazy. A lot of people just don't know it"

"Breakfast better be good." They play tag with the surge on the walk back. Half way around the cove Nicole just jumps into the sea, Billy follows jeans and all and they swim together for a kiss where bodies melt into one another, where the neutral buoyance in the sea allows them to meet as equals.

Innocence is a brave unconscious mindset that exists outside past and future.

Innocence was not always equated with naïveté and immaturity.

It comes from your heart, where you have no age, just the real "me" in the real "now".

Half-light, faded print rug, bookcases, pillows, shirts off, except for her denim jacket. Nina Simone sings on the warm trade wind through the storm shutters. Shadows from a long candle as they share a bottle of wine without glasses or pretence.

"What's in that "L" box? Good letter carving'

"Nothing really. The other sides have O V E'

Not nothing. It's locked."

"Personal stuff Nicole". It's not time to tell her about his mother's wedding ring handed to him when she left his stoic second world war father, about the Purple Heart for "bravery under fire" but Billy knows he was shot in the back, last man left in the squad, running for his life... and the picture of Jake streaking across a big Honolua Bay wave. Which lured him to Hawaii to become a fiercely self-reliant, passionate surfer. Passion where your guts ache, the mind defaults, and dreams draw new lines across liquid sheet music. Like music, dance, sculpting, bullfighting or knowing God.

Billy was born to surf.

"Really just personal junk Nicole."

Changing the subject he says, "That's a nice jacket." He's half insinuating that it's the tropics and nobody wears fur lined denim jackets... "Great embroidery."

"Thank you I got it done in South Africa... it was a good year." She smiles in a way that says she has no more to say on that subject.

They get it; no more talk about the Love Box or the jacket.

"It is just nice being here with you, It feels... good." Billy speaks mostly to himself

"Yes."

CHAPTER 5

Nikido was five feet tall, grey whiskers on his chin and gnarled arthritic fingers that never seem to bother him, and he wears a yellow hard hat every day.

"Coconut!" he'd bark, as if he was screaming 'bonsai' then tap his hat. Not only did it protect him from coconuts but it also made this square brick of a little man seem five foot five. Most people instantly recognize that Nikido is subconsciously connected to the natural rhythms around him. A symphony that put him at peace while in motion around the yard or at the sea. Being in his presence you remember that if the music is good you may as well dance.

Billy and Lloyd regularly meet Nikido by the Mango tree on the big black rock. The mango tree is the dividing line between the houses but really it just one large lawn with random coconut trees. On this sunset evening Billy and Nikido sit on "their" side of the tree and stare at the electric horizon. Billy says,

"I've been trying to think out what I'm doing with this too rich girlfriend? ... And what she's doing with me? It doesn't make sense."

"Mind mind mind...tink tink tink! Now time whole world decide with mind... no more wisdom!"

"What do you mean mind?" Nikido laughs and slaps his belly then

Nikido claps his hands and shoots his left fist to the sky. ."Mind" tapping his hard hat with his right.

He smiles then claps his hands again and shoots his right fist to the sky... "Instinct" as his left hand radiates away from his solar plexus, then he laces his fingers and says "wisdom! Together number seven wisdom"

"Only number seven?" Billy

Chuckling Nikido presses his hands like trying to squeeze the mind and instinct thing into a volleyball, squeezing and squeezing from every angle as if he's compressing the energy of his words. Chanting "instinct mind, instinct mind." Then he throws the energy volleyball onto the waves and says "throw on the sea, now happening, no think!"

"Fate?"

No no no! You did throw!"

"So I have the free will?"

"No. now wave has, but you must throw. Now thinking no help so no worry. Is great wisdom. Number ten wisdom!"

"So don't worry about our relationship... 'cause it's out there?"

"You throw?"

"Ya"

"No worry."

CHAPTER 6

**It's a dry gusty afternoon and Billy's surfing his third session of the day**. Sitting on the board, legs over the side, comfortable, satisfied, tropical sun above and vibrant reef below. Waiting for only the choicest waves. An ocean-patience learned from years of surfing solo. It's telepathy with the mind of the ocean: sensing the approaching set of waves from the slightest rise of blue water out toward the horizon. Like the thrust of a thousand mile whip these waves will crack onto the reef, all unconscious knowledge from a flash of undulating horizon. He just slowly, rhythmically paddles toward an intersection with the peak.

This is the rhythm. The sea bird banking off the breeze, the fisherman on the big black rock, a line in the sea and his mind spread out across the water. The spent wave slapping on the sand. The dropping sun ricochets across the winds pattern. A set of waves approach the reef and a surfer paddles the whole rhythm, unconscious, lit up and complete; this is the glory of being an amateur. Money would be obscene and doesn't fit the recipe.

There are surfers who aren't tuned in, they just watch each other for a sign and when a true waterman moves toward the eventual peak the 'man on man' surfer, the surfer of the crowd, can paddle ahead and take the wave that already has another's name on it.

Billy chooses the best wave of the set, not always the biggest; head high and glistening. He knows exactly how each wave will gently foam at the peak in almost a pause, before the whole force of the swell abruptly hits the shallow reef and jacks straight up, thin windswept sun diamonds that will tunnel to a casual ending at the edge of the reef. All this knowledge is instinctual and slightly beyond three dimensional. It is difficult to articulate that moment... Billy just gives it a two stroke take off, fading left before snapping into a one eighty top turn with so much force, Manolete arrogance, that his fin slides out of solid bite, premeditated he drops into a tail first side slip, arms overhead and controlling the slid with fingertips and style. As he slides to the bottom of the wave he jambs his fin in and power carves up onto the silver green wind facets. The feeling is rat-a-tat-tat from the souls of his feet to the tip of his head and the wave begins to pour its colors overhead. Projecting from inside the tube and dragging a hand to pull up into this hollow water cavern, gaining wave speed over flat out board speed. Eyes on the oval opening, going for it, making it no matter what, arms forward and gaining on the moment until he was born, as casually as possible, into the blue waters at the edge of the reef.

Jake forces the gnarly passionfruit covered fence aside on this wind swept afternoon and walks to the seawall with Lloyd. Together they watch Billy skip across the wind scuffed waves.

Jake says to the dog,

"Lloyd, do you think we all are just riding on the good graces of the guys who won the Second World War? Falling away from their unencumbered goodness and right thinking?" Lloyd looks Jake in the eyes," I mean are we jettisoning chunks of deep clarity as we try to redefine the vision they left us?"

Lloyd looks at Jake sideways and brings his ball.

"So Lloyd, has Billy ever mentioned that he got a degree in horticulture and I got one in psychology?

It's true we chose UC Santa Barbara because of the good surf and the party atmosphere but, we did get the degrees."

Lloyd nudges the ball,

OK yes I got out of Nam because I'd studied being neurotic, but ... but hey Lloyd don't put that guilt trip on me about not using my education. It influences what I do on the beach, and yes I get paid for being a pro surfer, it's OK ya know? Billy was an All American athlete, he hardly had to study."

Jake heaves the ball far down the beach and jumps into the water before Lloyd gets back to follow him out to the break.

"Hey Jake, what's up?'

"Two good news and maybe a bad news" Jake offers his patented Cheshire cat smile

"Good news first"

"I'm gracing your waves with my presence."

Naw that's the bad news." Billy gives him a splash

"We'll I heard that Sunny Boy, Blah James, Baby, and John John, the hui bosses, are moving in with Nikido to help pay the mortgage. But, the other good news is that Sunny's been voted out already because he wanted to put Nikido in a "home" cause he can't handle himself well."

"That's bull shit, Nikido pees outside 'because he hates wasting water and he stares at the sea all day cause he reads it like the New York Times! He doesn't eat like us because he has a different rhythm; days without food, days with only raw from the sea, days where he eats one brackish/ salty mango under that skinny mango tree; he takes all day cause that tree only give a dozen fruit a year... and he yells a lot because he's used to talking to the wildness of the ocean. He doesn't need a "home" he needs a PR man and a government grant! Damn it!"

"Cool it Billy, Sunny's not moving in now and they're making Nikido his own place in the shed on the edge of the seawall. He'll like that."

"Who the hell are these friends of Sunny Boy?'

"Ummm at first impression this may seem bad, but really there good guys. Blah James is actually a great guy, big 6'4" Hawaiian with a black pony tail who grew up in Waianae the prodigy of warehouse thieves, he graduated to prostitution, extortion and drugs, Baby is his best friend, Hui boss, and once Mr. Body Builder Hawaii which is tough when you're only 5'2", seems like everybody owes him something, I think Sunny owes him his life ... oh John John is famous for sawed off shotguns."

"You got to be kidding me?"

"They're actually very peaceful guys, unless they're working, basic long hairs really."

"You gotta be kidding?"

"Don't worry, they don't surf. Except Sunny, who really would rather take weird drugs than surf." Jake spins to catch a set wave. He is like Blues music; got the progression down, doesn't deviate from the proven form but somehow there is an unmistakable style, a uniqueness grander than the form... he turns in the middle of the wave gouging a Jake statement, then snake dances four solid measures before seventhing the last carve into a 180 change, a cutback for two measures of slash and froth, before coming back around with frenetic snake carves setting up the speed into the tube, exiting with another quick cutback before sliding back over the top of the wave hooting with joy to paddle out and do it again.

Stoked and sitting out the back while the morphing orange sun accelerates into the horizon Jake says.

"Hey Billy, this IS a nice wave... "

Um, keep it to yourself man. Billy splashes at Jake

"Sure sure...I hear you've been up at Nicole's house."

"Some, she's been down here more."

"Good for you pal. She's great but remember to avoid getting over committed. Girls like her don't want any complications."

"I know man, I'm a gardener and she's independently wealthy but... we're really enjoying whatever it is we're doing."

"Cool... but I think I should take you to Honolulu sometime, just the boys ya know."

"Nah Jake, it'll just cost me money and you'll get twisted and I'll have to drive you home."

"Billy, when ya go to town you don't know WHAT will happen. That's the fun bit."

"Maybe Jake." And Billy spins to drop into another two paddle take off, freefalling but confident.

Watching the waves in the afterglow of sunset on the grass just below the stairs to the house, Jake says

"Those waves were great Billy, and I'm glad to see you can still snap into smaller surf."

"I kind of got this place wired"

"What's it like in a west swell?" Jake asks

"Not nearly as good." Billy

"Where do you surf then?"

"Still here." Billy smiles

"You oughta try the Pipe. It would blow your mind."

"Well Jake I have a hard time leaving my back yard. Somehow it's not the same with a lot of other people in the water. Ya know what I mean?"

"Well one of these day I'll come get you and take you up to Pipe. Greener pastures ya know?" Jake senses Billy's apprehension and changes the subject. "Hey Billy how much bigger can this place handle?"

"Not much more. It just gets mushy on the outer reef, but they always reform into something rideable in here."

"Well you know they're having the super contest at three different spot next year?"

"I didn't even know there was a super contest."

"Billy! This is big news for surfing. Huge prize money. One big wave spot, one point break and", Jake pauses for effect, "a small reef break." He flashes his eyebrows.

"I imagine they've already decided on the spots." Billy says

"Well they're not totally sure. The big wave spot will for sure be Sunset Beach, and the point is probably Laniakea. There's no consensus on the reef because one or the other surf stars dominates the main spots. It'll probably be Chun's Reef unless I can talk them into this place..."

"I could see that coming Jake and I'm totally against it."

"Oh? Well think it over, I know you want to keep it tranquillo but Billy you'd be giving back to surfing and helping me 'because I could eat this place alive man. Plus you'd have a front row seat for the greatest show in town!" Big cheesy Jake smile.

Kiss off partner." And Billy grabs the hose and squirts Jake down. Jake squawks

"What are you doing man?"

" You need cooling down, and I've still only got a cold water bath inside so get the salt off and I'll cook a Papio I speared today... like the old days, remember? No money no worries, fish in the fridge, papayas from the roadside trees, mangos, passion fruit, guava from the hill behind, sugarcane, breadfruit... the only thing to buy is beer." Billy smiles

Billy throws Jake a towel from the veranda. "I mean it's the '70's pal, beers my choice, got to leave some of the '60's behind."

"That's rich coming from you Billy!"

So sitting on the seawall sharing a six pack can jell into the center of the universe.

It is when your soul, spirit, will and body are being satisfied in a mutual sense, deep acceptance behind a six pack that smiles into elevated levels; dimension. How is it possible that this place is the center of the universe?, whether "this place" is a shared six pack by the dusty side of the road, an orphanage in India, or beers at the seawall where it's not the words of the conversation but the friendship/healing from "the center of the universe". How is this possible? Cascading back through the dimensions you get an in articulable realization that, yes God can be 100% focused on you both, Billy and Jake, yet the math from here, the center of the universe, allows Him to also be 100% focused on every, meaning every, soul... It is not even a question. Yes here two friends, returned to one another by the sunset warmth on the skin, the third beer in the brain, and the unspeakable knowledge that they bath together at the center of the universe.

Jake suddenly jumps up, runs across the yard, hands Nikido a beer and drags him back to Billy, and the center of the universe. That's just Jake. If it's good, share it.

CHAPTER 7

Funny how a good friend can be someone, at first, you knew you couldn't like.....

The broad lawn between Billy's house and the new neighbors, Da Hui guys Baby, John John and Bla James, has become a permanent Croquet tournament, Property boundaries are null and void and if you play with the boys its $50.00 in the pot. Today it's the three of them, RB, surfing's Super Comp director. RB knows everybody in surfing, speaks perfect "business", wears the latest surf wear and you get the feeling he irons his board shorts , also a pasty long hair in shorts and black socks, Craig, "the Hui accountant", who sits with Jake and Nikido watching the waves.

Nicole and Billy have been spectating these games for days on end. It's clear the croquet combatants like a pretty girl as an audience. Finally Nicole walks up to the hulking 6'4" Bla James and says

"I've been watching you all play for days now."

"Ya we're getting the hang of it." Bla says in a gentle voice as if they were all country gentlemen.

"Well my money says I'll take all of you." She throws out a green eyed challenge and fifty bucks.

You're in! Bla roars and puts a beer in her hand.

"Billy, come meet RB, we're helping organize the Super Comp with him. We're having part right out front here. Cool eh?" Blah says

As RB shakes Billy's hand he says, "It's a great venue, exclusive beach, elevated seawall, and the beach marshals live next door. Perfect!"

"Look RB I really don't want it here but I also know I don't own the beach."

True, we have full State of Hawaii approval. But Billy it's getting surfing on national TV and around the world. Billy the legitimate acceptance of surfing as power art is long overdue; like bullfighting, or sculpting, painting big canvases. You see it would be selfish for you not to get behind a program that brings credibility and legitimacy to what we do?"

"I hear you RB but I think keeping surfing a lifestyle is legitimate. Remember the roots of modern surfing? Beat era counter culture, Dora and that crew, an antithesis to the status quo, like Blues, flamenco music, like Kerouac. The guys that know and live it; everyone else can go to hell."

"Well I hear you Billy, maybe it'll be possible for the two visions to exist side by side?"

"Maybe, I guess it's here for only one day. I can cope"

"Great. Because you have no choice haoli boy, we make the decisions." Baby says in his raspy authoritative voice. A voice that lets you know he is the boss and his decisions come from a place beyond good and evil. "Let's play croquet."

"I can pay Billy's ante." Nicole says without thinking about Billy

"OK I'll give it a go, but I'll get my $50 from the house." Billy walks to the house thinking 'these guys are dangerous, and the $50 shows how far Nicole's world is from his. Billy can live easily for a week on $50.

Returning Baby instantly give him a mallet and a beer, as if Billy's an old friend and not someone Baby just put in his place with a threatening raspy voice.

It's like playing croquet with the Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Oscar the grouch; with guns. Also it's like being with business men relaxing on their weekend.

"What happened to Sunny? Thought he was moving in with you guys."

"We threw him out, before we got started." Baby rasps," I know it's his uncle's house, and you're in his auntie's house, but he seemed too hard on old Nikido."

"Ya Billy," Bla says "Sunny wanted to put him in an old folks home bra, Nikido would have jumped off the roof or something. Naw we made a cool place for him in the shed on the edge of the seawall. He's stoked, we pay the mortgage, we're stoked, we can fish and keep thing mellow. And he can pee on the waves through his front window!" Bla James gives a huge tight lip smile.

'Plus Sunny had to go, he does drugs. It's like always bringing your work home."

Nicole lectures everyone on how croquet came to South Africa in the 1850's from England and then she blew them away with the roquet shot.

When Nicole wins they insist she takes the money.

Out on the lawn Nicole trying not to take everyone's money

"Naw bra you're taking it." John John says very clearly but with a big gold tooth smile. "And if you're here tomorrow you better give us a chance to get our money back." With John John you know you'll make him mad if you don't let him do whatever good thing he wants to do for you. And if you make him mad he'll probably shoot you.

"Nobody expects any trouble at a surf comp do they?"

"No trouble Bra." Bla says, " Everybody knows John John always keeps a sawed off shot gun under the seat of his Mustang. No trouble Bra."

"Right." Billy says remembering how a good goofy foot, Willy Fond, was shot dead on his couch at the Rocky Point Quonset hut because he stiffed the Hui on a drug deal.

CHAPTER 8

The Banzai Pipeline is obvious with a touch of overt complexity.

Big black ocean swells abruptly engorge over a lava reef cylindrically folding water into crystal green spinning energy, "Pipeline", which then collapses like squeezing soap through your fingers creating a cannon shot of inner wave; white dragon spit.

The Banzai Pipeline kills more surfers than any wave on the planet.

The men who ride Pipeline almost growl as they paddle shoulder to shoulder. Who will get the wave? Backs can be broken in an instant reputations can be made in a session and if you're a hardened elite North Shore surfer it's just another day at the office.

The beach is broad coarse sand with cliquish groups of spectators, photographers, and industry people who rate each ride like a vertical Mondavi wine tasting.

Just off shore awesome green waves thunder surgically. So close you feel the thunder in your stomach; laughing lions in a Coliseum.

Billy sits at the waters' edge, feet wedged into the coarse sand, 7'7" single fin pintail "gun" across his lap, riding each wave with his mind's eye...gathering energy, from the flawless eight foot waves; power and perfection. Jake comes up from behind.

"What's it look like Billy."

"Oh hey Jake, stoked, decent really decent."

"Well if you don't over amp from tripod fever" Jake nods toward the massive lenses, "we ought to have a lot of fun." Nodding toward the approaching waves.

"Hum a lot of guys' man, but I'm in there!" Billy says as they jump on the back of the last receding wave of the set.

Waiting patiently out the back Billy avoids the man on man jostle, just reading the ocean like he was the only guy in the water. Quite naturally he finds himself in perfect position for the biggest wave of the day. There is no hesitation, the animal clicks in, breathing becomes natural and deep, Jake hoots him on and fakes at paddling in too, backing off the other desirous surfers before leaving the wave of the day for Billy.

Green energy over an unforgiving reef, the catching of the wave and snapping to his feet is unconscious, the drop is deliciously steep, fast, and the backside turn is the electric matador driving a slashing edge, pulling the cape at the instant of the horns. As he squeezes up into the salivating tunnel he throws his head back arrogantly Manolete. Tons of cascading water securely surrounds him; humming energy, eyes toward the opening at the end. Squat low, ride high, sense the power at the back. As he is exiting the tunnel he straightens up too soon, the board catches a stress line throwing him up, detached from the board. Board and rider independently go over the falls and in slow motion miraculously re connect. Laughing at how he could have made it Billy goes to shore.

Satisfied and sitting in the sand... smiling at the spectators. Billy joins some kids making sand castles..." Hey cool castle.... You guys ever make drip castles?"

"Show us how."

"Just pull out wet sand like a crane see? Then you hold your claw hand over a bit of wall to make twisted turrets. The guards can climb up on and watch over the land." and the red headed little girl says,

"Oh and we can tie our horses on them also."

"That's so right" Billy says. Oblivious to the "scene on the beach" the three of them carefully build the inner chambers of the castle. As they concern for how far they'll allow the horse to approach the center the boy says, "It's not very strong in the center"

"It never is, it's all about the walls." Billy smiles

"Just create places for peeking eyeballs over, and maybe a spear"

The beach is in a roar as camera men fire away at machine gun speed. However Billy and the kids have found the path to the center ...they've had to hold the horses as the clomp of their hoofs echo rudely on the fine Venetian tiles. They sit on throne chairs as sunlight streams in from oval in the frescoed ceiling. 'It's beautiful" she says,

"How many can it hold?" the boy smiles

"Probably a billion including angles". She says

"You never get to stay you know." Billy mentions

"Why?"

"The tide" Billy says, "it's always coming up and levelling things out."

"We can save it!" the lad says

"Well we've got to try eh?" Billy smiles

"Oh have you got a plan or should we just get out of here?" she says as waves begin to surge through the outer walls, the troops arrive but it's all lost.

"Well we'll just start again."

Jake comes up to Billy

"Hey did you see my last wave?"'

"Missed it man, 'been making sand castles. Good fun."

"You are such a goof ball man, this is the ultimate surf arena, the power pit, and here is where you make it or break it for surf status man."

"Hum? Feels like a day at the beach."

"Right Billy." Jake rolls his eyes. "Excuse me kids. Billy come over here and meet some of my friends."

The rest of the beach had been watching Jake do his fully tested power dance. Jake learned to never fall so the camera men can count on you.

"Nice ride Jake." Classically understated by Hap

"Nice? Brilliant would be better..." Jake flashes the full tooth smile

"You boys want a beer?"

"No." as Jake grabs two beers handing one to Billy

"Hey Hap remember my friend Billy?"

"Right. Billy we met when I shot you at Wiamea, and Billy I got that bizarre last ride of yours. It'll be in the movie for sure. ... and Jake that last wave was brilliant," Haps turns to the crew lined under palms and says,

"Jake drops in, set wave, so late that he's so far out in front he has to crash through the lip to get into the tube! Where he gets blasted in the back by the compression spit. Impossible but he does it before stylishly exiting, hands draped at his hips and rides to shore"

Billy smiles, Jake's ego inflates, and the groupie girls on the beach are trying to get their attention.

Stretching in the sand and feeling a bit public. Forgetting for a while that Lloyd waits at home and Nicole's planned a dinner party at his place.

"Hey Jake, maybe we should go, dinner party, Nicole and Julia?"

"Hey Billy we better get going; dinner party at your place right."

"Right right right..."

... **men are desperately waiting for their epic story. For a clear vision of their place in the cosmic battle between good and evil. Men sense this tension between the forces better than women, there is a necessary primal-ness and sexual inertia, "Where is the thing worth fighting to the death for?"...in the indecision we feel like imposters ...It is like a tropical storm brewing on the horizon, the fight is eminent but the waiting is excruciating. Wonderfully, as surfers, we can retreat to neutral ground and cleans ourselves for the battle ahead... we just go to the ocean and surf.**

CHAPTER 9

Arriving home finds Nicole's car parked on the lawn space between the house and the seawall, Billy's usual space.

"Glad you finally made it! A proper dinner party takes organizing Billy." her amber eyes flash, but she laughs and throws him a tea towel... "Wipe all the plates, cutlery and glassware." I've got a full tuna in the oven, made lomilomi salmon, bought poi, cooked vegies, brought Chardonnay, and got houpia for desert. You need to tidy up your house, set the table, get some ice, chill the wine, and put beer in the fridge for you and Jake...

Billy do you think he really wants a relationship with Julia?"

" Her family are old north shore which nicely bridges the gap between the locals and Jake...maybe the course of his life hinges on that decision; maybe not? Sometimes you never recognize those moments until there long gone."

"Well a proper dinner party is a rare thing on the North Shore, and it's as much for them as anything, so let's do it right. Oh I brought my own glass ware and cutlery, your hand painted plates will be fine."

"Sure, I'll feed Lloyd and then get going."

"I already fed him. You get going. Move the table to the front windows, iron this tablecloth, get a vase for the flowers, take the candles from next to the turntable and fold these cloth napkins, oh and wipe the chairs."

The house is more crowed now as musicians have been leaving amps, guitars, 6 foot wall speakers. These thing just appear as guys come to jam with Jake and Billy. Imperceptible really but now the room is no longer stark and Spartan; not totally Billy's.

Jake and Julia arrive at sunset just as Billy finishes his chores. Thinking over kill can create weird vibes.

It's a north shore sunset, the glasses sparkle, the girls seem especially elegant, and Jake and Billy get into the idea that a dinner party can be a wonderful time-out from the routine, and a reminder that every moment doesn't have to be action or rest.

"Hey Jake, have you given the future any thought?" Billy says passing him a beer.

"I'm sorta caught up in this pro surfing thing right now but it seems like the North Shore is getting mellower. Maybe I could use my degree out here? Or maybe I need to do some travelling. Did you hear those stories from GL about Indonesia? These guys the Boyam brothers have supposedly found surf better than Hawaii?"

"That's hard to believe. I mean the whole focus of the surf world is here isn't it?"

"Ya but I guess the question is do we hang here and be a part of the legitimizing of the North Shore or ...Or do we escape responsibility in the guise of adventure?" Jake flashes the smile.

"This dinner party makes me lean toward watching the North Shore mellow and working toward legend status.' Jake says as they settle into their chairs, Billy pours chardonnay, Nicole serves a beautiful dinner.

Suddenly, as the turntable plays" You better watch Yourself Sonny Boy" by Lightnin" Hopkins", the sound of a heavy fist hits the door and Sunny Boy bursts in. Billy jumps up to stand between Sunny and the table. Screaming in a strained, cocaine wizened voice Sunny Says,

" You frickin" houli, this is my aunties house, you don't belong bra." and he steps up to Billy nose to nose, Billy's heart is racing but no stepping back. Just stand there solid, eye to eye, no aggressive vibe no backing down. Sunny Boy's eyes are wild with drugs and vengeance but unbelievably he spins walks to the door, pauses, looks at Billy and derisively mimics the record, "you better watch yourself sonny boy." And slams the door behind him. Moments later they hear the sound of a beer bottle breaking against the outside wall. Jake says

"He's vented his anger with that beer bottle."

"Well that could break the mood... but let's finish the meal; civilized." Nicole says

"Sure, maybe my heart rate will settle." Billy says picking up his wine glass. "What were we saying about the mellowing of the North Shore?"

"My families been here a long time" Julia says, "We know everyone, the good guys, the bad guys and the wild ones. Its how you come across, how you work for the community, what you put in over the long haul that defines how you'll be received. I'm expecting to grow old here and raise children here because I know that this community works thing out, and that's comforting and safe once you're invested in it."

"I like this girl Jake." and for a moment the veneer of surf stardom fades from Jake face, less nervous, less pose and almost intimidated by the momentary flash that he could be the father of Julia's children, grow old with grace; rebirth into a life he feels he'd forfeited many years ago when his heart turned cold. But for this moment all four at the table stare through a window into Jakes heart, just for this instant Jake believes God would somehow allow it. Before anyone can speak the moment is shattered as a cement block crashes through the kitchen window spewing glass across sink and floor. Sunny Boy is outside screaming,

"I'm going to shoot you, you fricking houli!! I'm going to shoot you!" The girls dive under the table as Billy's surfboard comes crashing through the fly screen window.

All this time Sunny is screaming "I'm going to shoot you! I'm going to shoot you!" Billy is still sitting, the girls are under the table and Jake stands with the wine bottle in his hand as Sunny comes crashing through the door with a gun in his belt. Julia scurries out the door on hands and knees, Nicole backs into a corner swearing at Sunny in her best South African. Jake steps in front of him looking into those coked-out crazy eyes and says, "You don't want to shoot anybody, Sunny, how about a glass of wine?"

"You! You're only here because pro surfing brings money and you pay Da Hui to keep the peace at contest. This fricking houli got no respect" Trying to reach over Jakes shoulder with the gun Sunny screams again. "I'm going to shoot you' you fricking houli!" Amazingly the door busts open again! It is the neighbors, Baby, John John, and Bla James come in with Julia. In his deep gruff voice five foot three Baby says "Stop Sunny." and it's like Sunny got hit in the back of the head by a baseball bat, he drops the gun and drops to his knees. Before everyone's eyes he turns into a whimpering puppy dog. Sunny owes Baby his life as years ago the Waianai Hui wanted to kill Sunny like a mad dog, for ripping off the Hui, and being out of control. His only saving grace was Baby who talked everyone out of killing Sunny in lieu of sending him to California which to them was similar. It was years before Sunny was allowed to return. "Get outa here Sunny, you make trouble in this house and it comes to my house. Get outa here!" and Sunny slinks off to his van. Just like that it's over.

It was rumored that someone went to Sunny's house and broke all his pottery and then carved their initials in his back with the broken pieces.

... and the window into Jakes heart snapped shut.

CHAPTER 10

Sometimes you can lose your line-up and not know that you're drifting down the line... too deep... and too shallow

Jake pushes the gate open to find Billy and Lloyd sitting on the seawall watching the waves.

"Ready to go Billy?"

Ya, maybe.

How did you talk me into this Jake? All the way to town and back to get drunk?"

"Look Billy it's the launch party for the Super Comp? Your beach is one of the venues?...and who's going to keep me from all those women?" big cheeky smile, "and who's going to drive me home? Plus Billy you need to loosen up pal, meet some new women, and give Nicole some space. It's beers with the boys tonight."

"I'm with you Jake; see I put on my '50s silk aloha shirt. Lloyd you're in charge. Hop in the Jeep Jake, were outa here."

The whole club in downtown Waikiki is reserved for a national media" invitation only" surf party. Billy and Jake drive up to the entry and when they hop out John John is standing there in a black tuxedo, his gold tooth seems magnified, and he's got thongs on his feet.

"Billy bra, the blalahs goin' park da car, get inside and fine' Baby and Bla, dey get free drink vouchers!"

"John John do you guys run everything on the island?"

"We jus' North Shore fisherman Billy!" John John flashes his tooth and winks.

Inside Peter Moon and band electrify the place with warm slack key rhythms and drivey steel guitar melody lines. Two big screens pump the latest surf movies and all the worlds surf personality male and female have beautiful dates dressed to impress. Photographers both surf specific and national media move in and around the tables, dance floor and bar. Anyone who was lucky enough to get a ticket feels like they "are somebody" as movie cameras record the entire proceedings. Baby in his high heeled cowboy boots and Tux stands with Bla at the bar, there is a clear space around them like penicillin in Petri dish of bacteria.

As Billy and Jake walk toward the bar...

"Hey Jake, do you think Baby, Bla and John John like being sorta separate?"

"They're like a frying pan with no handle, you need it to cook but you don't know how to handle it. It's different with you because you're their neighbour, you play croquet and know they're basically good people with not normal jobs.... Here people just know they're important but dangerous."

The dance floors rocking, the drinks never stop, Jake is being interviewed by media, and the master of ceremonies, RB, is pumping the Super Comp like it was kin to putting a man on the moon.

"Now Billy the sure fire way to meet women is to go where they are."

"They are all around here Jake." Billy smiles

"Yes but where they relax has got a label right on the door... see here where it says 'women'."

"Jake. That's the ladies powder room"

"This is the place Billy."

"What about Julia?"

"We're taking time out." and Jake grabs Billy's arm and drags him into the ladies room. Instead of being appalled the girls are intrigued as Jake explains his theory that the place to meet women is obviously where the sign says, 'women'. Roguish charm exudes from Jake. The tallest most pimped up platinum blond turns to Jake with a martini in hand and says, "You have a pirate, wanderers' spirit. Dogs love you and women love you for sex, you're heart has always wanted to settle down but your mind won't allow It." and for a long few seconds Jake is stuck in his tracks. As Jake recovers from this painfully true spike in his heart, he takes up the call and begins leading the girls out and passing them to his friends. Compassionately, charmingly, impishly he connects the tall statuesque blond to Billy who gets into the swing of things and goes to the bar where Bla James is ordering some very bizarre shots.

"Billy brah you gotta have one of these, or two! And really it's safest if you eat one of these little red pills with it. Mellows everything out bra."

"Ok"

As if Billy is watching a movie of himself, like turning a radio dial, things get cold and quite objectively a man drowning.

Needless to say Jake doesn't need a ride home and its late afternoon before Billy dejectedly pushes the passionfruit covered fence to drive his Jeep to its spot between the house and the seawall. It's that weird feeling; sticky, crumpled, hung over and spiritually weak.

Upon entering the house his mind thinks the cat has strewn the tapes of the reel to reel across the floor but as mind catches up to sight, he looks around to see the tape machine is gone, the wall size speakers that were on loan are gone the turntable is gone the collection of '30s and '40s 78 blues records gone, the

Jake's '1950 National blond wood hollow body guitar with gold Humbucking pickups and decals of girls in one piece bather and high heels, gone, the Epiphone base gone, all the pottery, all cash, and all surfboards, gone. Robbed? But after the previous night it feels like retribution, karma, fate, God's hand has been lifted off. His head is on fire and his body is like a cracked bell waiting for the harsh blast of the clanger.

Some renegade snake knew Billy would be at the Super Comp party and set his house up. Nobody does the job themselves; town guys do it and pay dividends.

The neighbors are furious. "Bra Billy this is not Hui guys." Baby laments

"Somebody's going to pay bra". John John smiles; it's a very asymmetric smile.

A week later the second bad thing happened.

While Billy was in the shaping room working on his new yellow surfboard. Pig hunters from up the mountains came down and stole Lloyd. They take big dogs, starve them, put gun powder in their food to make them crazy, work them to track wild pig until a boar guts them with his tusks.

John John saw them eying Lloyd before and ordered them to leave Lloyd alone. The fact that they stole Lloyd enraged John John not just for defying his order, Lloyd was one of his few friends, because a dog doesn't care what your job is. When Billy came next door to look for Lloyd John John took off in his mustang with a loaded shotgun. And when he found one of the guys he made him crawl around the road and bark like a dog, then he made him bit the curb and kicked him in the back of the head.

Lloyd was gone. The most honorable, noble, loving friend Bill's ever had, next to Jake, gone like your child stolen into slavery. Billy's head was ablaze, fuelled by guilt fuelled by anger, and lots of self-pity, he couldn't sleep, or eat or concentrate or put out the fire that raged in his head, like fusion burning the core.

You can never love your dog more than he loves you... until he's gone. Then the sadness and shock of realizing unconditional love has been sucked out of you. And you are weak like the bleached feeling when walking out of hospital.

At Nicole's A-frame house in Pupuikea Heights, the moment feels mechanical and Nicole says,

"Billy we need some space from each other. You know I love..." she pauses... "your style but I feel like you're going through some stuff that is like rain clouds casting shadows before the rain... you go through it and maybe I'll meet you on the other side. I've got faith you'll get past all this but I don't want be around you for a while."

"I know the Sunny Boy thing freaked you out, the Super comp party, the robbery, and Lloyd getting stolen all freaked me out too." Recognizing the sum of his reality is astringent. "Maybe you're right. But let's not pretend it's possible to start up the same again. I'm out of here."

"Good Billy. Let's go our own way and if our paths cross we can see what we feel."

"Right" Billy says mockingly

Driving away Billy feels hollow inside, quavering inner speak, swearing, and ranting at the heavy laden rain clouds blotting out the sun. The atmosphere is sticky, humid and Billy's mind burns with a monotonous vision-clouding slowness. It feels like Nam. With no reason to go home he drives right past the passionfruit covered fence.

Fat rain drop begin to fall.

CHAPTER 11

Van Gough did a self-portrait that looked like a week of no sleep, no appetite and an escaping soul...

"...and the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

Driving up and down the North shore, can't eat, can't settle, and he can't think past trying to figure out what happened to his life. Did he survive Viet Nam, get his life back on track, and work daily on getting his spirit back, all for this, a hollowness in the soul, aching heart and his insides burning with consuming fire.

Once again he drives past the passion fruit covered fence, no reason to go home, just drive, eat a almond cookie, drink coffee, feeling skinny and sick emotionally, sick spiritually... His mind is fuelled to burn and ill easterly winds blow menacing his skull.

When your head is on fire you'll do whatever it takes to put it out. Driving doesn't work but it gets you somewhere. Billy finally parks the Jeep at Puena Point. It's a lonely series of small sandy coves facing toward Haliewa, a forgotten WWII air strip over grown with bush. The Jeep bashed in there easily. The surf is always small at Puena Point even when Waimea is breaking. 'I need to walk straight into the calm waters, into the deep and breath water "yes, breath water" echo in his mind. A cold step across the line. Strange voices in his head verify that it is the obvious option to put out the fire, a short step in a vacuous mind. The will is engaged and the course is set. His body is thin and muscular, his emotions are too dry to cry, and his burning spirit is bigger than the sum of his parts, if you could see his halo it would be badly tinted and uneven like explosions on the sun... His mind, hyper aware of everything, is moving a million miles a second into a very dark location. Walking into the sea until he breaths water is the remedy... and that is that.

At waist deep a flash of color from the next cove catches the corner of his eye. Jerking his head sideways he sees a young girl sun bathing alone, she's wearing a bright tie dyed homemade bikini and she is smiling at him, this millisecond observation rattles around in his head like dice on a crap table, his mind lets him realize she likes what she sees, he knows it! She is definitely smiling at him and simply that, is the turning of the tide. The crack in the wall of evil. There is light. A 180 that swims away from the dark. Quite suddenly he thinks ' what the hell am I doing?' He just begins to laugh, a smile, a giggle at first that turns into a belly ache. What power in the shallowness of this moment, a moment that turned suicide into laughter, but that's really all it is, something to get past the apex of the darkness. A pinprick glimpse of light into the future re-engages time and time needs being, and only being alive allows another step. Whatever it is that enters ones head to kill and destroy dissolves in the light of life potential... and the smile of a cute girl in a tie-died bikini.

Driving home with tears running down his face and a very deep humility warmly inhabiting the vacant spaces in his being, Billy senses the beginning of return, the ring of recurrence in one lifetime.

"When yo ain't got nothing you got nothin' to loose... you're invisible now... "

CHAPTER 12

It's a dry gusty afternoon, Billy is surfing alone. Hollow but smiling. It is one week to the super contest and Jake pushes the passionfruit covered fence open, surfboard under his arm... expecting Lloyd; remembering, and spitting on the ground. He sits on the sea wall to watch as Billy ferociously paddles left before standing in a flash to rip a gash in the four foot wall of liquid before dropping down to soul arch' around head high sections, there is almost a violence in his stall to rise into a controlled tail slide that evolves into another arch around the final section where he cups his hand and drags it through the fringing lip controlling speed, feeling it. Coltrane,

'Just poetry" Jake thinks as he paddles out. For Billy it is the cleansing moment that lays open his bare wires dissolving pain, and demons and words like 'why'.

"Billy that was such a beautifully constructed ride."

"The difference between you and me pal is that it's not a construction, not a thought process for me, when I pull out of a wave I struggle to really remember what happened, it's more about the flow and the feeling. For you, and I totally understand, it's a calculated attack. It's the 'iron sharpens iron' of professionalism, versus the spirit of uninhibited freedom; surf my guts out. Amateur' may have become archaic but it's glorious and free. Like pal I'm going to spin around and grab this next wave and I've got no plan, just the feeling through my feet. So I'm going to surf my feelings which lately have a lot of gouging, sorta bebop."

"Right" Jake says, " but I already calculated that the following wave is the biggest doubled up wave this cove has seen all day, it's about 'size of wave, length of ride, most critical move closest to the curl'..." as Billy spins to paddle Jake blurts out, " and that's why I'm expecting to win the Super comp!"

Billy drops in, five foot wind scuffed perfection, folding like chocolate icing on a cake, and he rides like therapy, like parenthesis in the dullness of life, like meaning is a feeling not a thought, a cake walk...because surfing's the only constant left. As he exits at the edge of the reef the sun drops below the horizon and he waits in the calm water watching Jake do his power dance. The wave is doubled up- two wave energies combined, twice the power, twice the water. Jake top turns into a slashing cut back, eyes arms and sinew forcing back into the heart of the curling wave then snapping a turn right as the curl folds, so he drops his arms, arches out his chest and allows the curl to pour onto his chest, a statue, a photo opportunity, a moment of haiku poetry before ducking in under the tunnelling lip, Jake drags two fingers on the wall of water unconsciously it is Lloyd, Julia and the children he will never have, it is powerful music that rubs your cheek close to the real timeless now, dragging him further into the black hole of sunset, tons of water pouring overhead.

In the dying light all Billy can see is Jake's white teeth and the fluorescent bubbles of his boards' frantic track. Billy is screaming approval but Jake doesn't come out of this dark doubled up tube. It seems like a long time before Billy paddles toward the last spot he saw Jake.

Jake finally surfaces gasping through a sea surface diluted with blood. Doubled up tubes are smaller, Jake's head got stuck in the top of the tube and he was pulled over the falls, the fin of his board flayed his knee cap wide open. Diluted blood, rain softly begins, and reality threatens to melt as Billy drags semi-conscious Jake to shore.

CHAPTER 13

The day before the Super comp Billy wakes to the sound of heavy equipment; bleachers are being erected, TV platforms, and judges stands rise while traffic stops to gawk. 'Grin and bear it" Billy thinks, 'it'll all pass but how the hell did it get to this?'

. The next morning there are cables being strung between the neighbors and Billy's house, Blah James has a beer in hand, the sun is rising, palm trees are being garrotted by tightly strung speakers, Baby, like a first Sargent is directing all the big Hawaiian beach marshals (who are mostly his relatives). John John stuffs ammo inside the seat of his Mustang where the sawed off shotgun rides. RB is ushering media to their luxury viewing tent, tour busses are beginning to back up on Kam highway and Jake arrives with a crutch under one arm, Julia under the other and a six pack in his teeth.

"Well you're still in form partner!"

"Ah... you've got to make the most of all situations Billy." Jake speaks through the six pack.

"Right. Will you live?"

"Hard to tell 'because the doctors got me so drugged I wouldn't notice either way."

"Well come in man, we'll have to watch the event from in here cause the rest of the surf world is camped outside my door."

"Now don't be bitter, I'm the one who should be bummed but I'm not. Truth is Billy I'm relieved. I've been delivered from the expectations of all those people out there... and, my pressure on myself, maybe it's fear of public failure, so I 'm going to just love being spectator... and I still think I could have won this thing."

"I know you could Jake, you've done the hard yards and put in the hours like a research project. You could've won today but you're a brilliant rider any day... and that is that."

"Thanks man. I really like the adventure, the mission, preparing... maybe I could just do that for the rest of my life... or maybe I'll marry Julia, raise her sons and rage at the sea like old Nikaido San." Jake says.

"That's not exclusively your choice pal." Julia says threatening to kick his knee. Jake shrieks like a girl and Billy has set the table by the window similar to the dinner party, but the furnishings are stark again, just the three of them and Jake's six packs. Jake dismisses the moment by saying,

"Well guys it's party time out there" pointing at the contest, " so we may as well get into it." nobody says a thing about being just three.

Two beers down each, two heats ride by the window, and Nicole's at the door with two bottles of Chardonnay. "Hey guys am I still welcome here or what?" she says with such a laughing South African challenge that the natural wattage goes up three fold in the room and the three legged dog gets the miracle of real balance and solid footing.

"Get in here and chill that bottle of wine!" Jake orders with the biggest cheesy smile you would think he was a cartoon Canadian Mountie. Billy almost cries he's so happy to have her presence back in the house.

"Hey Nic... I've got some ice in the freezer." His words are dumb but she smiles at him like he is a lost kitten found under the sofa. They don't touch until she reaches into the freezer to help him extract the ice. Just brushing forearms brings eye contact that's as good as an embrace; heart felt and light years from sexual.

They sit in the window watching the heats and the afternoon sun

So much weirdness has gone down that for the four of them the comfort of being with old friends, mutual acceptance, is so pervasive that long stretches of silence are warm moments bound together by golden light more caressing than the sun. Quietly Jake watches the sunlight come in through the window and light up Julia's ankles. For that moment it was like he fell in another rabbit hole; quiet and maybe in love.

The super comp was everything it was billed to be and more. The surf turned on and the media really did show the world how powerfully beautiful surfing a wave can be; it is power dance at the highest level, it is bull fighting without death, of course the wave dies; it is art. R.B. was masterful and when he popped into the house to commiserate with Jake it seemed the whole beach entourage followed him in.

On the seawall in the moonlight Nicole and Billy sit shoulder to shoulder, like they are at someone else's party, someone else's home; two old friends giggling at the past and content in, the present... which stretches right out there on the moonlit horizon. By morning only a house is left, smelling of beer, bottles piled high around the yard, and a slapping shore break echoing coldly across the cove.

Ecclesiastes 11:7 ....Truly the light is sweet,

And it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun

But if a man lives many years and rejoices in them all...

Yet let him remember the days of darkness,

For they will be many.

All that is coming is vanity.

CHAPTER 13

When the swell is going to come up really big you can sense it in the unearthly distance between each wave. The shore break is different and the timing between waves is disconcerting; time gaps too long and the energy of the ground swell is hinting that big things out to sea are marching to land fall.

In the morning Billy and Nicole bodysurf the foreshadowing shore break in front of the house. It was perfect for playing the game where you had to go as far up the beach as possible with the surge before spinning on your belly and gliding back down with the backwash. Standing is not permitted so if stranded you wait for a set to get you back, like flapping grunion on moon light California shores.

"Hey Nicole, the surf really is coming up."

"Are you trying to get out of coming up to my place to do the yard? I'm cooking a great meal for you... I'll drive you up."

"OK let's wash off with the hose and go. This swell will stick around for days."

Her house is filled with her treasures from around the world, each sculpture, piece of glass or hammered out copper platter tells the story of Nicole's restless years of escaping from and then finding herself. Billy loves how she's decided to make a stand here on the North Shore.

So as they are finishing a tuna, green beans with olive oil, more chardonnay meal

, Baby calls on the phone, his scratchy voice straining, as he yells into the phone

"Billy bro. you better get home, grab what you can and get off the north shore"

"What are you talking about Baby? Are you guys mad at me or something?"

"Billy turn on the radio bro. The biggest swell to ever hit the north shore is pounding in! It's so big that the backwash has pulled three marines out of the Wiamea car park and drown them in the shore break bra! Billy Nikido went with his house." And for once Baby's raspy voice chokes...

"It's getting dark so we're leaving for Waianae... Your seawall is already gone and the cops have closed the roads. You can make it down from Nicole's on the cane roads. Bro be quick or it will all be gone. We're outa here." And he hangs up.

"Nicole I got to go."

Why take the risk, whatever you lose we can replace."

"Naw the little I've got I want to keep; it's all I've got" and turning to get her eye, "and I want to show you my mother's wedding ring in the LOVE box. If I can borrow your car I'll be back in an hour or two?"

"You are not going to put yourself on the line without me mate. Grab the keys I'll get my jacket and let's do it!"

He thinking' gotta love this woman'

Racing through mud slide turns, along the blind cane roads where too many good guys have been cleaned up by monster cane trucks, Billy wheels Nicole's sports car as Nicole navigates to Kam Highway just across from Billy's house. There is one lonely street light with a weak yellow glow through surf mist as thick as fog. When they get out of the car the sound of the huge ocean swells churning up the outer reef is so loud they have to shout to hear one another. In that moment of chaos a set of waves is pouring white-water across the highway to their feet. Billy says,

"Crap Nicole.! How big does it have to be to wash over the outer reef, over the inner reef, go up over the sea wall, through the fence and across the street?"

"Billy have you got a plan or can we just get the hell out of here?"

"Ok Nicole, got a plan, I'm going to go open the gate go in the house and check things out between sets. You stand at the gate and call me if you hear a set sucking out on the reef and I'll meet you by the car, I should have enough time to run across the street in front of the white-water and put my stuff in your car."

"Billy anything in that shack can be replace, don't do it!"

I got to get the love box,"

What?" over the roar

Something for you!"

And he charges across the street behind the receding surge.

Going through the gate Billy sees that the sea wall is completely gone, his Jeep has been sucked out to the reef, crumpled up like a tin can then violently thrown in a heap back under the house and half the earth under the house is gone, the stumps hang desperately like a kid trying to reach the floor from a high chair and all his germinating plants and infant palm trees are gone or awash.

He finds the box grabs his passport and shaving gear throws them in a shoulder bag, grabs his new surfboard and screams to Nicole

"It's getting bigger! Stay at the gate!"

Nicole has been screaming against the roar but Billy doesn't hear so she bounds up the steps, grabs him by the arm and slings him out to the porch. The house is tilting and starting to fall forward into the eroded void. Shoulder bag under one arm and new surfboard under the other. The raging of the sea has taken more earth than the house could handle, and it begins to creak forward and collapse like a dying camel. As a mountain of white-water approaches...

Nicole! Grab the tail of the board, I'll get the nose. We jump on three!"

If there was music for this it's Miles doing Stravinsky while channelling Jimi.

They're only hope is to leap off the porch onto the one story high churn of diabolical flotsam and force. As the house falls they leap and Nicole loses her grip, immediately Billy's guts rip as he feels her go and grasping for three long seconds only to have her Jacket as she slips away. Gone. Abandoning the board he fights toward where he last saw her but the violence is so intense that he feels himself posited against the fence unable to move... then the power recedes back toward the sea sucking everything with it but Billy who is wedged all twisted into the passion fruit vines and the metal fence, shoulder bag spun around a broken arm, clutching her jacket.

Almost lifeless he tries to extract himself from the fence, dazed, he senses the broken arm. In an instant his soul has ripped again, he now has a good reason to walk into the sea, to join Nicole and they can breathe water together, and be ghost fixtures on the North Shore, or legends of love or... just together.. He is almost free as another set of waves approach. He takes a step toward the sea when Baby, Blah James and John John headlock, hoist and leg tackle him toward the gate and the mud road where Nicole's car sits under the weak yellow light. Where Jake is propped on his crutches.

"Let me go let me go!!"

Naw bra Jake thought we better check on you." Baby says

"Billy bra we saw the whole thing. Bro." 6'4" Blah James say through tears, still holding Billy off the ground by the waist.

"You drink this or I'll shoot you" says John John offering a flask of fine Kentucky bourbon

... and all cry softly under the weak yellow street light as the second force of waves approach. Billy uncontrollably shattered by the weight of this moment, the boys in sympathy aching with the childlessness their life choices.

As they brace against the fence for the next slamming of white-water, straight out of the coming wall of force strides Nicole like some slightly drunk combat British soldier. She has a vice grip on the uprooted mango tree that saved her life. Sometimes it's like that, unbelievable, striding with a massive gash in her leg and eyes ablaze with willpower; returned, redeemed, regained, by a 'roots of steel' mango tree.

"Give me my jacket!"

CHAPTER 14

There is little gravity to a decision if it doesn't nod to those that have gone before and those yet to come.

The next few days are perfectly beautiful sunshine and gentle trade winds, but for the mist hanging in the air from the sea. Even though the swell was smaller than before it still seemed too big to fit the planet. The take-off spot where Billy had ridden the giant waves earlier in the season was closing out across the bay. This was the second reform after the first break, a left hander that honestly didn't fit the planet, pummelled a reef far offshore whiting the horizon before reforming to dump in one motion across the Bay ...

Days later Billy, arm in a cast, Nicole, bandaged leg, sit with Jake and his crutches in her Mercedes above the Bay.

"This is a good time to consider a change." Jake says

"Surfers of the future won't understand what these waves have done; not the wrecking our houses or the Super comps and the tourists. But it's like that pure surfing pure naiveté pure arrogant anonymous waterman vibe has been scoured from this island. It's not going to be bad really, just never the same again. I imagine Nikido would have quietly escaped."

"So I'd like to try Indonesia and anonymity." Jake offers a sad toothy smile,..." and you two guys, farming yourselves off to Maui and the 2nd string surf crew, probably have children who become famous artist and don't even surf... and you'll have this awkward awareness that makes your neighbors wonder, in envy."

And the two men look into each other's' eyes, "What about Julia Jake?"

"Billy, really we were best as a photo op couple. Neither one of us really wanted to give it all away, really commit, everything was easy but not the glue you guys have."

"Classic Jake! You actually are the prophetic Holy Goof" Billy smiles

Nicole says

"Mate you haven't got an anonymous bone in your body."

## Part three

## WEIRD BEER

## Going home

CHAPTER 1

Kites seem similar to rainbows, they know something we've forgotten... and can't see. Invisible power and majesty, like a stallion, handle-able but perhaps never truly tamed. It is an ancient symbol inviting an acquaintance with the personality of the elements. Lau Tsu flew kites.

The drive of the big kite strains the boat bow timber. Blood mixes with sweat from Jakes bald head, blurring and stinging. Celeste at the helm and Sadi has slipped to the bottom of the boat; arrows fly overhead. Jake expertly sines the kite for more speed but the boats of the villagers bare down, sails akimbo. The fastest broaching in front of Jake's outrigger blocking access to the Spirit Ladies fortress. All is lost, until Jake arrogantly loops his kite into a swooping dive that rips the archers from their boat destroying the kite but allowing Jake and companions to clamor into the Spirit Lady's fortress.

The machete wielding locals are afraid to go into her courtyard... And Jake is afraid to leave her beer cellar... The golden light from the dropping sun dances two miles across the wind scuffed lake; from the beer ashram to her castle.

He's thinking, 'What's up with these guys? It was an accident!'

Her rock wall fortress is three stories, thick limestone, and tall wooden windows with small glass panes. The humidity fussed light, like alcohol in a Martini, floods onto the hardwood floor of the beer cellar. Jake is slumped into a padded leather chair staring at her wall of beers like a cat in front of a birdcage.

Beer is an acquired taste, and pace. Over time you can taste it before you open the bottle and you manipulate the effect by controlling the pace; old age also controls pace.

Silently she stands in the doorway, three steps above the polished floor. It's a startling moment for Jake, like when someone touches you from behind while you are staring at one thing, dreaming of another, then shocked back into this world.

Her silver hair is falling thick and randomly onto the shoulders of her silk kimono. Eyes the nondescript color of diamonds sparkling above high cheek bones. She is slender yet curvy, almost nascent like the colt-ness of a 13 year old girl. "Crap you freaked me out!" he says as light floods in through the small metal cross hatched panes. She is barefoot and walks so silently Jake thinks 'she's floating and this Deja vu is all too weird'. The music would be Jefferson Starship doing a cover of "Wooden Ships".

Lingering on tip toes like an angel in an upward abyss, she pulls a litre bottle of beer from the wall rack. Her hands seem even older than she is, long and small boned, raised blue veins running over the dry landscape. "The limestone keeps you fairly cool" she says presumably to the bottle. Her eyes, like pale grey diamonds, fall once again on Jake, this bald 5'10" sinewy old rooster of a man; perpetually bloodshot green eyes, skin cracked like a tanned satchel and a manicure scruff with trim moustache.

She hands him the bottle. He opens it, lingers on the aroma; smells like Mexico and being 19, and instinctually he stares down the bottle neck.

To cover his shameless pausing on the potential epic story of her hands, he says,

"In the middle ages monasteries were the largest breweries. The monks used beer to fast. Records show up to five litres a day per monk." Then he just blurts out

"Are you really Osley? I mean San Francisco Osley? Government computer hacking Osley?

CHAPTER 2

...but at a place called the beginning...

Cresting out at 10,000 feet, on the rim of an East Indonesian crater, Jake and his guide Sadi pause atop the switchback trail. "Better email Craig" He says to the reclining Sadi.

Craig, the once anarchistic academic, known as "The Accountant" who cooked the books for the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, the Hawaiian Hui, and various rock groups is now redundantly atrophied to a fear of contact with the world; reduced to cyber-communication, donuts, coffee and cigarettes. He lives in his North Beach San Francisco apartment and only goes out for take away food and cigarettes. He has a huge savings account fed by e-book sales from his interpretation of Jakes outrageous adventures.

'... Craig, I've made it to the top of the crater. Below is the village and two mile diameter lake, the brewery is a round building in the middle of the stream. There is a domed mosque type building in the center of the village. To the left is the beer church, looking forward to that! The map is good but your building across the lake looks like a semi hidden fortress terracing down the crater wall; glass front facing west. Love these digital binoculars. Craig, on the map; what exactly does that phrase "Spirit lady's castle" mean?'

Craig, awakened by his email alarm is in front of his computer pouring coffee and eating donuts. His ashtray is overflowing with cigarette butts and his leather swivel chair is a bit ripped but remains a treasure that Jake bought him. About the room are signed posters of 60's and 70's rock groups along with letters of appreciation pinned up with thumb tacks. On a nearby table mail is stacked and overflowing. He is a balding long hair in a cardigan. He has four locks on his door. It's 3am in San Francisco.

Jake let me worry about the" Spirit lady". I've backed you up on all of your "calculated adventures" before. Leave the editing and research to me. This "publish as its happening" thing is only duplicated by CNN! (Maybe this is my last cigarette!) Get all your top priority research and decision making questions ready ahead of time and hit send at 4:00 GMT each day? I'll plot the next scene and give you some tools to pull it off. You just get down there and start making friends so we can e-book it ASAP. By the way we are killing it in e-book land. (Shit, spilled my coffee!)

You left Africa two weeks ago and the book launched the same day! Your bio got fifty thousand hits! Most people don't believe you're that old and that crazy, so I've linked bios on 50-80 year-old sportsman and adventurers; John Glenn types. Anyway this should be a two week, 300 page docudrama. I'll need photos of the Spirit Lady, learn how they brew the beer, what it tastes like, bios on the philosophy teacher, the brew master. Kite surf your rammed air kites, I'll pump you with tech. info regarding the weather etc. you just be larger than life to them . . . the stuff you do naturally (donuts, I love donuts) By the way what happened after you left Lombok? I'd booked a ferry from a clandestine government "Travel agent". Five days no communication. Not like you Jake.

Craig, 4 GMT is easy for you, 9AM in Frisco but its midnight here! Plus! Why did you make bookings with a Muslim ferryman who has a coughing one stroke canoe? It doesn't spill your coffee or make your donuts soggy, but when the motor dies in a Southeast Asian passage, and the channel serge is so strong that the ferryman freaks out in Indonesian like some New York taxi driver. Well hell man I had to fly the thirteen meter kite for two days straight while he prayed to every wrong god I've ever heard of. I would have throttled him with that Russian headlock Jay Robinson showed me but had to concentrate on getting the 19 meter kite up wind to the island. At least a 10,000 foot mountain gave me something to aim at, beautiful really. Where did you get my guide? An hour ago he walks straight off the cliff into a head wind, pops open his coat and like Mary Poppins, rights himself and just keep on prancing down the trail!

When we got to port I went to a bar, had a big thirst, and the Muslim guy, Sadi, was blessing the ground, oh did I tell you about the sharks?... ripped the liver out of one and ate it. I always wanted to do that. Anyway at the bar I offered him a beer which he graciously took though it's against his religion. Just so happens he spins around, sorta Big Bird doing Fred Astaire, and spills the beer into the food of some rad Javanese Muslims. They threatened to kick his ass, (religious rules tend to melt grace), so, he told them the story of flying the kite for two straight days, the shark, etc. They called him a liar.

(As if the hero guy can no longer be rich and white because of his decadent culture?) Anyway they threw him in the pig sty, or he tripped; so, I dropped the ring leader with an underarm spin but got kicked in the back by his mates and had to escape after only one beer! (Gang mentality has no honor in a fair fight.)

Hell no I didn't communicate with you! I bought a six pack, slept and organized for the hike up here. Sadi is my guide but he doesn't really know the way, where did you get this guy? Tell me more about the Spirit Lady, what is a Spirit Lady?

The info I've got says she's only been there for around 30 years.

Old chicks are scary Craig.

She's a few years younger than you pal.

"Like I said, old chicks are scary."

The locals, who generally settle arguments with machete, don't know where she came from but it appears the beer ashram leaders, that is the philosophy professor and the brew master, feel she was fated for many generations to arrive. She was about 24 and had silver hair. My best Intel tells me that the place balances between the beer, the philosophy and the spirit lady.... I need a picture and some more info on the Spirit lady. I have a theory. In the late 60's, when the only people who had computers were governments, or the stock market and huge number crunching business, there was a girl from Berkley who started up Navy programing and became the mastermind hacker. She'd go in fix the program, and hack the info. The chip had just replaced transistors... It was said that she was one of the other people besides Ken Kesey and Leary who was clinically testing LSD. We only knew of her as Osley but it was rumored that she had hacked all the FBI files, (J Edgar Hoovers private stuff!!), the CIA files, she fed the info slowly to the Black Panthers, Angela Davis, etc. she knew who killed Janice Joplin, Jimi, etc. and she saved Dylan's skin. She knew who shot Kennedy ... I mean Osley was this underground rumor that supposedly went to Viet Nam with enough dirt on Ho Chi Mien and his secret USA deals to expose the entire war as a hoax where both sides went wrong... By 1975 Osley just sort of became an outdated story that no one told anymore. Later I heard maybe she died in Cambodia, story is she hypnotized her captors....

Jake types, 'I heard about Osley, I just didn't know it was a person.'

Jake. I think I knew her. Send pictures. The possibility freaks me out... I need coffee, a donut and a cigarette...

OK Craig, Nobody in the mosque ... everyone at the beer church. Sadi and I will find lodging... then go to church. This place is great, a warren of buildings layered from the lake up the side of the crater wall. The streets are cobble stone paths just wide enough for walking side by side. This place has defiantly never seen a car.

CHAPTER 3

Returning from staring down the cavernous neck of a beer bottle, Jake is pulled back to a place called the present... the orange light of the setting sun washes across the hardwood floor. Osley sits on the stairs and Jake drapes over the leather swivel chair.

"No one has called me Osley for... Thirty years."

..."Really, no one has called me Osley for thirty years Jake."

"Well most of us never thought you really existed. The name just became synonymous with the Haight-Ashbury epicenter of hippie-dom. Purple Osley!'"

"That was the problem Jake. The whole thing was like fake spirituality, you chemically didn't feel 'of the world' but you weren't grounded either so every type of low level spiritual muck could mess with your chromosomes. Casualties Jake, how many casualties have you seen?"

Jake smiles into his beer bottle, thinking of all the alternate routes his life might have taken...

"Well I don't know if it was fake exactly, more like taking a look from your spirit but somehow squeezing it through Jimi Hendrix's amplifier."

"Right but from then on when a beautiful, fragrant and sincere spiritual experience happens your bare wires have been burnt by Hendrix's amp.... And you think, 'how could that be it, so subtle."

"Right Osley. We definitely need more beer."

"Osley was my Berkley pseudonym ... it just got out of hand." She shrugs broad shoulders.

Jake stretches across the leather chair, the sunlight filters to her ankles...calves... silk Kimono thighs, and he says

"I'm stunned that you really are you... and you look pretty good."

"You want to say for an old girl, but I'm still younger than you pal...we are just whatever we were; plus some."

And Jake is, for a change, not totally intimidated by this woman. Actually he feels 'at home'.

"Amazing." He says thinking about another time, Hawaii, another woman, a streak of sun, naked feet, and the call to adventure, a missed opportunity to make a stand... like the children Christ never had.

"We've never formally met have we Jake. I mean I knew of you as the "surf guy" who came up to San Francisco from southern California to dig the music; a friend pointed you out at Keystone Corners one night when McCoy Tyner was playing."

"Was that the night he had this Latino guy behind the amps doing insane rhythms with hoops of Master locks?"

"That was the night! You seemed, well, too cool. Like you went into the ladies room, charmed the girls and left with one of my friends! Southern California was crass even then". She smiles at her girlishness and gives Jake a beer opener, expressly noticing his gaze on her gnarled dry hands. He counters with,

"I've heard that "dis "about southern California before, but the surfers of the beat era were the pro genitors of "cool" there is no cool without those guys; that action existentialism and that antiestablishment style' is what the rest of the world is still trying to get a handle on. It was like Gertrude Stein's place but without trying to be somebody. I'm sure the underlying soul of post war California was the surfers; flamenco rhythms, blues, and jazz at sunset in a Malibu beach shack... and beer. Everyone who knew wanted a piece of it. Wild men aware of what to do with the acquittal granted when the allies won the Second World War; counter culture, light years from any space that could be judged crass." Jakes blurts out . 'Um alcohol starting' to pump in the veins now' he thinks

"Hum, you do have a brain. Never thought of it like that. Would you open another bottle?"

"Sure, but I think we'll need more than one bottle? The limestone keeps it cool, but I miss icy cold beer." Jake unconsciously pulls his cauliflower ear... the generic bottle cap pops free. He shoots his cheesy smile and a hailed bottle toast, theatrical, like he was in a Coke add, he inhales a third of the bottle.

Osley smiles at this macho presence in her quiet sanctuary. Thinking "why is this man here?' and she is somehow strengthened by being with some from her own culture. She asks

"So Jake we're basically the same age, but you come off like you're 19", she pulls her hair into a ponytail and speaks at the light coming in through the window, "is that some type of delayed retard or what?.... Yes ice would be nice."

"Look Osley that's another mystery of life I haven't figured out. Like at what age are you supposed to mystically quite digging rock and roll and only listening to talk radio? What's the deal with that?"

"Well, that is a mystery. I mean we're coming from the same culture but neither one of us are time warped hippies. We moved on." she takes the bottle from him and drinks an honorable share.

He says, "You hid out and I kept moving." ..., "Hiding out is the weird bit."

"The CIA was out to kill me Jake but you, you're one of the last hold outs, still running from responsibility. Sort of being a live cartoon character. " She says wiping a drip from the corner of her lips. "I've read some of that outlandish 'Lone Ranger' drivel Craig Naughton writes about you.

"Really?" Jake says slightly flattered, "Look, well maybe, in one sense that's true but, at least I'm not Homer Simpson, well not always, I'm not posing at being something I'm not, a responsible guy, build a life, wife and kids around the hidden fear that I don't have what it takes, feeling that a solid mature man rarely exist. It's only variations of the pose. Like the dream that I think all men have, the one that for me went like this; I'm in a fight and scared shitless but I'm on top of the guy and punching for all I'm worth only my blows are weak and my hands are like limp rags ... I think every man has some sort of dream like that; ineffectual, not up to the task. It's just seems some guys go ahead and fake it anyway."

"You think most men have that stuck somewhere in their head?"

Ya. Most "first world" guys see the matrix but in some subconscious self-talk convince themselves they are powerless to get out of it. Not all, some guys still saunter to their own music in the middle of society's script. Those guys I dig, a few friends got it right, like Billy, and Craig in his own way, but that's another story. Me well, I just never could do that, so I keep moving and emailing Craig who e-books it so I can ... just keep moving."

Osley smiles breathing in his honesty.

CHAPTER 4

Prior however...down in the village beside the crater lake.

The musty smelling beer church is on a hill next to the philosophy teacher's classroom. There is a pulpit type bar and all the guys are quietly sipping brew and listening to the organ player. Jake is thinking, 'got to love a church that smells like beer',

"Hello, anyone speak English in here? Can I buy a beer?" Jake flashes his toothy Canadian Mounties smile; excellent dentistry.

A young woman with a smile of intelligent innocence, an Asian oxymoron, turns toward Jake; bright brown face, black eyes, bare feet. He senses once again the feeling of being invisible, it's as if young women recognize instinctually that you are beyond breeding, for Jake it's always disconcerting and yet of late comforting. She has an obvious limp but moves smooth, graceful, a rhythm of her own. She speaks through him to Sadi. "Greetings, my name is Celeste and yes English is fine." She smells of flowers, and Jake enjoys Sadi's shy glow as she says "the beer is our gift to you but if you would like you can put some money in the tray at the door."

"OK. I'll have a pint." Jake's moustache twitches as he surveys the scene for bad vibes and escape routes. He and Sadi sit in the back row with a safe corner just behind. Celeste brings a glass of throat clearing amber fluid.

"Delicious!" he says "I like that subtle anise finish."

"There are many alternative to bitter hops, ours has a light anise flavor. Would you sign our guest book Mr...?"

"Martin, Jake Martin... Adventure journalist." the Canadian Mounties smile which did cost a fortune in cosmetic dentistry. "Where would you like my autograph?"

"Well Mr. Martin just printing below the previous entry will do. Name, age, address and a phrase on what brought you into our valley."

"I'm hoping to do a piece on the beer." and he thinks she is soft, pleasant and yet business like. Reminding himself that some women just consciously remain thirteen in their head; vexing.

Sadi steps in asking in Bahasa "Excuse me Celeste; can I buy you a beer?"

"Oh I really don't drink much; occasionally for ceremonies of course. Would you like one Mr.?"

"Call me Sadi, I had my first beer yesterday and I think now is a good occasion for another." Sadi smiles

Jake asks, "... and perhaps you could tell me why these guys are so serious looking."

"Well hospitality is one of our trademarks but we see so few outsiders we may seem more of an exclusive club." she smiles wryly.

"The rest of these folks wouldn't convince me of hospitality." Noticing painted on smiles saying 'Hi, keep a distance'.

The beer is smooth and has that light aniseed aroma Jake pulls out a silver flask he carries in his nap sack. Quietly he pours whiskey into his beer.

"Mr. Martin, it's virtually sacrilegious to alter the beer flavor."

Why, isn't beer for enjoying?"

"I say again rejoice!" Sadi says.

"Yes but our brew has been passed down from brew master to brew master for centuries! The first brew master, Petra, created the formula and no one has deviated from it since... What is it that you poured in?"

"Here, have a smell" rather delicately she pulls the silver opening to her nose.

"Good heavens!" as her head snaps back, "it's like a spicy sweet bite of wood."

"The finest Kentucky bourbon ..." breathing in her youthful flowery scent though she seems more like a daughter. "I imagine it's culturally uncool to put some in your beer?"

"Oh yes, virtually a sin... can I try a sip of yours?"

"My pleasure."

Now Jake senses that the men in the nearby pew are getting a bit agitated and uncomfortable at his non-conforming beer enhancing style.

"Gentlemen" He says, as Sadi begins rather naturally to interpret, "a little change of tune for you too?" Jake waves the flask under their noses at which they recoil back and slide further away. "I guess not." Turning back to Celeste who has nearly finished his heartily spiked beer. She is loosening her hair while pulling up into a crossed leg position on the pew next to Sadi. The parishioners are now visibly agitated by Jake's non conformity.

"Jake, it appears your beer is nearly finished" he notices she lisps a bit "I'll go up to the new brew master, his father just retired, and get you another." She glides up the aisle, her limp is rhythmic, mesmerized. At the keg pulpit a pompous, skinny young man with slicked back hair stares down at her benevolently. There is a muffled argument between Celeste and the brew master before Celeste finally returns with a beer for Jake.

"Thanks, was that any trouble?"

Well, that young dilettante has lost his hospitality and tolerance, and he thinks you may have defiled 'his' beer. Which of course is Petra's beer and he's just the worker bee. He really irritates me!"

"Why"

"I'm betrothed to marry him. I think for the last four generations. I've been trying to get out of it since we were children. Once on the switchback trail we kids were throwing sticks at the Spirit Lady, Simeon, the dilettante, tries to taunt her but like a skinny tiger she spins on here heels engulfs us with a look that seemed to make her eyes turn into one big eye that sort of swallowed us in an ocean of emotion we were too young to swim in... and Simeon fell off the cliff but grabbed my left leg pulling me over too, except the Spirit lady grabbed my shoulders. We pulled Simeon up but my leg never healed exactly right.

You see my father, and my fathers' ancestors, are the philosophy teachers and Simeon's family are brew master, and well it is just fate I guess, nothing can be done."

"Fate is gutless." Jake muses, got to meet this spirit lady?

Celeste takes another swig of Jake's spiked brew only this time it is in a mock toast at the young brew master, whose cheeks bulge visibly red. Awkwardly the youth bolts away from the men he has been speaking with, who hastily follow him down the aisle toward Jake and Celeste. Like an old cat Jake leaps to his pre-arranged corner as Sadi and Celeste look on.

"Hey Pal, don't get worked up about beer quality; all beer is good, some better than others, but basically good for the soul. We're all on the same team here."

Stepping forward the brew master counters with, as Sadi interprets Jake and Celeste interprets Simeon

"Beer is a delicate science that has millenniums of creative design. 5000 years ago Sumerians ..."

Jake interrupts "Dude... not 5000 years ago, at least 9000 years ago." Jake smirks

"Excuse me but there is no record of beer before the goddess of beer, Ninkasi of Samaria."

"Naw man beer is a mistake that some sloppy Neolithic housewife lucked into when she just kept splashing germinated grain bits into the gourd next to the chopping block...I'm sure beer evolved way before bread."

"You imbecile! Beer is a sacred art!" Simeon is flushing red and inching forward, Celeste and Sadi are counter interpreting

"Dude back to the chopping block" Jake is baiting him. "Dig, the mash dried out, she spilled hot water on it, she drained it thinking she could feed the hubby the malted mash: yeast was everywhere like semi domesticated dogs, sweaty armpits and as if trying to pluck an apple from an orange tree, voilà! Brew, beersky, cervesa bro. It fermented. Sugar into alcohol, simple."

"Beer is not simple!" Simeon's voice cracks and strains,

"Dude your head's going to blow up. Look it was like this, the enlightened Cro-Magnon comes home, she's got nothing ready so she give him this cold gourd soup, he sits on the couch and the rest is history."

Visually incredulous the young brew master clenches his fists and blurts out,

"You sir are discrediting the art of brewing!"

"Beer is like democracy man, it is not to be fine art, and it is the common denominator of evolved society. Beer is not exquisite, it's a right, like voting. When the president drinks a beer everyone thinks he's a normal guy, one who might walk into a pub and fit in. Get it?"

The youth has long delicate hands that are shaking, and he jerkily speaks and reaches forward. Before Sadi can interpret Jake instinctually captures the arm, pulls into a pump arm-lock then twists into a shoulder throw cleanly landing Simeon into the arms of his followers. Smiling to Celeste and Sadi Jake dryly says "That was fate, Jake style." As he readies for another attack Celeste kicks him in the back.

"Hey I'm protecting your independence from this dude!"

He was extending our hospitality hand shake!" She is chuckling, he knows she is chuckling.

Jake tries to extend a hand and apologize but the young man is haughtily over reacting, and no one is interpreting so he throws his chin in the air and returns dramatically to his keg of beer.

"Does this mean the party's over?" Jake smiles at Celeste.

"I think your beer supply is finished. You guys follow me out of here, I'll save a bit of my reputation, and I can get us more beer."

"Excellent... but I sorta feel bad about popping Simeon's beer bubble. And I wanted to get a job in the brewery." Jake shrugs

Speaking to Jake and smiling to Sadi she says, "I can probably help you guys there."

CHAPTER 5

With the etiquette of cheek kisses Jake and Osley drink from the second bottle.

Jake speaks into its musky silence

"I heard you hacked into all the government computers, they had the only ones in the sixties and early seventies didn't they?"

"There was useful stuff in big corporation computers too. About the time "the chip" took over from tubes UCLA and the government war machine developed a pre internet net called ARPA. We were connected with UCSB, where I heard about you actually. It was like being from another planet if you had one of Engleberts mouses and a floppy system in '68 you ruled a world only a very few knew even existed. So few people knew what we were on about, like having something so terribly valuable but only a few knew it was valuable. I could hack anything with a chip. We knew on a grander scale that knowledge was power". She speaks with an air of pride.

"I heard you had the goods on J.Edgar, knew who got Kennedy, Janice, Jimi, everything?"

"Look where it got me." She says shaking her thick silver hair out over the shoulders of the kimono.

"Yes and for that the CIA killed me. I hope they think they got me. It was just over the Viet Nam border in Cambodia. I was there when Ho Chi Min was meeting Jane Fonda. Anyway I was wanted for the hacking business. Somehow I got separated from Jane's group and found myself surrounded by white guys with blackened faces who had M-16's on me; two had Ak47's. They tied my hands with hessian rope and sent me with the two crazy eyed Ak47 GI's in to the jungle; I thought I was done. But the absolute nutter of a reptilian commander steps into the clearing, tells me he's a fan of Osley, but, ordered to finish me and make it look like the VC shot me. So he points a finger gun at me, says "poof" and tells me to change cloths with a stiff and disappear forever, No second chances. And I believed him... He put me in a boat going down river, didn't get those ropes off for days. He shot pictures of the dead body and told them it was me.

I eventually landed here. Fated, but fate had nothing to do with it.

"I believe that. Life is weirder than fiction". Jake stares into his beer bottle thinking her story is grander than anything he's ever done but, she can never tell it.

CHAPTER 6

Sunset colors from the brewery apartment Sadi has rented. Jake pops his laptop open on the thinning orange carpet; he faces out the open door to the brewery and lake beyond. Sadi is hovering about constantly reading over Jakes shoulder...

So Craig I waved 'hi' to the Spirit Lady today on my way to the beer church after working in the brewery, free beer, she smiled and it was ...warm? When I got back from the beer ashram I slept...

Weirdest dream...The mirrored domed Palace had a Vatican type window at the top. The reflection pond was only three inches deep yet the fish seemed huge, there were three reflections: mine, Celeste, who has a limp so pronounced it melts your heart because she doesn't even notice it, and Sadi, my bumbling guide who constantly has chaos swirling around him like lazy flies.

In the dream she was sitting on a huge white pillow next to one of the mirrored walls. Her silver hair was plated and her deep blue eyes seemed to pull us onto three pre-arranged orange pillows. It's like we had a conversation but I'm not sure we used words? It was like we asked "why"? And she let us know that it was "appropriate".

So we're sitting there and I start to feel like when I was a kid where I'd get light; mentally and physically; expanding and had to hold on to my chair.

In the dream all four of us looked washed out from the light streaming in through the ceiling, and we were getting elongated. The Spirit lady looked like a Modigliani painting. Then she rose like a waft of cigarette smoke, just slowly swirling and rising toward the stream of light from above. Which freaked me out so much I went to run for the door but couldn't get up, like I was sleeping.

Looking up she's communicating "it's OK, its Ok" and it was her manner of motion, the rising of the smoke, that was the language... and it said "dance with me" so the three of us just pushed off our pillows and rose up twisting and pirouetting toward the ceiling. Celeste, toward the syncopated pulse of Sadi who's hands kept flying in opposite directions before she went laterally to him giving his hands someone to wrap around.

I rose toward the spirit ladies blue eyes. My hands independent in flight yet connected to me by my style, my dance, and I remembered every wave I'd ridden that was just for me.

So Craig in the dream the Spirit Lady and I power danced; sensual not sexual, meaningful and mutual, and it was like she'd been waiting such a long time to have someone to dance with, does that make sense?

Anyway, like a Spanish dancer edited through a morphing program she became a roiling grey smoke black-horizon Wiamea wave and I wanted to ride. I scratched over the first monster meringue wave, fear stinging my skin. Breathless yet still dancing.

The smoke bounced off the mirrored walls creating like a rogue wave from a distant storm, like a stone dropped in the pond of life. And I wanted it. With my hawk like hands I paddled into that swell and the grey meringue smoke threw into a textured tube, my cheek against the wall, spiritual... or something. Is it our spirit that dares us to dance so close?

Crouching into her light refracting tube, scraping the wall I leaned against the smoke with its Van Gough-ish texture knowing the Spirit is head dip close, and all I can see is a splash of sunlight at the mirror far below. Going so fast that I couldn't avoid splattering myself on the mirror... but I didn't. Velocity.

I simply passed through and pulled out on my pillow in the cool dimension of the mirror, gasping for breath, and thinking I'm going to have a heart attack for sure as the Spirit lady morphed back onto her pillow.

So I'm sitting there out of breath thinking 'heart attack' and knowing for a damned certain that we are on the wrong side of the mirror. Well she reaches over and gives me a glass of beer! I don't take my eyes off the mirror until I taste the beer; tasted good, reminded me of being sixteen in Mexico and confident; my genetic codes and memories stabilize behind the taste of the beer... It's like that.

Well, then she leans over and touches my arm, clicks our beer bottles and tells me about a beautiful prostitute who was sensuously carried by the master monk across the river; hours further the younger apprentice monk bursts out with ethical unbelief at the masters motives. He simply says "I left her at the river" and walks on.

For that instant the spirit lady was like some platinum blond you meet at a party, the kind that unconsciously says something that changes your life.

... Then I woke up. What do you think Craig?

Very weird Jake, you better take another look at the beer recipe, do they use mushrooms?

CHAPTER 7

There had been such a long pause while Jake fell into that rabbit hole. Finally he says to Osley,

"Fate fills the gap when we forget free will.,, How did the computing, acid, San Francisco thing come together?" she'd forgotten where the conversation was....

"Right? So Stanford taught me programming. I was hanging around with Englebart and the interactive computing guys at Stanford Research Institute, those guys were 'out-there', the "collective IQ" concept of solving the earths' problems with computers. Imagine visualizing the future of computers yet no one spoke the language. The wrong powers had the big computers, and hacking seemed the liberating thing to do. In those days San Francisco was the center of computing and there was Kesey and the LSD stuff... and music at the Phillimore after hours of computer crunching, no sleep... I think no sleep makes your hair go silver." She says like some college co-ed.

"Right. And the speed." Jake says enjoying the oxymoron that is Osley's trim 58 year old body; silver hair but strong thin arms, and perky round breast.

"Gee I'm thirsty. Always get thirsty when I'm nervous... or threatened... " He says, to shake her breasts out of his head.

"Do you get nervous a lot Jake?"

"Not really, but I feel threatened plenty."

Jake suddenly realizes he's fully enjoying the company of a women his own age. Half speaking to himself, half into the bottle, he says, 'Being with you is rather weird, and you got to be weird if you've evaded the FBI and CIA for thirty years... ...but, I feel comfortable, like 'time out', like we are friends, maybe lovers." He says with a smile that lets his face sag to the honesty of a 63 year old ... She sees it and relaxes into empathy.

"Maybe. I think it is willpower and time that young people miss about love. Love is also the courage to just hang in there because you have faith in the time ahead... and love is also bitter sweet knowledge. Just having the spirits and bodies connect doesn't make love solid, doesn't add to your heart does it Jake?"

Jake scratches his head realizing her unfortunate platonic meaning...

She continues as Jake sucks his litre bottle dry,

" and I think when you're young you don't even know what your 'heart' is, maybe you have an idea about your soul, your inner self, but most think their heart is just emotions..." wondering if he gets it.

"Yah, the heart is the center of the watermelon; the good part of your soul"

Right, sort of. I think it is the pure part of your soul mixed with the instinct of your spirit; and it grows with time. It expands as you learn to extract the good of even the bitterest of situations."

Like getting a grip on where Blues music is coming from..."

"Like drowning in Edith Piaf's world or the depth of Irish poetry."

"Right." Jake grabs another bottle form the wall

"It's even embracing melancholy which seeps into and expands your heart... Mix this with all the joys of life and over time you have a grand heart that can love big."

"Sorrow expands your heart but it takes time to look back and recognize it?"

Like sadly/joyfully remembering a long dead friend." There is no smile on his face

"Don't get weird Jake"

She continues,

"We could make love now and it would be complete like a circle on a piece of paper; perfect yet still two dimensional."

"Have you got a plan?"

"No plan and No time. So, let's just assume we did it and enjoy the best part... when you could share a bottle of beer without glasses or pretence.

I never even think about sex, and you are too old aren't you?"

"No! I do think about it, but maybe the blind impetus is fading." and Jake suddenly feels vulnerable, she knows that his adventure heroics have really been running away from responsibility and keeping his options so open that now there is no closing... "Right." He says to change the dialogue in his head about what life would be like to live with this women, to be close friends... and he's thinking he really is over women that could be his daughter.

He takes the bottle from her and his smile turns business like. "Do you think those guys with the machetes will come in here after me?"

"No. They won't enter my courtyard... but they will keep guard outside for as long as it takes."

"Takes to do what?"

"They are eye for eye types around here and you did insult their time warn rituals, devalue fate, and ruin a month worth of beer."...

Handing her the bottle, "Do I have to fight these guys?"

"Flight seems wiser"

"How?"

"There is a natural staircase up the lava crevasse behind this place. It goes to a flat plateau on the crater rim. There is a considerable up draft." She hands over the bottle and waits for Jake to fill in the conclusion.

"... 19 meter rammed air kite, 10,000 feet to the tropics below... What are the odds?"

"All things considered, maybe as good as 50/50."

"Don't you think we should make love before I do this?"

"No... you don't have the time to do it justice." As she takes the bottle back.

"True." He's thinking 'not true'.

CHAPTER 8

So Craig, while everyone is locking doors and washing up I'll tell ya what happened...

... Let's see, a kite can be very fast off the wind and off the wind was heading straight to the Spirit Ladies mini brick palace in the forest. Celeste steered her outrigger, I threw the sixteen meter kite up and drove it for all it was worth, and Sadi once again prayed to every wrong god I'd ever heard of. It is amazing how an animistic gentle people can lust for your blood on they're machete. One little mistake really.

Can you believe a guy like the brew master, who lives on the edge of a lake mind you, can't swim? I mean not even enough to get out of a vat of beer! Amazing really but no one noticed because we were laughing so hard. I mean here he was posturing about like Ichabod Crane, trying to get me to do some ridiculous ceremonial gig so he could demonstrate his dominance over me, the lowly brewery worker. All this because the young girl Celeste was there with her first year philosophy/beer drinking class. So when I refused to go along with his antics he went into some sort of Kung Fu, arms waving, feet raising gyration. I mean I knew I had to drop him. Simply faked a foot sweep, hooked him up, winked at Celeste and drilled him into the vat with a Russian headlock. As I was taking bows he drowned. This became a problem for the villagers on two fronts. One, reliance on the fate and generational linage thing regarding the Brew Master and Celeste sort of drowned, and two, I had ruined this months' beer.

There is no such thing as nice guys with knives. So now I'm sitting in the Spirit Lady's beer cellar realizing the knife guys will not go away. More later,

Jake

CHAPTER 9

There is a howling updraft at the crest, Sadi puts weight on the leach of the 19 meter foil kite. Celeste says, "Jake, this is insane that kite is for kite SURFING not jumping off mountains!"

"No Worries darling, back in '72 on Maui we were jumping off Haleakala with Dick Eiper on his puny rigs, believe me this'll be a cake walk."

Celeste and Osley stand beside the two men. The sun is rising brilliant orange from the chilling crystal clear 10,000 foot precipice. The clouds below are like meringues and the horizon beyond reveals the subtle curve of the earth. The four stand like tourists. Jake gives launching instructions to Sadi who suddenly interrupts.

"Jake mon. I must tell you that the CIA contracted me to bring back Osley. They want her bad." Sheepishly he looks toward Osley. Celeste slaps him in the back of the head. Saying,

"This is not fated! The spirit lady is meant to mentor me!"

A strange sincerity comes over Jake when he says, "Don't be a dumb shit Sadi! This is a chance to make a stand! Sometimes you only get one in a lifetime. Don't blow it. Stay here, learn to brew beer, raise children... and keep your mouth shut. Osley died 30 years ago, and that's that!"

Osley looks at Jake then gives him a real kiss,

"I think I'm tired Jake. Maybe it is fate but one thing for sure the guys with knives are coming up the trail. Are you ready?"

Future flashes are faster than lightning... and Jake takes less than a second to walk through the vision that just ripped through his head.

He and Osley quietly drinking beer with ice at an open air tropical bar. And the glue between them is peace and friendship.

"Cake walk darling'. Hey girls," he grabs them both by the waste and half lifts them off the ground, "fate is a weak shadow left in substitute when we neglect free will. Dig!"

"Jake, I'll miss you a lot." She grabs his hand

"No you won't."

And in one motion he drops them, launches his kite, grabs Osley with a figure four leg lock and together they fly off the rim of the crater into the grey meringue clouds below.

## The End

Thank you for reading this bit of fiction. I'm glad to have finished it as sometimes the consuming adventure of life gets in the way, so when you can, .....Walk on Water.

Thanks Again,

John Geyer

## "Jungle Eyes"

## A poem C1972 -

Perhaps it was only a moment ago that we dropped into that last wave...

Paddling full intensity, furious to enter, Jungle man about to be electrified

Forcing down eight foot glass, ahead three hundred yards of hissing liquid threatening to fold all the way

At the bottom of the beginning,

Lean ape body on the a fiberglass bar of soap, arms extended, playful

Like the first ape touched by God, favored, all emotions fused into one emotion; serpentless.

Each wave the first wave and always the first man inside. Fused spirit mind and soul peer down this wall of arching emerald green liquid. Ride.

The body is fluid stardust and a jungle man flows into a turn that carves new lines upon a glistening surface...

We began this journey, the first turn, I was given strength by you, who I don't really know, have been forever, who whispers what I feel, that jungle eyes are a window and jungle men can see constantly through either side...

It is like that as we squeeze upward toward that lisping slippery lip releasing control that we never had. Squatting in the orangutan pose

It pours overhead as we press cheek against the wall. Jungle eyes upon the oblong, skipping on the wind chops, clawing on the stress lines, see it in the free mind, guts against the wall...

They were your guts, you put them in my stomach; they are guts, organs, emotional train stations.

I would have thought of you but you beat me to it. We rode there wishing to be born...

Slicing rigidly to the top to be kissed about the waist, by a lisping slippery smile from a frothy time in space, free, the bird mind spoke its wisdom as we glared with jungle eyes glazed and amber at the skies, glazed and amber.

It was an instant of reflection as we carried your cross to that last section... that of course will never end...

## The last match

## Of an Old Athlete

When knowledge about your opponent becomes a thought process, where you can intellectualize what should be instinctual, you are an old athlete. This is not an enviable position.

During the course of battle, when your mind can visit five to seven attack options like they were old friends, yet your body isn't inclined to deliver any, you are passing from warrior to philosopher. During the battle this is not an enviable position.

There is a spirit that wanders around inside a man called youth. In Jakes case it should never have been given control of the pen that signed him up for the wrestling championship. Smart old men lay down until the feeling goes away.

Bearded balding and committed Jake slipped into his sweat stained $300 pair of Nike's once again.

Running is passive, almost Camus -ishly existentially absurd. Jake watched his body lose weight, and with curious eyes Jake sensed the muscles between his ribs strengthen again, like armor. In his mirror the wild animal smiled back as the old man scrutinized the bearded body that had tightened once again, almost ludicrously, into what appears to be an efficient wrestling machine.

FIRST PERIOD

When the match began Jake immediately shot a single leg attack. A simple hand fake to the right ear, attack the left leg. It was not to take the young blond challenger down as much as to waken every fiber into the hyper awareness of combat. This was it, the finals of the tournament and Jake needed to sense through the skin and sinew how much the youth believed in himself; was he aggressive and prone to over commitment? In the intensity of man to man combat you sense his cunning, calculate his will, and smell his essence or his fear. This information is instinctual knowledge communicated by touch. You've got to know where he's coming from to head him off at the pass. A match starts inches apart... and quickly gets a lot closer; flaring sinew, grab hold, release, give space take space, all in the whirling psychic chess game , moves and counter moves, calculated as much by the will and soul as the intellect.

Wrestling is not a spectator sport; most of what's happening is invisible, or barely visible, as if the combatants are in a dimension similar to that inhabited by warring angles in an upward abyss.

The young opponent countered Jakes single leg attach by hooking an arm and dropping his weight. The mat was red and they parted momentarily. Jake attacked again, a high thigh double leg but with startling speed the youth snapped both hands under Jakes chin, pried, somehow willing his body weight into his yellow wrestling shoes. Jake's grip on the thighs strain and slip, the moment thins and Jake begins to hear the cheers and sighs of the crowd. Heart pounding, breath labored, the match has just begun.

Running is cheered on by the genetic memory, joyously coded "The Primal Run". Mankind exists because it can escape; "flight". However, on the "fight" side of that coin is preservation by making a stand; plus it's fun, like putting a candle out with your fingers, like swallowing fear and making it energy. Fight is a laugh with consequences, with elements of "to the death".

Bouncing back Jake searches the young eyes for the hint of self-doubt to drive his wedge of dominance into. Your opponents doubt can leak and become your confidence. The young eyes are steady, he is bouncing on the red mat; shining sinew and sweat. They engage in the subtle game of hand fighting and reality thickens again. Swirling wrists and slipping grips accelerate an epic flow of dominance gained and dashed; split seconds of spinning wrists, instinctual pawn pushing, intensity that no spectator could see. The young hands are fast and accurate so Jake drags his opponent by to break the hypnotic moment.

The Gabrialino Indians that ran through Grand Canyon knew running was a means to 'being there'. When running the mind and spirit can smile as old friends, one not out-balancing the other. Sense everything; smells, sights, sounds. Sensing your guts are internal emotional train stations, pounding heart in rhythm with breath, every breath a catalyst for the tightening in the system. Every step kisses the ground like a barefoot Indian. Running, dancing, mixing the chemistry of 'being there'.

In the final moments of the first period Jake knew he was losing the single leg attack. He thought "screw it" and pumped all the energy he had into a body lock. It was not classic, not like the Persians taught us 4000 year ago, too high on the chest for a clean throw but he managed to squeeze and bully the challenger to the mat for a score.

Hallucinating white spots Jake walked to his corner. One minute to get the heart rate back down, cool the body temperature, and gather back the almost vicious desire for victory; a Nietzsche space beyond good and evil, a hyper dimension that two men agree to inhabit, like stepping onto a soft red plane of existence, the mat, or a cage where time is compressed, where six minutes borders eternity, like going on a twenty year space journey only to return to earth six minutes later searching your pockets for identification. "Who was that guy and why would you do that?" Jakes bloodshot eyeballs almost hurt as they pulsated from the pounding blood. "Fifteen seconds." The referee shouts as he calls them back to the center of the mat. In that instant Jake turns his head to see the open double doors of the gymnasium where a sun struck green grass day is smiling at him and he can almost taste the cold beer at the nearby beer garden. Then wham he's called back in the center of the mat, back in the intensity, back to the proverbial "Gymnasium". It smells of the tears, mortal fears, and the flavor of all past victory and defeat.

SECOND PERIOD

The young guy is standing in the middle of the mat bouncing with anticipation.

Run and don't eat, that's how to "make weight". The enlightenment from depravity takes away the hunger, as if your spirit is actually electricity in a vacuum, as your body shrinks the spirit brightens toward release.

Jake was pushed back by the challenges swift attack that captured a leg, he had no choice but to turn and make a diving retreat toward the edge of the mat. In doing so the blond attacker lost his grasp and Jakes heel grazed the challengers chin. Immediately he attacked again regaining his grip on the leg and trapping Jake close to the edge of the red mat.

The mat or rugs or fine dirt or a grass field is the universal space for primal cunning and high speed physical chess. It is universal and unchanged in essence since men quit fighting to the death and opted for unequivocal dominance. An honorable agreement to go into a battle that is as much will, soul and spirit as physical. In that arena the mat is the only reality of the moment, passing beyond the edge of the mat is a shocking rebirth into the world of humanity.

Jake had no choice but to force back toward the center. Escaping off the edge is not in the rules. Not only did Jakes' attempted counter attack fail, but the challenger was so strong that he crunched down and caught Jake on his back, that vulnerable wrestling position synonymous with death. Stuck there on his shoulder and head. The challenger has one arm across his ribcage and the other trapping Jakes elevated arm and shoulder. Arching on his head to avoid the checkmate of being pinned, Jake's eyes scanned from the timer who is standing to shortly end the period, to the overhead lights, to the open gym door and the grass beyond, and beer garden dreaming. Jake is truly saved by the bell.

Running has most of its creative component experienced in the labyrinth of the mind. Wrestling on the other hand realizes a good deal of its creativity in a physical world. Wrestling necessitates "being there"; focusing all on the moment and dealing with rapid fire events in linear time. Running on the other hand realizes a rather egoless opening up to "it all". Running has less spiritual angst than the gymnasium. The paradox being that you need to run to wrestle well. All the power in the world is useless without cardiovascular endurance.

THIRD PERIOD

Pulled from the beer garden dream of the doorway, Jake walks to the center of the mat, not revealing the gut feeling that defeat is clawing on his back like a demon.

The challenger is strong, quick and surged with the symbolic sent of the kill. Jakes senses it, like watching your son rise above your expectations; not envious but rather curious. His mind no longer expects to win, "but damn I want to score with creative string!" When the challenger again got his leg the whirling mind of the old boy created a trap. He dove for the edge again knowing that this time the young challenger would hold tight to his ankle. Just at the edge, with the challenger clutching the foot to his chest and pulling back toward the center of the mat, the old man almost stood on his head as he snaked back and grabbed his attackers ankle! Then with no more strength than drawing a bow, Jake pushed him off balance by forcing against his chest with the trapped foot and pulling up the ankle. For a very long moment Jake stood on the challenger's chest and bore his eyes into the blond head. Lightning melted reality. The beard was gone, the blond head was gone, and a youthful energy was forced to the horizon of incredulity. For three seconds, or was it thirty minutes, the old man held the sceptre.

Running is like rain in the ocean.

For an instant, before the young man's reality surged back, the old champion had succeeded in "being there".

The air cleared of oos and ahhhs, the young man's arm was raised in victory and with a rather liberated smile Jake walked for the last time from the red mat to the colors of the open door.

### THE END

## IT WAS THE STAR

Hole in the sky to pure energy

And I followed it with the wind in my sails

It looked down upon me, yet

Across dark water we were eye to eye

It was the reason

So pure and unchanging

A piece of a friend

To follow

I loved it from my screaming throat

With the wind across the water, in our sails

About my body

Everything passing by us boat my boat

Just aiming for the light

And the gusts of wind would heel us

Ocean kiss you on the ribs

Smile at the familiar sound

Then the rush and the beauty and the glide

With the tiller

Weather helm thank you, lean back

Keep me right on the light

Ah hole in the sky gave meaning to the darkness all around

## JEALOUS ANGELS

The faded print rug could tell as well

Candle light body firm with energy

Fingers, theirs hers mine ours

The fingers rode the wave

Our thought swallowing personal thought

Deeply ours

Kissing fingers swallow energy

Which has a voice that screams 'last forever!"

Lightning bolts bursting to escape the bodies

Dreams resurrected

Like the ocean open and seemingly endless

A "we" dissolving into undistinguishable parts

Observing from the ceiling, jealous angles

We all drank from ancient bone china tea cups

Delicious! Rings through the room

Acapella

### About the author:

### This day of writing I am 69 year old, I've been surfing, Wind surfing and kite surfing for 60 of those 69 years. I grew up in Waikiki in the 50's, did high school and university in California, joined the Maui National Guard in '68. I moved back to California in 1980, travelled the planet as a competitor and journalist for Wind Surf Magazine... and now I live in Perth Western Australia, amazingly blessed by the love of my life, my wife Donna and my children.

### I only feel old when I look in the mirror or after some particularly fierce wipe out from surfing or kite surfing.

### I surf Indonesia as often as I can, don't train wrestling anymore, but dream about it.

### Aloha,

### John G
