Yogi Don’t Surf! (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Cinco)

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
William Blake

...someone told me the forecast for Philly for the following week, when we’d be home, had highs in the upper forties...which’ll feel just balmy, said she....or would if we hadn’t just spent ten days down here, said I...


Charlie don’t surf!
Colonel Kilgore, Apocalypse, Now

...the Pacific coast of the Nicoya Peninsula is renowned as a major surf haven, attracting incredibly buff wave riders from around the world...including most everybody else on our little retreat...and yet...alas...this cynical yogi...(with a history of ear problems...culminating in chronically infected scar tissue from operations meant to remove other chronically infected scar tissue resulting from previous operations meant to stop chronic ear infections)...(all of which makes water sports that involve submerging the head highly inadvisable)...does not surf...

...and, anyway, there are an awful lot of underwater rocks, there...so ya never know, when floating about the surf, just what might be lurking underneath....and this is starting to sound like yet another metaphor...

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
attributed to Swami Satchidinanda

...there’s a book called In Search of Captain Zero, about a couple of surfers and ex-weed smugglers who, earlier in their lives, decided that someday they’d find the perfect beach with the perfect surf break...paradise...to spend the rest of their lives...

The Paradise is in the desire, not in the imperfection of accomplishment...

Allen Ginsberg

...in time, though, they lost one another...and the author, Allan C. Weisbecker, has the idea that his friend, Christopher...Captain Zero...may have finally found it...so heads down through Mexico into Central America...doing lots of surfing along the way...

That ‘s how thick the wave was and how deep within it I found myself. I was in a crouch, which is pretty much instinctive in that sort of situation, but I could have stood up and still not gotten my hair wet. For the three, maybe four seconds before that wave spit me back out into the sunlight with my feet still planted firmly on my board, I was exactly and without doubt where I wanted to be on the surface of the planet earth. And there was not a drop of water in my universe that was out of place.

...eventually finding Christopher, and it, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica...only to learn that, having found his paradise, Captain Zero’s developed an addiction to crack....sometimes, it seems, there’s nothing more dangerous than finding your ideal...especially if the plan is to try and hold on to it for good instead of simply enjoying the perfect moments you get before letting them go...

...back in slowly-melting-snowy Philadelphia, found my difficult adjustment to cold weather after ten days struggling to stay cool, itchy skin flaking off from sunburn, arms and legs so bug bitten they've been compared to Saint Sebastian, garnered little sympathy...

...and, anyway, here’s where I am now...and, with temperatures reaching up toward the low sixties, and purple flowers blooming where snow was days ago, it's probably best to let go of that beach...for now...