Being

  When the voice was heard in the silence, I felt my body harden and the Nausea vanish….[T]he music was drawn out, dilated, swelled like a waterspout….I am in the music….This movement of my arm has developed like a majestic theme, it has glided along the song of the Negress; I seemed to be dancing.

  —Sartre, Nausea

  THE SURFER IS BLESSED, yet not so special. To knowingly surf, for one’s chosen purposes, is to express human nature, the human’s nature as an adaptive being.

  Being Oriented

  Sitting on a park bench, on an otherwise ordinary day, the hero of Sartre’s novel Nausea, Antoine Roquentin, suddenly encounters Being itself, in the twisted black roots of an ancient chestnut tree. Roquentin explains,

  I was sitting, stooping forward, head bowed, alone in front of this black, knotty mass, entirely beastly, which frightened me. Then I had this vision. It left me breathless. Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of “existence.” I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, all dressed in their spring finery. I said, like them, “The ocean is green; that white speck up there is a seagull,” but I didn’t feel that it existed or that the seagull was an “existing seagull”; usually existence hides itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can’t say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I must believe that I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word “to be.” Or else I was thinking…how can I explain it? I was thinking of belonging, I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that the green was a part of the quality of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, I foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered, in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form which was added to external things without changing anything in their nature. And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.

  Roquentin had been feeling nauseated. The mood came upon him “cunningly, little by little,” and then “never moved,” after he’d taken up journaling. He wanted to bring presence to his mundane doings, by describing the day’s events in every nuance, however trivial. He’d classify them and “see clearly.” Suddenly he sees the emptiness of his ambition, and the source of his disorientation, in the radical limits of descriptive language. The words, try as he might to find them, can never capture what can only Be, and be encountered directly, right over there, in the knotty, beastly roots, next to which he is but another lump in reality, merely in the way. The words fail even to capture their very failure, atop the great chasm between language and reality. As Wittgenstein put the idea, we lack the concepts needed to articulate how words “picture” reality, aside from all the ways of speaking metaphorically (for example, as though words “picture” reality). Once we see this, we can kick away the philosophical ladder that carried us up to this high vantage and behold the ineffable, the “mystical” that escapes all words.

  This is to upend Modern Western Man’s sense of control. Before the world can be measured, predicted, organized, and manipulated, through science and wise policy choice, it must first be described in words. Yet if the world is simply unruly, bumptious, finally beyond our control because beyond description, how can we keep our bearings, staying oriented through constant change? Modern Western Man confidently posits that, yes, the natural world is rationally ordered. Science can transcend our varying personal perspectives and trace its objective laws. We can know the world as it is from an impersonal view from nowhere or—in the religious version that birthed the scientific revolution—from a God’s-eye vantage that traces God’s organizing thoughts in creation. But then everything depends on whether this detached perspective can be kept up. And if we can’t reliably view ourselves as though looking from nowhere, sub specie aeternitatis, from the perspective of eternity, we seem abandoned to Roquentin’s nausea. In disappointment founded upon high expectations, the postmodernist embraces a sense of dread and distrust, while the fundamentalist cleaves to authority, whether religious or scientific, in need of a surer foundation. Better that than being ungrounded, disoriented, adrift, at sea.

  To which the natural surfer question is, “What were you expecting?” Surfers never put much trust in words, including the words of theories, worldviews, or texts. Even science is much as the logical positivist Otto Neurath imagined, akin to a distressed boat at sea: “We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from its best components.” Good theories require constant revision; we adapt our beliefs as new evidence flows in, in science as in all rational belief.*1 For the surfer, this needn’t be disorienting; a person can remain oriented in the changing seas, if you know what you’re doing. Not in the artifice of words, or in theory, theology, or any authoritative truth, but in knowing how to be in the waves. Not exactly in thought, certainty, and propositional knowledge, but in knowing how to attunedly adapt, in the world right under and in front of you.

  If you happened to stroll or skate by the park in the afternoon sun, where some gnarly chestnut tree roots happen to be unveiling their very Being, you might then feel stoked, instead of Roquentin’s dread. Why not find joy and wonderment in being ever closer to realities that lie beyond words, beyond so many scientific or philosophical truths, in the reality you can only be in and sense? Isn’t it, in the end, just a tree? Roquentin repeatedly finds relief from his nausea in the sound of music—in becoming attuned. “So strong is the necessity of this music.” And yet he is troubled that “it would take so little to make the record stop,” perhaps a mere “broken spring.”*2 How, if at all, could attunement become a steady, normal way of being? Yet for the surfer, it is. The tree, the music, the waves, it’s all good, in just another day of feeling connected, another afternoon waiting for a wave in one’s daily surf, buoyed in an undulating sea. Until the right wave mounts and crests and one is carried along.

  —

  Heidegger called the “being” of the human situation “being-in-the-world,” by which he meant being engaged in a particular setting, knowing how to do things defined by one’s “life world.” We live out the everyday meaning found in our material culture, getting absorbed in its skills and tasks, keeping our bearings in absorbed skillful coping.*3 But for Sartre, freedom means being free from the cultural matrix, which one can choose not to plug into. If both perspectives have certain attractions, the surfer suggests that both Heidegger and Sartre overlooked a possibility: one can have freedom and flow, together, being free to move in or beyond one’s social world, for being naturally attuned, to the ocean and its waves.

  Surfing Like a Girl

  Is there such a thing as throwing a ball like a girl? The 1960s psychologist Erwin Straus maintained that there is:

  The girl of five…does not stretch her arm sideward; she does not twist her trunk; she does not move her legs, which remain side by side. All she does in preparation for throwing is to lift her right arm forward to the horizontal and to bend the forearm backward in a pronate position….A boy of the same age, when preparing to throw, stretches his right arm sideward and backward; supinates the forearm; twists, turns and bends his trunk; and moves his right foot backward. From this stance, he can support his throwing almost with the full strength of his total motorium.*4

  Because girls throw like a girl at such a tender age, Straus finds the apparent difference from boys hard to explain. In which case, he concludes, it must be part of a girl’s “feminine essence.”

  To this, Simone de Beauvoir, the feminist pioneer (and Sartre’s lover), answered that, yes, girls and women can feel weighed down and heavy, as though carrying a fearful and mysterious burden, in puberty, menstruation, and pregnancy, their individuality and efficacy confined in bodily necessity. But, no, there is no fixed “feminine essence.” There’s no fact about being breasted or hormonally disrupted that isn’t socially constructed.*5 So if some girls or women have a “girly” way of throwing a ball in sports (but perhaps not a girly way of throwing keys), this, too, is a fluid cultural product, created in tender early upbringing.

  Why do women often sit on a bus bench with compressed composure, legs closed and arms folded in, while men recline, legs spread-eagle? Perhaps the risk of being seen as “loose,” while being peppered with unwanted attention, is reason enough just to avoid the unpleasant leering. That sounds rather sensible under the circumstances, quite aside from any “feminine essence” that inhibits public relaxation. And why do many men “manspread” on a crowded bus or a subway? Is this part of the guy’s “manly essence”? Or is he just airing out his crotch area (as according to one woman’s theory)? Most likely he’s being insensitive, pushing the burden onto others of asking for a seat put there for general use, because his mother never taught him better, while his father and culture taught him to own all available space, to, you know, Be a Man.*6

  If people don’t have an essence beyond the roles they own and perform, whether feminine or manly, could it be that gender culture keeps people from getting into the flow, from being fully attuned? Could it limit both flow and freedom?

  Gender and surfing are both part of culture. So you’d expect them to interact and change together with the times.*7 The Hawaiian sport of kings (as well as its even earlier Peruvian development) was always equal in opportunity. The queen herself surfed. More recently, after surfing was male dominated for much of the postwar era, girls and women have returned to the waves. In the United States, 1970s Title IX policies encouraged girls in sports, and these days surfer girl marketing and women’s professional surfing have arrived commercially. Keala Kennelly has been charging heavy, heavy waves at Teahupoo (the ones men were once said to need “balls” for, in a now dated way of putting it). Most important, more and more women and girls are feeling empowered to get out there to enjoy the waves.*8

  Men and women do seem to surf differently on average. During the years I was growing up, the difference was explained by center of gravity: with women centered in their hips, and men centered in their torso, women sort of somehow, you know, don’t get as easily into a fluid and directed motion…or something. Then the world champion Lisa Andersen came along and refuted the idea that women can’t surf better than nearly all men. At the same time, she was also said to “surf like a guy”—this being meant as a compliment.*9 Unlike fashion generally, and despite all the female-targeted brands, men still set the style trends and standards of quality in surfing.

  Now that many women surf better than most men, the average male surfer should not feel emasculated in the comparison.*10 He doesn’t have to feel “weak” or “lame,” not even by the standards of manly “power surfing,” with its big moves, thick carves, and explosions. Surfing is becoming ever more inclusive. The new rotational aerials are often gentle and technical, with moments of passivity, lying back and recovering. It is a lot like ballet, although ballet is actually more “masculine” than the stereotypical ballerina for its own display of control, speed, and power. Flow, balance, elegance, and style have preeminent importance in surfing, even in powerful carving. And aren’t those qualities generally seen as rather “feminine”?*11

  So could it be that the very best of surfing is some optimal mix of gendered features, or somehow gender-neutral, or even beyond gender?

  The former world champion Joel Parkinson is widely touted as an ideal surfer despite being underscored in competition for making his extraordinarily radical repertoire look too easy. (Lately he’s been conspicuously forcing his turns in competition to suggest difficulty and overcoming.) In life generally, men and women gradually age out of their stereotypical gendered features. Newer generations might seem to merge the best of “male” and “female” qualities (for example, younger men learn to listen, ask questions, give rather than take credit). Might surfers get enough sex and be secure enough in their sexuality to own surfing’s gender transcendence? Might surfing be a sport that is truly for all of humanity?

  It’s a nice idea, but also incomplete without the acceptance of a surf-as-you-please tolerance of deep stylistic difference. Surfing is freedom, which partly means the liberty to surf however you want. So maybe some women have a feminine style of surfing, even or especially because of gender constructs. Why not celebrate the difference, as some feminists celebrate having breasts?*12 Style, after all, flows from the very nature of human consciousness, along with the constructs that shape our very being. For all the profound influence of culture, men and women might differ in styles of bodily comportment for rather deep reasons of our very bodily sense of space.

  The philosopher Iris Marion Young developed this point powerfully, drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s views of embodiment.*13 If the body is sexed and gendered, men and women might have a very different sense of the space available to them for movement, which then shapes sporting actions. A girl can throw like a girl, walk like a girl, sit like a girl, tilt her head like a girl, carry a book like a girl, and surf like a girl. Not because of her socially unconstructed “feminine essence,” but because of the way her upbringing and society shape her basic, intuitive experience of her body, its space, and what motions she at once can and cannot make.*14

  Young explains, speaking from her own sense of the problem,

  For many women as they move in sport, a space surrounds us in imagination that we are not free to move beyond; the space available to our movement is a constricted space. Thus, for example, in softball or volleyball women tend to remain in one place more often than men do, neither jumping to reach nor running to approach the ball.*15

  The girl who throws like a girl doesn’t quite bring her whole body into the motion. She’s partly immobile, throwing with just the arm or only the forearm. Perhaps she sees herself as incapable of carrying a heavy object, underestimating what she can lift. After a halfhearted effort, in which she “fail[s] to plant [herself] firmly and make [her] thighs carry the major portion of the weight,” maybe she gives up in frustration, in what became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Young puts it, “We frequently fail to summon the full possibilities of our muscular coordination, position, poise, and bearing.” It’s an “inhibited intentionality,” which “simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an ‘I can’ and withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed ‘I cannot.’ ” Or as the lyric in Carly Rae Jepsen’s pop song puts it, “Call me maybe.”

  Sartre tells us that consciousness is freedom, so one might wonder why a free person wouldn’t just throw off cultural expectations and choose to put herself completely into open, unbroken movement, which fluidly calls forth capacities to follow all the way through. Why all the timidity, uncertainty, and hesitancy? “Typically, we [women] lack an entire trust in our bodies to carry us to our aims,” Young explains. Many women do gain confidence through practice, in the schools or families that help them practice. Yet the woman who throws like a girl often began in an “ambiguous transcendence”: she constitutes her bodily space but also sees herself as an object to be dealt with, managed, or maintained. Her body is experienced as both a capacity for action, as “transcendent” in consciousness and aspiration, and a mere object. It is at once for touching and being touched, grasping and being grasped, to be respected, but also shaped and decorated, showed off, and used for sex.

  A coach would tell you that this sort of duality can lead a person to take her eye off the ball. Being constrained in her very being, a girl or woman might not find herself fully attuned to her bodily action. Young calls this “discontinuous unity”: “Our attention is often divided between the aim to be realized in motion and the body that must accomplish it, while at the same time saving itself from harm.” She continues,

  We often experience our bodies as a fragile encumbrance, rather than the medium for the enactment of our aims. We feel as though we must have our attention directed upon our bodies to make sure they are doing what we wish them to do, rather than paying attention to what we want to do through our bodies.*16

  So if we experience a natural sense of harmony when we’re fully dialed in, as Merleau-Ponty says, a person can also be only partway there. A man can be overcontrolling, throwing his weight around without being tuned in. And a woman’s “feminine spatiality” can keep her body from being all in. For different reasons, neither might find a fluent flow in surfing.

  Attunement

  Before the big 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, a poor Sri Lankan boy with little education had been reading discarded issues of National Geographic. There he learned about the sea rushing out when an enormous, long-period wave is approaching, because of an underwater earthquake. One day, down at the boat dock, he saw it happening. He had time to persuade his village to head for the hills and saved everyone, because of his new attunement to ocean dynamics.

  Being in a state of basic attunement to something means at least being “in tune” or “in sync” with a pattern that emerges over time. I hear the sound waves emitted from a violin as musical, rather than as noise. I’m attuned by my recognition of sound wave patterns through my brain, auditory system, and innate feel for music.*17 I’m attuned on a steady basis, as time elapses, as I follow the tune and get taken up in its crescendo, with rising expectations of an approaching release.