ACAPPELLA, PART 1

Here’s the thing, it started out a long time ago and while the air wasn’t pure and clean it was long before life’s precious pastel skies were desecrated and turned dark. Sensibilities aside and without the need for validation or posturing, lives were lived hard, fast and embodied love and passion. Sometime back in the day in a midnight session, the light of moon beckoned with its magical dance off the waves. In its most organic state it was slowly being revealed, a story that would play throughout my life, a story that slowly unfurls a heaven and hell twist of fate.

The memories are solid still, oddly crystal clear … afloat in the water with a bunch of close friends. We were mischievous little street rats from another era when it was a little too real for most now to envision. For most, lives were cut short, scurrying through painful decades of damnation, abuse or just misfortune. Here we were locked in to one of those epic, oh-so-dangerous never-to-be-recommended midnight surf sessions. The warm summer water of not-so-innocent youth lapped up on our boards, cleansing the pain that our lives were bathed in, as we anxiously stared at the dark horizon, watching and waiting for the next set, watching and waiting for the unknown. Mysterious random sounds on the razor’s edge of life wafted through the air, mixed with youthful banter and laughter, as the waves pitched and rolled. Waiting for what seemed an eternity, a rumbling in the distance was heard and that wave, the one that keeps circling the world and finding me every so often, found me.

As clear as it can be, I can recall … feeling her approach, seductive in its beauty and ominous in its power. While the rest of the ill-fated crew cat-scratched out of the way, I turned away this one time for some reason, dug in and paddled hard to position. Likely outmatched in retrospect, it was the line drawn in the sand to meet a promise. Not a promise written in pen and paper but an internal promise to abandon the pain, the fear and hell behind and face the unknown. A promise that lasts always, a promise that has no goodbyes or boundaries, a promise not to cheat life for what it could be. In a time-defying moment, a moment that lasts forever like a picture pressed between the pages of my life – I dropped down that impact zone and time as I would learn through life, by happenchance, time would evaporate in this moment and just stand still. Eyes wide open, I can feel the wave with my hand dragging low against it, I can see across the wave, the shoreline … as the purity of exposing life for what it has to offer. A subtle conjoining of grace and power and symbiotic flow to shore, the one you never can, never will forget. I never will.

But this is neither a raconteur’s love stained letter of youth or the tale of that wave that circles the earth and from time to time graces you. Instead this wandering road is oddly about where it all began for all of this.

Out in those warm summer waters of tormented youthful angst, an understanding of finding perfection with imperfection was found. The undeniable subtle beauty and grace of that which is imperfect and natural. Of how stability is something that is only uncovered within the most chaotic of environments for there is peace and shelter within the storm. Quickly it became obvious that a physical medium of readying yourself for the random and unknown was done with the understanding and intent it would optimize real-world performance because the only thing we can expect is … the unexpected. In time movement would be understood to be woven together seamlessly like a fine tapestry in an organic and natural manner. Yet before the physicality of performance and functionality could be understood, passion, an undying, unyielding, unrelenting desire to do what you do with all your might, needs to be embraced. It is blood the pulses from the origin of R-Style.

And so it wasn’t too long ago, traveling down the road again, from the corner of my eye I see a late night moon dancing like that perfect diamond off the waves to my right. My mind wanders back, finds those locked-away memories that never fade and the pictures that hide within, treasures that can never be lost, yet maybe never found again. Images race and tortuously tumble blindly inside me as I look over and quietly think back of a chapter in life that was left so horribly and needlessly unfinished. In the rear view mirror, anonymous headlights glare back to the graying flecks of time and I pull quickly to the roadside parking lot. Looking out the water, squinting, the waves roll and crash on the empty abandoned shore. The cold nights of winter, still are no match and without debate, I quickly change and soon enough I am walking across the sand, board underneath my arm. Paddling out, the wintry waters are bracing against my legs but still I paddle hard to the break that is only lit by the light of the moon. Straddling the board alone in the dark and cold water, it is both numbing and freeing. Amongst the rich splendor of the ocean’s random sounds, I can recall the laughter, the joy, the smiles, the glimmers of hope and the echoes of what once was and what I will hold dear always. I sit and wait quietly alone, for that one wave to find me once again, that home to a promise and a dream.

And it is a promise I keep, always.