A free-write about free-writing.

Walls of Time

A free-write by Sheel Khemka

The spot marked X wasn’t there, but there he was, just a spec, so I headed towards him and it was strange when I arrived - that prompt familiarity on the other side of the world, searing hot sun down nape of neck, faint liquid glow of a vaporous air, and nothing but the long, lonely stretch of an endless sand being washed over at its ends by recurring waves.

AJ was looking bronzed and slim, donning a pair of weather worn coal coloured knee length board shorts that were quite low hanging from the hip, his face slightly peeling at the nose and temples, you could see the cheek bone shining through. He’d been at it for a few days already, you could see, no doubt slightly chuffed with his beachcomber come surfer dude visage.

His eyes twinkled like shells as I met his, and we shook hands and looked out together as if to the horizon but for the first time I noticed the size of the waves. They were almost directly above us, or so it seemed, tubular and snake like smooth sculpted from the last legs of an infinite, perpetual ocean, by some large invisible hand or was it a masked wind or break before crashing violently onto the shore, soon to be followed by another, then another, like an ongoing, endless conveyor belt of undulating wave. Ariston.

We chatted and I unbuttoned my long trousers and shirt, safely decked out beneath with my new found acquisition of a pair of mother of pearl Villebrequins that I’d worn today in the place of underwear.

After a minute the coast was propitiously clear, no wave and there was also no one else on the beach that day – not even the locals.

All the more for us then.

AJ hurried into the water, then took a dive lunging with one long breath as far as he could until he resurfaced at some distance, arms popping out outstretched and chirpily beckoning me over with some not un-wilful semaphoring going on, but then he simply carried on. The idea was we were to break past the wave break point in some kind of a race. From where I stood that would be a good three or four hundred metres out- quite far out you know- he’d had the start but I knew I was the better swimmer.

I carefully undid my sandals, chucking them with my shirt and trousers tied to far enough back so they wouldn’t get wet, and I sidled up to the water, almost tip toeing for no reason why. Then I plunged in projectile style, jettisoning arms forwards arc-wise, glibly chopping the low tide like whisks till I was braced with an onslaught of cold oceanic drift, which was followed by a rapid shivering, which soon started to abate as I slowly but gradually radiated from the core, arms accelerating into blade like movements against the sheer gelid of the water, and then into longer oar like pulls with my legs furiously flapping semi-frenzied still. Hotting up it felt good though, and to be ocean borne again after who knows how long. The cold bite of salt water crest against arms and a torso that were being hot worked into lean muscle already.

Finally after a few strokes I propped my head up and scanned for AJ. The intervening drizzle, call it spindrift, was like a screened veil and it took me a couple of seconds before I could make out a scrambling, bobbing spec at some distance and it seemed like he was hollering something, but the separation between us was also gaining which seemed a bit strange, then slowly I could hear his echoes but then that too became barely audible, like a 1930s motion picture with just the puppet like movements of his arms, no sound. I could see he was making some frenetic gesticulations to draw me over. I hollered something back but it was now my own echoes that were being as if returned, butted back by a now heavier, gaining wind. My every pull seemed to have the opposite draw. My arms and legs were doing the motions more than adequately, yet I was somehow travelling sideways in a line, floating but at the same time being drawn as if into the diagonal of an obliquely configured treadmill. So I started to swim without holding back. And, in spite of my past life - and proliferation of medals and countless trophies- my hands were tied. I simply couldn’t fight the current (which is what it was). I was being dragged. I also saw I was no nearer the wave, after X many strokes. Now that was truly bizarre.

So, without much choice, I let it roll. If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em - and I swam directly with the tide. And if I guessed correctly I should still hit the wave just the other or a different end of it.

Taking a quick breath and raising my head I turned my direction slightly, to about 20 degrees to the left, and carefully eyed up the new gangway. New road to heaven, or was it a stairway?

And, I rode with it.

Ducking, diving, free-styling, my head buried for speed, breathing at intervals like in training. Each time after a few strokes I nosed up for bearings. As long as I was still headed in the general direction of the wave it should be fine. Plunging in head first once more I could feel I was getting into the zone, fresh Pacific salt water chill brushing triumphantly over the back of my head, neck and rear delts, and this continued for a good fifteen or twenty seconds till I was smacked large hard on the back of the head.

Suddenly I thought I’d lost it.

Then I was thrust down and tumbled under water 360 degrees, then again in another direction, yet I didn’t seem to be doing anything.

I thought I’d lost control. I was disorientated, discombobulated, no idea, nada. Then suddenly I realised it must have been that blessed wave, and then I almost kicked myself in the soft part of the groin. That wave, it must have hit me square on the head, and meanwhile I hadn’t seen it coming. Suddenly there were submerged currents all mad gushing, criss-crossing into each other and I was captured in the middle, like a herring, it was like a squad of deep-water rapids swishing and knotting everything (including me) into a swirl followed by some kind of a roll, as in black dice, so gathering knees into a ball I kicked out hard but there was no end of the pool to kick against it was all water. I tried to jig around gyrating my pelvis from side to side, that way hoping to surface for air, but was at the same time was being pelted by different currents at varying speeds. Finally I thought I’d zig zagged myself to the surface, then I found it wasn’t air at all, I was tumbled again with some new unfathomable rapacity, another burst of reprisals sending me to the opposite direction, was it now the scaly bottom or was it the top, still no way out, very little in the way of bearings. Whichever way I turned - or was jettisoned - the burgeoning facade was like some great trompe d’oeil, and I was being again rolled around like a loose piece of rock or jetsom, screwed into revolutions yet again, by some new found warpath of undertow wave, if that’s what it was. Still no bearings. I remember being violently somersaulted twice or thrice, but it didn’t stop at that. Then I was about to lose it- consciousness I mean - and I can’t quite remember but I was suddenly, out of the blue, catapulted into air gasping like seals- for the breath which I knew had just saved me.

Then I didn’t see it coming, this second one. I was treading water hyperventilating air, volubly shaking over what had just occurred, on the point of singing my ave marias and it was more sudden, more inordinate, this time, less than a minute since the previous one and it slowly crashed like a multi-storey block onto the thick of the base of my crown. Hammering, thrusting, sloshing like the tumult that it was, once again in oscillating directions, then into some great spin of a giant cosmic underwater washing machine, I was trapped betwixt and between as fodder or bait by some curious accident of fate and once again I couldn’t breathe, I had no idea how to get to air. My reflexes told me to curl into a ball should that magically thrust me back to the surface like before, but this great deluge of water had no sign of abating, just aggregating its rotations - for yet another go.

By now I was haemorrhaging air, asphyxiated in the sombre crush of that vast corkscrew, and I could then feel a gentle call of gravity coming on, in stages. Water around me was filling up like a tardis, my general circumnavigation spiralling downwards was met with a deluge of all things being pulled, falling, fading, like the end credits of a film. I knew then that that second I surfaced or else, but sadly I realised it couldn’t be anything but the else.

With zero reprieve. And this dilemma continued for two, maybe three minutes.

Apparently it was four twenty to thirty foot waves in direct succession - that’s what AJ told me when he found me ten minutes later washed up on the beach, still alive. How I’d managed it there grace be to the powers that be, for it couldn’t have been any other. Or maybe it was those years of bloodied swimming training I’d been forced into as a child.

Yes I’d nearly drowned.

We weren’t go back to that beach again, except for a languid, wistful re-examination of the panorama from far back, once or twice. There were plenty of other surf breaks in the vicinity, and absolutely no point in taking the risk unless you fancied that death wish.

Looking back the trick is to use the board to assist you in breaking through the waves, making sure that as the wave comes up you dive into and under it (lying face down, glued to your board), and once submerged you use the nose of the board as a buoy harnessing the energy of the wave in a kind of opposite reaction, propelling you and the board through and back to the surface of the water just behind the point where the wave broke, behind the wave break point). Then if you were to look back you would see the wave augmenting and subsequently crashing behind you. Sometimes easier done than said on this one (honestly!), and that way you also avoid the nasty tumbles – and mind you, you don’t go in without a board, that’s known as being a wally.

Once out there, past the wave break point, it was a different world. Those glorious rip curls of cascading magnificence were simply not there - not one iota existent. All you knew was the ebb of a long ocean face with its rhythmical swells, as your board bobbed up and down quite gently. Quite the God’s engineering to get your head around, bit of a Jekyll and Hyde.

Past the wave break point, on a typical day I’d see a smattering of bronzed slithers of surfers on boards taut and lined up as in clusters waiting for their next ride, anticipating, eagle eyed, some chatting here and there within that ocean colour scene of blue unfazed, peerless calm while their voices carried – and then there was the casual allure of female here and there, usually a looker honed or tuned by the waves, then I’d wonder if I should get in to one of the clusters or stay put. But I didn’t too much care either way, I was here for the wave. The longer you waited you’d start to feel it, the tranquil inside. Pure zen out here. Not a care in the world. Silence except for the whispering and the bobbing of boards, an eternal heat of a driving sun warming you like lizards against the cool of naked ocean spray, and what would anyone know they couldn’t reach you out here, and also you were far enough removed to think or really care. And just imagine for everyone else we too were just a spec, miniatures in a montage of endless sea of blue and green. And I was floating, absent of thought. Or day dreaming (I forget). I wonder if this is what it’s like for astronauts. Have you heard the story where astronauts go into space and have a melt down when the Earth starts to contract and disappear into a tiny ball, they suddenly realise the insignificance of things, the earth, them, the cosmos, their whole life prior, everything just a spec of dust floating, floating till eternity.

But this was also bliss. Pure, unmitigated, calm. Divine calm. No boredom this was therapy. Could stay out here all day you know. You didn’t need to think, no thinking required. Just lie back, take it all in, the stasis, the to-ing and fro-ing, like rocking in a chair. And it was new, this absence of things. The horizon, the expanse, the azure and some green, the bluebottle sky with its rumours of wind brushing through you to remind you that you were still alive.

Then I almost missed it. Within split moments it was a great spattering of the water, frenetic, in all directions, surfers swivelling around en masse as in some kind of a shoal, each frantic and arcing themselves round towards the direction of the shore, and then all suddenly paddling. I was still the other way, so I could see the swell come up as the water started eddying – then the swell was right up to us and gaining, I could see it was coming right up to me too so I crazily did the same, arcing round face down on the board feverishly paddling in an effort to catch that wave. But no, too slow. The wave simply hoisted and dropped me gently back into the same place as it quietly passed under. Then I saw it start to build about 10 yards in front of me and for that momentary second I could see it transitioning. Others had caught it already and were now on it, sliding over it’s peak just as it broke and then glibly articulating the hollow of its curve as it arced and then gained, and then finally plunged right through in a long ridge like formation to somewhere close to the shore.

But that said, my juices were now also being sucked up and gently induced into outwardly flowing of their own. Having been up that close I could see there was nothing surely to stop me ride that wave like a silver surfer – blessed that I was with all those years of hardened intensified swimming training for an hour before school every morning, or what was it all for? And yes of course surfing might look simple, but sure you have to be quick off the mark I can see, super on-it, balanced and agile too, and not just keen. And yet, all the same..

I was still in the throes of processing the scene that had just occurred less than a minute ago, when fragments of the posse were huddling back on their boards, I could see little bobs of heads and boards paddling back at a pace, the cheek (!) having ridden the wave they were right back on it, and now flushing themselves back over the wave break point within moments reinstated with abject ease in almost exactly the same place they’d been before. Only there were two guys who settled dangerously close to me either side. So presumably I was in the right place then. But I wondered what would happen - if there was a risk of us sliding over or ramming into each other if we all caught the (next) wave together, isn’t that pretty darn unsafe verging on wilful spasmodia, or does it simply not happen that way?

The adjacents chatted over me in what sounded like Portuguese but could have been Spanish, I didn’t pick up a word of what they said.

We all gazed out on our boards, treading water, holding, flapping and bobbing, saying very little but softly serenaded all the while by the rings of a mid-afternoon sun in session.

Then I could feel it rising up in the base of my gut, as the next swell like a slow portent approached. Once again the spearmint bodies of the surfers swivelled like compasses each in succession back towards the line of shore, now it was all about skimming for speed like motors to catch the crest of the wave - which gradually heightened and billowed out like a great leviathan God of the seas rising from the deep to demonstrate its might and its roar before reclining back into a crescendo turning on its axis like a silver foil, frothing gallons of its own vaporised plume. I was on it, as was a multitude of others, all teetering forwards then being thrown like confetti with the incremental force of the wave that like some great behemoth or gigantic combine harvester of the seas ploughed through its full stretch without recall or respite, at what must have been a hundred miles an hour, maybe eighty, and I insanely rode the wave with my chin stuck to the board (for I daren’t stand up), adrenaline and synapse coalescing like a soft rush to the brain, for a moment fusing atoms before strands of my gut stood each on end, hollowed out clean for a good 8 to 10 seconds as I skimmed down the incline like a spliced stone. Until the point I was finally flipped over, board shooting out in another direction but it was still roped to my ankle. I gasped for air resurfacing, then treading water again, then I pincered the board between knees and pulled like buckets back to sand and shore.


Surfing as an experience for me shares something with free-writing, they could both be seen as analogous in that they both begin with that precious zen experience followed by a high octane euphoria, albeit the high octane part of surfing is more physical.

For me the zen of a free-write has great power, in that when you’re in the zone, it’s a self enclosed space, no-one (other than you) has access. You’re locked in and protected, just you. No judgment. And your focus is unwavering, unbroken. And then you also have the luxury to be immersed in purely raw truths (swimming around in a medley in your consciousness), as you can’t lie to yourself. Truths are less complicated to deal with, as they’re true; and they all make intuitive sense - as they’re true. They are also eye-opening, as they’re truth revealing. And enlightening, in the sense of creating a feeling of euphoria - as it’s all honest and true. All in all, it (the zen of a free-write) is a golden haven of truth.

And then whatever it is that your ‘soul’ is, you’re connecting with that ‘soul’ – your soul – through the occult practice of free-writing - and that’s a good feeling indeed (both with reference to the zen and the high octane part). Better than drugs, as there’s the heightened euphoria without the come down. You also end up with some interesting bounty in the process – raw truths about yourself and situations that were latent in your memory, something you can build on. Liken it to a treasure hunt, but where the journey itself becomes part of the treasure. And then when you find the gold nuggets, that’s only the beginning of a longer journey to come (your life long practice of engaging in free-writing).

In a sense my proposition re free-writing as a source of heightened pleasure could also be seen as linked to the ancient Greek Epicurean prognosis that the highest pleasure in life is to be derived in the study of philosophy (or ‘sober reasoning’, Wikipedia) – which for them was the search for truth through logical argument.

On the other hand with free-writing, while it is also focused on truths, it – and this is the key - taps into our subconscious (as well as conscious – therefore going deeper), and engages the creative as well as the rational. All this surely makes for a more overwhelming state of heightened pleasure than philosophy or sober reasoning.

Had this been put to them about free-writing, would the Epicureans have agreed?

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21 February 2022