Sad and Sanding

Editor’s Note: CS Louis spent the majority of his life serving the Gods of core. He was an ex-pat in one of the most wave-rich realms in the world. Twice. He does nice things for his shaper. He doesn’t give you waves. He appreciates the subtle things that make surfing the ridiculous mess it is. His core score is always rising and he nearly always wears a hood. But, he has recently been relegated to an inland lifestyle. He wrote to us. —Travis   

I’m sad and I just want to sand surfboards in between breaking them. I used to think that a lot whenever I was gloomy. Or bored. Or that the world had done me wrong. Now I think it daily. I think I am depressed. I am depressed. I placed a sun-kissed image of a beachie wedge I know intimately on my computer’s desktop a couple days ago. Better than a distorted Microsoft logo I thought. Better than being generic. Stand for something, etc. Maybe that will cheer me up I thought. The image now haunts me.

I carry its wounds even when not partially obscured through an array of scattered icons. I am in the frame of the photo, but am now lost in it. That it is not my life anymore. And why and for what?

“SURELY THERE WAS A HANDSHAKE SIGNALING A FAIR DEAL HAD OCCURRED WHEN I CHOSE TO LEAVE THE OCEAN. I’LL BE GAINING AN AMOUNT EQUAL TO WHAT I’M SACRIFICING, RIGHT?”

Experience. Education. Techniques beyond rote methods that a modern employer might value that can be parlayed into earning extra bucks and returning to the sea at my convenience. My memory fails me, lost in the fuzz of the daily mundane.

I’m sad and I just want to sand surfboards in between breaking them. And be cold. Like a kid before they knew wetsuits existed, smiling through blue-lip shivers. Cold like when the wind is fierce and you are submerged in ice water and cower as sand-laden gusts crash off the beach. Sharing a calm serene smirk with a mystified face tucked in a neighboring hood. When you’re not cold but freezing and keep paddling and duck diving and know you cannot stop or you will be required by sensibility to exit the water. On to land where you have a chance to warm up. But the wedges! The righteous wedges. A lottery of side waves converging at a single time and place and you maybe being there for the crescendo. And getting fucked and hitting the bottom and laughing and screaming and sucked into the rip near the rocks. Swimming hard to avoid actual danger. 

And possibly breaking your board. Cause they’re brittle when it’s cold. No one talks about that. When the deck buckles or tail falls off the back completely. And then you get warm and fix them. First a coarse pass to roughen the edges and remove laitance. Create a surface the fiberglass can bond to mechanically. Mix it hot so it cures quickly and can be sanded again soon. The carcinogenic aromas. Another coarse pass to roughen the tack that forms when the laminating resin’s outer surface is retarded by oxygen. But rigidly cured below and awaiting the final matt of glass. Ideally one would use sanding resin here for its wax content to encapsulate the outer surface from oxygen so it may fully cure and not tack. And then you sand again, and it is satisfying — lawn mowing satisfying. Ditch digging cathartic. Thoughtless, focused, intense. A smooth surface is achieved by sequentially using finer paper. Say a flight 80-120-180-240 grits. Average sand particles per square inch is the unit of grit. Sanding beyond the functionally smooth is a superbly vain act. It’s dying for praise. While within you know the polished surface carries veiled flaws. Weaker than if you had stopped at 180. Weaker than if you had stopped when the surface began to blister. When your vanity compelled you to patch your patch from the burn thru. To be momentarily impressive to a passerby. 

I just want to sand surfboards in between breaking them. I cannot imagine I decisively left the ocean and I miss it. I’ve purged many memories lately to survive and declare happiness. Mission accomplished. “I do not need the ocean, damnit!” I thought I’d yell. I felt that was necessary to prove at some point. Ascetic enlightenment. And now the perspective of hindsight. A fair accounting of my time without the sea. I’ve concealed my life’s most blissful moments and crawled into a cave and got fat and stressed. I’ll surely die younger for this folly. My hair is dull and dandruffed. Complexion dismal and dreary. I am a member of the general public. My worst fear. I freely traded my health for responsibility. And a façade of ambition. And this old picture taunts me. I miss warm land breezes at sunset grooming frigid wedges. And caring for little beyond the routine of breaking surfboards and sanding them.—CS Louis