"Sickness"  

by Rick Deitch

     The sickness had caused me to be holed up here for a couple of days now, just staring at a straight high candle across the room. I had missed the latest swell due to my fever, and was now more than anything just plain bored. When you’re supposed to be resting, it is the hardest thing to do. I had rifled through just about all the reading material I had stored up, including surf magazines, picture books full of waves, and even short stories focused on surfing. I batted my open palm against the side of my head and wondered what I had become. Is there nothing else out there that interested me? Well, granted I was a bit immobilized, but there must be something else to focus on while my constitution slowly seeped back into my body. 

    That’s when I took up staring at the candle. It had been just sitting there all this time, unlit of course in the middle of the day with a book of matches resting by its side. I struck one up and lit the wick. After that, the flame grabbed me. I must have bored a hole in its side just looking at its wavering musical dance. At first, it was nothing more than a fire atop a shaped pillar of wax. It was beautiful, no doubt but just kind of ordinary in the sense that it’s something we’ve all seen countless times before. I watched it nevertheless because it just seemed to make me feel good. I don’t know if the fever had anything to do with it, but…I couldn’t look away…didn’t want to. The more I stared at the flame, the more I became enamored by its motion. It reminded me of the way the ocean moves on a calm day, with light winds. There was only a very slight breeze inside the room due to the open window. Crisp, late summer/early autumn air moved in and stirred the open spaces of the room. It left occasional, alternating pockets of cool air dispersed amidst the balance of the warm and hinted…whispered of the coming season and the cold. I liked it, for it meant less crowded lineups and perhaps more consistent surf, but for now I was still stuck here in a waterless room too many steps from the beach waiting for something to return to me. 

    There was still the candle. There was only the candle. It was the only fix for my sanity. I could not stop staring at it, and now it not only resembled the ocean in its motion, but I began to see, really see tiny waves welling up out of the golden peak of the flame. It was amazing. Just at that point where the three colors of the fire mix I could definitely make out a nice swell coming in. There were organized, consistent sets. I tried to shake myself out of it, believing it to be a hallucination, but as long as I kept my eyes peeled to the flickering tongue atop the wax sculpture, the waves remained. They would rise up as if they were coming from an immeasurable distance, deep within the fire and then easily move towards me in a slow motion roll: long sweet lines. For a moment I thought I even recognized someone or something moving off the face of one of the waves, back and forth and up and down, even cutting back in long graceful arcing movements. I rubbed my eyes, thinking that this must be nothing more than a projection of my desires on a background of flame, but they were definitely there. Tiny swell lines were coming in towards me in perfect formation as if I were standing on some beach and registering their path of motion. I could taste the miniature hollow waves and feel the rush and roar of their upending power. 

    Just a moment or two more and it seemed I had permanently slipped. Following a particularly nice looking swelling section of the ‘candle ocean’, I felt a soft buzzing in my ears and a pleasurable sensation spreading throughout my entire body. I gave in and plummeted into the waves amidst a dreamlike sensation of falling. It seemed I had left this world for an alien dream…traded this illness for a peek into something else.I found myself speaking one on one with what was obviously not a human and feeling no pain. The creature smiled and put me at ease. Was this what an abduction consisted of? I didn’t see any probes or prying loose hands coming towards me. It was alright with me. This was just fine. Things in the beginning are a bit distorted in my mind. I remember an inquiry, in almost a classroom like setting and then a detailed explanation on questions regarding waves and the ocean. There was much ‘time’ in lecture dedicated to the riding of waves on this planet and then some kind of a follow-up comparison or relation to similar attributes (of wave riding and ocean activities) on a different planet. It was what I guess amounted to a really very interesting lecture on comparative surfing. I got the idea that this ‘other’ place which the earth waters were being compared with was either a home planet or favorite place of interest of the professor. The concrete information is fuzzy, almost like it was incidental to the travel: like an in flight movie or a demonstration by the flight attendants on the safety features and accessories of an airplane. 

    Once past this point, I can remember everything without any trouble. It was as if a voice or someone that had been speaking to me in a warbled, distorted tone suddenly stepped right next to me and began to talk in a measured, clear voice. From here on in, everything is clean and clear as crystal: the sweet sound of a lightly tapped crystal glass inside of a large, echoing ballroom. I immediately fell into a light dream of shallow waters. My memories from this point on are unclouded and lack any of that eye-rubbing dream recall distortion. My host is easily recognizable to me now, and he gives off a warm aura of easy, calm pleasantness, but underlying all is a sense of excitement and wonder. Damn good feeling. I first noticed that this creature who I had been listening to was not a humanoid type, but looked more like a cross between a dolphin and a penguin or maybe an otter, yes an otter with wet flippers and fins. There were notches in his coat (which he explained patiently to me) were geared toward tapping particular oscillations in energy. They acted like receptors for sound, color and waves, allowing a resonance between the body, the soul and the energy phenomenon, which they were linked into. They also released stores of great pleasure in the body similar to opiate receptors in humans, only they were geared chiefly as wave receptors so that in some it became like a kind of addiction but without any ill effects. Also, they made possible certain movements and motion while in the presence of the wave such as ‘soul flips’ and consciousness changes-reality movements into other fields etc… “Damn,” I thought these guys really have it on us down …I wonder if I could, if we somehow could tap into that… “Yes.” He answered simply and directly after reading my thoughts. I stared at him, maybe appearing a bit worried at his mind reading abilities but he put up a flipper to calm me. “No, I did not, though I suppose that I could. It is just very obvious by looking at your face that is what you were thinking. Logical.?” “Mmmm. Okay. How about it then…where do you uhh use these things?” “Turn around now.” I did a 180 and it was as if I had been standing here with my new professor all along with closed eyes. We were perched atop a small rise that overlooked a smooth plane. It struck me somewhere that I knew that this was definitely a water environment, though at first it merely appeared to be a vast flatness which lay out before us. Gradually, as my eyes adjusted I began to see what this place really was. With the initial hint of recognition, my jaw dropped and I let out a long breath. My first sight of the sea here in this alien landscape almost knocked me over. There were waves-huge undulating colors and sounds just moving everywhere on the space opened up before us. “Is this heaven?” “Do you mean, are you dead? No,” he answered with a slight smile.“Well, then…I can’t imagine what could be more beautiful. The waves, they are so perfect. Are they ridable? ” “Would you like to try?”The waves looked huge. I mean, even from this elevated point, above the ‘ocean’ you could get some idea of their size. I hesitated and then remarked that these might be a little too big for me. “Is there a spot that maybe has a little less size to it? Back on earth I’m really not one of the best surfers, in fact I don’t surf very well at all. I mean I love it and all, but my skill level is not…” I tripped over my own words.The alien appeared perplexed by this. “What difference does it make? Try. Enjoy!” “But, what about wipeouts? What happens to those?” “Wipe-o-out?” “Wipeout? Ya know falling off the wave, crushed by its music its power etc.”The alien smiled …knowing now “ohh yes that. Well, you’ll just have to see about that yourself now. But I think you’ll find it to be something not so bad.”We approached the “beach”- the launching point. It was not like a bungee-jumping platform, but more like an earth beach, with shifting patterns of reef-like plants and sands, images maybe I was making them myself, putting them there. There were all kinds of species there standing on the beach, watching the waves like on a day of great swell on earth. Several surfers out there doing their thing-some flicking in and out of visibility, either inside the tube, or just disappearing off the face of the wave, to later reappear somewhere else further on down the line. Some were lighting up spontaneously- like stars were being released or light just coming off of them especially coming out of the tube or off the lip, floaters etc. Just magical colors everywhere; it seemed that the wave itself actually interacted with the rider, in a kind of surreal dance that blended both participants together in a matrix. There was real symmetry here, and the wave was obviously alive…and possibly enjoying the play just as much if not more than the surfers themselves were.

    I came to realize that this is the same thing on the earth. One of the things that draw surfers to the waves is the possibility of that magical interaction between themselves and nature. It is an experiment in consciousness where both sides give a little. The wave is just as alive on the earth, and each has its own characteristics, as individual as a snowflake, no two exactly alike. We recognize this on some level, and can remember individual waves or rides during our lifetime. Sometimes, if not all the exact details of the whole ride, then just bits and pieces and certainly the feeling of the affair. Standing on the beach on my home planet would never be the same. Though I think I knew it all before, now it was much clearer, like someone had taken a candle out and just illuminated the backside of the waves, so that I could see all the way thorough it and around it. The whole picture became clean, like some of the many angled, still photographs in coffee table books of waves in motion. Most of the beings there on the beach had a similar look to my host, but there were others that I had not seen before-obviously vacationers from other dimensions or on a dream-tide trip like myself. I looked around to see if I could spot any obvious humans here. I wondered what I looked like myself to those others here: was I really the image that I saw in the mirror or something else entirely to a creature that might have four eyes and some extrasensory antennas to work with. They may have an entirely different type of vision than we are used to. Using not only sight, but also extrasensory appendages to complete the psychic picture of the being in front of them. I might have the appearance of a gelatinous blob or an oblong leaf with ears sticking out…a Mr. Potatoehead. Ahhh. Just a bit of jet lag paranoia maybe. 

    I asked the professor about all the others here. “Yes, there are some who know this place as a vacation type of a spot; others come here like you do. And no, they are not all sick in their home realities, like you claim to be…don’t always need a fever to make the trip…” “Are there any like me? ya know…human here?” “Ahh yes of course…look over there-“Across shifting sands standing by a floating rock like jetty and intermittently watching the waves and taking part in a light conversation with a humanoid like creature who had a more sinuous body than we would be used to, was an obvious man from the good old earth. He appeared to be quite at home here and I could tell from his hair that he had recently been in the ‘water’. I stepped across towards him.“Hey.”He looked over as I approached. His eyes were all lit up from the sea, a shifting blue green reminder of the earth’s oceans interspersed with other unnamable hues from the waves here off this alien shore.He nodded and smiled – a signal, the tip of the iceberg of that knowing undercurrent of surf moving through him. He put out his hand to shake. This was obviously something different than the earth. Not even met yet, friendly surfer.“How’s it going? Long way from home eh?” “Yeah, but the swell is here and it is beautiful. First time?” “How’d you know?” “You can just tell. There’s this thing, ahh once you go in you’ll be able to see what I mean.” “This place…how’d you get here? I think for myself, my body is sweating out a fever back home. But you, well ya seem like you’ve been here many times.” “mmm…I have been here. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how I made the first jump. It might have been an accident or a dream or an accident in a dream or the other way around, I can’t really remember. But now,…it’s easy. Once you’re here, you can always tell when a swell is going to hit. And then you just …make your plans/plan on being here…the rest is the ride.” “You mean, it’s not always like this here…I mean the swell? It’s not always pumping like this today?” “Well, I don’t know. Every time I’ve been here it has been, but I’ve never really tried to come when I didn’t think it would be here. It’s like there’s a signal or something that registers on the outer dream buoys tipping you off. I’m not sure what it is. Anyway? You up for a surf?” “Yeah, but how do we I mean, is there a board or…” “Don’t worry you’ll see, it’ll be completely logical and make perfect sense once you get out there.”We paddled out, or swam I’m not sure which through thick colors and off shore sounds which I guess mimicked winds on earth. Then it struck me that possibly, it was the other way around-the breaks and ocean sounds on earth were really just making their ‘normal’ patterns as a kind of a bleed-through siphoned tip of this reality here. Maybe this was the source of all waves…or just at the least a very good spot where all the perfect conditions were in place for everything to come together; a sounding off point. It could just be a creative outlet or an experiment that some all powerful life form had been fooling around with: the first work done in the wave field and this is what he came up with. The results spoke loudly of success. At first touch, there was a slight buzzing pleasurable sensation to the feel of the water on my skin. It was like a vibration. As we paddled, my companion explained to me that the bigger the wave, the greater the vibration, although some waves that were smaller and smoother had their own unique vibrations that were perhaps sweeter in the way they released their energy. Each wave had its own vibration and pattern to be tapped into and felt. I felt instantly energized and alive…supra alive. Duck diving was a cinch. The water seemed to almost make way for you as you passed an approaching wave. It was like it parted to allow you entrance outside. Once past the breakers, we sat directly on the surface of the water with the other surfers. There was no board beneath us, but it was just as if there was one. It was like surfing-au-naturale. I felt like I was sitting in a thick living substance that sensed and was aware of me on its back as well as if not more than I was cognizant of it beneath me. The lineup consisted of every imaginable surf type you could think of. Interspersed among the alien types I spotted a couple of humans spread off down the line to the horizon. The lineup seemed to curve out of eye-shot as if it were too long to be contained in a single view. It bent the light at the end into a simple, gentle curve in the water. I looked up. There was a star in the sky. Singular and very bright, giving off long strands of refracted light to mix with the water’s surface. I looked up again. This time there were a thousand stars above me, some were falling, others blinking in and out of their location and all colliding in an impossible display of fireworks worlds beyond any Fourth of July celebration I had ever seen or imagined.

    Just on the other side of my new human guide was a conglomerate of those sinuous looking humanoids. They looked me over and I got the distinct impression that they were smiling…stoked on being here as much as anyone else. I felt welcome…a rookie, maybe a kook, but welcome-no animosity of any kind. How could there be here. It was too perfect and insane of a vision for anyone to have anything but intense anticipation for the waves and ecstasy at the immersion in them. My friend shook me out of my daze. “Here comes a set…get ready.”Moving in from the far horizon line, a shadow welled up in the midst of all the color. A ten-foot ripple made its way towards us, and began to wall up in a gentle arc. “Take off on this one…it’s gonna be the smallest of the bunch. Go late for the tube…” I heard as I began paddling for the wave. I felt the energy literally pick me up, and just when I thought I was going over the falls, there was an almost stabilizing push from behind. I couldn’t tell if it was the wave itself or a good Samaritan from the lineup recognizing my first ride attempt in this alien swell.I was on my feet, sliding down the great slope opening up below me. At first I was a little bit confused as to what it was that I was riding upon. I thought for a moment that I was barefooting it, like those water-skiers I had seen on some extra sports footage back home. But, no, something had slid open on the surface of the water, right where my feet were. It was as if a glossy patch of ocean had made a sudden appearance, which though obviously water had somehow transformed into a slightly different consistency than its surrounding molecules. It felt a little bit thicker than the rest of the ocean, like it was maybe a different temperature than what was around it. The consistency was like a hard jelly –super smooth with long clean lines. There was even a bit of an arch to it, giving me some rocker to carve with. I couldn’t believe it…I was flying down the face of a singing wave, absorbing colors I couldn’t even name on a board that wasn’t a board, but was actually a part of the wave I was riding. My mind reeled at the implications. I was flashing through thoughts of my home break and what everyone back there might think upon seeing something like this rise up out of the ocean on a calm offshore day. 

    Instantly, as if a curtain of water were being swept and held open for me, a real image of my home beach opened up directly in front of me, all around me and I found myself in the late summer waters back home, catching the tail end of a hurricane swell. The sun sparkled on the water, an old timer who I’d seen many times before looked into my face, and obviously saw something he recognized, looked up in astonishment…then smiled and winked. The light from his one open eye pulsed in and out of the wave and I was back in the alien waters. I must have flickered out like those surfers I had seen from the shore earlier.

    The next wave I caught was a bit larger, and as I lost my fear and allowed the streaming water to entrance my senses, I easily slipped into the tube. Particles of light were everywhere, like a supernova exploding through dream cut eyes. Everywhere was a sweeping motion of water and light. I trailed my fingers in the moving face of the curl. Everything caught then as if the action of my skin against the liquid wall had pushed some kind of an invisible button. All was crystal. I stared before me as straight flying light shot and flickered off and on whenever my fingers made contact with the source water. Tiny crystal flecks exploded like miniature stars opening their insides to a momentary viewing. The whole experience was vaguely familiar of a border crossing, but instead of entering another country, the switch was of dimensions. Worlds opened up and collided. Realities shifted until they moved by so quickly that I was not sure where I was or what sun I was under. There were pictures, images, and memories. I couldn’t be sure if they were there from me or others or a conglomerate of both: a blending of consciousness of all others that had ridden here before - it didn’t really matter the source. Some riders were wiping out, others confident, some in pure ecstasy, others free and doing whatever they wished.But then slowly, welling up from deep water there was this strong feeling of just sitting back and being carried along by the trim. It was like I was really travelling: the pure feeling of being in motion with no outside influences to clog or taint it. I was being carried but was also a part of what was carrying me if that was possible. I locked into the acceleration like a quick, switched click inside an intricate machine, but a whole and living machine. Entire worlds were here moving past and I was a part of each of them, creating from their raw material, and me being created I suppose as well at the same moment. I felt so empty and clean that I was sure I was capable of sustaining a direct hit from a lightening bolt or a concentrated floodlight of suns. I knew joy and was conscious that it was a living thing, a being that celebrated every moment. With me, every cell was taking part on this spin which jutted easily past into the outskirts of matter. It was a matter of motion and there shaped out of time there I was, sipping on a new soup or a sweet drink with long straws that reached easily into the liquid ecstasy.

    After several uncounted rides that I will never forget, I felt a tug. There was something here that was nagging at my consciousness. My body, my physical, not this one here, but the one stuck, sick back home in my apartment was calling me. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt I needed to get back. I looked around the lineup; my human friend was nowhere to be seen. I turned to the nearest being in my vicinity: a long bodied, tri-finned half-humanoid/half fish-like entity. English? Hmmm why not?“Xcuse me, but do you speak, well uhh do you know how…what’s the way back home?” I sounded like a real kook, but in the end it was what I needed to know and it just fell out like that. The creature looked at me, and smiled. His eyes held me, but without any malice. He seemed to understand my question. There was a vastness behind those eyes - brimming with this place, like he’d been drinking the seawater here and instead of going mad, had only gotten healed and wise from its taste. There was an alien intelligence here that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I could sense it. I could feel it overflowing from his presence, but it was not something I understood. The connection I thought was lost, gone with the current incoming, set incoming. But, no…he nodded his head once in sign that he comprehended what I needed, and then pointed with a webbed fin towards the barrel of an approaching wave. He made a motion like one falling off the lip and tumbling in over the falls in a wicked wipeout. He watched my face for the reaction and then, no doubt in response to the look of fear and horror that had crossed quickly over me he made a peculiar sound that vibrated through my bones…it was definitely funny - and I’m sure it was a form of laughter. He rolled on his side as if it were too much for him. After recovering, he winked once and took off on the first wave of the set, leaving me there to contemplate how I should approach what I thought was his advice.As the next wave grew larger and nearer, I took stock of everything I had seen and experienced here. What need was there to fear anything from this place. Hell, a wipeout even in large surf here would be well worth the ticket price to this ocean. I turned from the approaching swell and paddled hard until I was just beginning to feel the energy transfer from the wave to my ‘board.’ Instead of standing, I skidded out with the tail of the board and threw myself tumbling head over heels into the steepest part of the wave. There was a feeling of great space, like I had been catapulted into the well of the wave and any moment would feel the impact of the falling lip. It never came. There was only the pressure of the water all around me, but without any pain. I felt like I had been shot out of a cannon through countless images and thoughts similar to that moment just before you fall to dreaming. 

    I had left that world. That was the last thing I had been sure of before entering a state of deep restful sleep. Back home, on discovering that my body was perfectly healthy or completely healed, I lay in bed and drank the whole experience in. I knew this had happened, and was not just a lazy, fever-induced dream. My sheets were soaked through, as if I had just popped out of the water and used them to dry myself off with or, if nothing more, perhaps I had simply sweated out the fever. So, well, hell maybe it was just a dream. A fantasy I had constructed in lieu of missing some of the good swell here because of my illness. I shrugged and smiled because even if it were just a figment of my imagination, I felt 120% better than before the dream and was ready for a session. Half an hour later, in the water on an easy waist to chest high rolling day, I began to feel a remnant or reminder of the energy in circulation from that alien shore. There was a flashback of that electric feeling from the sea that left little doubt in my mind. It was as if that other place was trying to peak itself through here, moving through its own glassy walls and curtains to leave a bit of its magic here for everyone to taste. Then, coming up off a nice long ride, the old timer I had recognized from my wink-in experience appeared next to me on his longboard. He paddled a few strokes and then turned to me. “Hey, kid that was some trick you pulled off here the other day huh?” “What do you mean? What day…what ahh trick?” “Ahh…” He laughed and then winked. “You know what I mean…popping in here as if out of thin air to catch about a quarter ride of the best wave of the day, and then just as innocently deciding to disappear off its face. Hmmm kind of makes one think that you were never even here at all…hah.” I stared at the man’s twinkling eyes. His face was full of mirth and he seemed to be making a great effort to conceal or contain a fountain of laughter. It seemed as if he were about to burst into belly laughs or was keeping the punch line to some private joke concealed just under wraps and off the tip of his tongue. He raised his eyebrows then in a knowing look and stared directly into my eyes. There it was again…that reminder…it was the same appearance of light and moving depth that I had seen in just about everyone I had encountered in the “other place.” He knew what I had done, he must have been there himself, and thus was able to recognize what he had seen as ‘real’ at least to him here. For it seemed that no one else at this break had even seen me scratch the surface of that wave the other day. I had not even been here to them…but to this timeless guy I had flickered in and out for one long moment.

    “Hey, next time you decide to pull off something like that, do me a favor will you?” “Uhhh, sure anything…” I answered still feeling a bit dazed and bewildered from this man’s direct talk and knowing.“Give me a good hard shove off of my wave so I can wipe out of this place for the good swell over there…on the other side. It’s been too much time between visits and I’d like to trail my hand through the tube…trace patterns in the sweet faces there again before I take up a …more uhh permanent residence on that shore…” With that, he suddenly turned and sensing the approach of a wave, paddled hard and stroked right into a well-shaped left. As I watched him from behind the wave, he disappeared under the lip and then reappeared to move patiently and gracefully down the line as if biding his perfect time until he could be inside that dream tide once again. 

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