Welcome to Litsy!

Readers who enjoyed this might also enjoy “Rockaway: Surfing Headlong into a New Life“ by Diane Cardwell.

#2025Book28

Not long ago, I'd often felt that the happy warriors I knew were in denial. How wrong I'd been. To love life in a world full of tragedy doesn't make you complicit. It makes you complete.

But my doubts were aristocrats from before the revolution. They still existed; their authority did not.

I'd long ago realized that regardless of the arena--politics, culture, or anything else--outsiders study insiders with anthropological intensity, then are surprised to discover that the insiders don't think about them at all.

There was the TV weatherman in Iowa bullied into early retirement because he talked about climate change; the Stanford disinformation researcher forced to move her family into hiding; the law enforcement personnel in a Cincinnati FBI office shot at after Trump was indicted; the nurses at a Boston hospital sent into lockdown by a bomb threat because their workplace treated transgender youth.

But the outrage machine doesn't worry about accuracy. What matters is that it's fed.

While these aren't necessarily bad things, they all mean that Jersey waves break quickly. Their California counterparts are typically slower and more gently sloped, and thus more forgiving. A Santa Monica peak breaks like a door being slowly closed by the hosts of a dinner party as they wave goodbye to their guests. A New Jersey peak breaks like a door being slammed in an argument.

Even so, the minute I slipped an ankle into my wetsuit, all glimmers of body positivity vanished into rubbery shame. Perhaps you've seen one of those viral videos where a snake, through sheer perseverance, swallows something far too big for it, like a goat. I was that goat. 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂

Learning to surf is like learning a language that wants to kill you.