Traffic and Surfing

There is no better time to question your existence than when you are sitting in Atlanta traffic. A bitter Satreian comedy that consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of people burning gas as they inch along allees of asphalt, chain restaurants, and car dealerships, the rush hour experience in Atlanta is simultaneously bonding and devolving: you are in this together, and yet you are constantly judging the other drivers and finding them in need of severe punishment. Detachment is difficult to achieve and maintain. While trapped in this exitless inertia yesterday, I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR WABE 90.1. No doubt everyone else was listening to Sean Hannity on WSB AM 750.

Terry Gross was interviewing Jonathan Paskowitz, a producer and subject of the documentary "Surfwise," the story of the surfing Paskowitz clan of 9 children, who along with their mother were taken off the grid by their dad, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, spending their lives living ascetically in a 24 foot camper and surfing the world. While they experienced deprivations and strange disciplines, their lives seemed magical, innocent, and pure. Paskowitz referred to it as a life of "bold quests, big surf, wild adventures." When asked how he felt about surfing, he said "words cannot describe the euphoria that surfing provides as a human; words cannot describe the absolutely magical and romantic feeling of riding a wave, going up and down on the surface of the water, and feeling just an unlimited power under your feet and to be in harmony with the ocean, perhaps riding along and seeing a dolphin in the face of the wave next to you, or a beautiful rainbow as the spray of the wind is offshore pluming over the back of the wave. And it's just the most beautiful, romantic, organic thing a human can do."

You mean that sitting in a car on Highway 78 in Snellville isn't?

Listen to the segment on Fresh Air

Read the review in NYT

Watch the beautiful trailer in NYT