Stillness within the chaos

The urge to leave the country begins to bubble up inside me, like a pipe filling with steam, there can only be release.  Yearning to find solace in a hiding place nestled far away from the West.  An escape from the technology driven world and its thirst for inexorable optimization, its strangle hold on the collective consciousness of the people. A reprieve from the perceived allure of a materialistic utopia where people are judged by their followers, their special abilities, their net worth.  One day, it will all turn to dust, but we will have our memories of places discovered, friendships formed, friendships lost.  Conversations with strangers beneath a molten sun sinking into the Indian Ocean while southern stars began to shine through the blue and purple sky.  Of rolling caverns of water roaring across a mystical reef, turtles swimming languidly amidst the turbulent ocean, and the rushing flood of adrenaline that comes from seeking to be inside the eye of the storm.  

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Aromas of clove cigarettes interlaced with pungent spices wafted from a ramshackle of single level dwellings, while exhaust from motorbikes lingered in the humid air, creating a cozy blanket of novelty for the olfactory system.  Chickens skittered across narrow roads where mopeds whipped around corners, and children laughed and stared as I passed them by.  A lone rooster stood atop a pile of rubble, his head tilted to the sky, as if gazing upon his chiefdom.  Out beyond the roost and shanty streets, gleaming shopping malls loomed – a true juxtaposition of wealth, of ideals and lifestyle, of colonialism and globalization. The cultural divide that is Jakarta. 

After traveling thousands of miles from east to west and crossing the equatorial line, it was the exotic scents that afforded me the comfort of knowing I had hit my mark.  Trips to Europe and South America became routine, and whilst still exhilarating, began to loose a hint of the novelty.  So it was that I crossed the world in search of the unknown. Dodging normality, while breaking the walls of security that my daily life provided.  I didn’t know who I would meet each day, and the things I would discover would unfold like the ocean appearing through a dissipating blanket of fog.  

Absolute anonymity was achieved as I walked the streets of this tropical Gotham.  Zigzagging through alleyways that crossed between dilapidated buildings and warehouses, sharing half smiles with faces appearing through the shadows – a split second of spiritual connection with another soul.  As I proceeded onward through the labyrinth of backstreets, and alleys, I used a towering shopping mall in the distance as my bearing. Jakartans leaned against walls with cigarettes dangling lazily from their fingers. Like water leaking from a broken pipe, the cigarette smoke wrapped around their hands and face, slowly lifting up to join the smog above.

As the decades pass, my experience in some of the worlds most exuberant and unpredictable cities furrows deeper.  I’ve sought out the nightclubs, the afterparties, and everything in between. More grit than glamor.  I learned how to navigate the dangers of the urban waters.  I’ve traded looks with the hard edged youth from Sao Paulo’s streets as they eyed me up, wondering if I was the one to rob that day. I gave them my most convincing look of confident indifference while walking strong footed lie a broke street skater.  I’ve held my Nokia cell phone tight while a thief in Barcelona tried to strip it from my hand. I held firm and kept the phone conversation going as I pressed through the dark Las Ramblas.  Just as I was being marked as a gringo or tourist, I would disappear amongst the ravel.  By the time I was seen, I was gone, walking swiftly through the night.   

Jakarta proved to be uneventful in that regard, as I sought not the rush of the club, the afterparty, or the feeling from seeing Sunday morning from the summit of Friday night. Much the contrary.  I focused on my rest, my training and holding my breath as I swam laps of the hotel pool.  An Indonesian father and son swam next to me one muggy afternoon, the child kicks brushing past me as I turned from lap to lap.  The father curiously asked “you travel to Jakarta?” “Sumatra, surfing.” I answered.  The gleam in his eye told me I was on the right track.

South Sumatra was on the precipice and it was time to meet up with James.  

It had been five years since we had last met.  It had been in the cold, slate winter of Berlin.  Searching for just the right dose of techno on a Sunday afternoon.  Dreary late afternoon dance floors by the river and long walks through the cold, grey mist.  

We reunited by the Lion Air ticket stand, quickly embracing in a bearhug that was comfortably weighted with backpacks and surfboard bags.  Not many of my friends can rival my relentless travel experience, but James knows how to live in unknown places with unknown people.  We both pride in blending in, despite looking completely different than the local population.  We both failed miserably at that goal while checking in our oversize and overweight surfboard bags that sent our ticket line into a traffic jam. Curious Javanese travelers peered over at other ticket lines, wondering why they had been destined to the bottleneck that James, myself, and more than anything, the 1980’s ticketing system of Lion Air had created.  After several trips from counter to counter, and the pricing of several receipts from a small handheld antique device, we finally watched our board bags disappear beyond the luggage belt, disappearing behind the flapping plastic doors.

The moment we landed in Bandar Lampung I felt a tinge of adrenaline start to slowly release from within. Our driver awaited with a black van and a lazy smile that pulled his eyes tight in the late afternoon sun.  In a matter of moments, he strapped the triple packed surfboard bags on top of the van and we sped into the frenzy of city streets. 

Soon we hit the jungle.  We ascended the mountainous highway, working our way around precarious blind corners, ripping past semi-trucks, stopping suddenly when cars screeched around hairpin turns before whipping back to our lane again.  Jolting, pressing, churning our way farther from the Western world.  We passed monkey’s on the side of the road who looked at us longingly, as if saying, “do you have a banana kind sir.” We tore through the Sumatran jungle like a tiger after prey. More than once I imagined the van losing control, flying off a cliff and crashing in the darkness of the jungle, constantly reminded that my seat belt was conveniently stuck within the bowels of the seat. I yanked on the belt with only a slight amount of desperation. When I asked the driver he waived it off like flicking a mosquito from his wrist. He took long, deep pulls from his Gudang Garam, the clove smoke wafting back into the van. The Gudang would keep him stimulated as the hour reached midnight. We continued to barrel though the mountains.  James said I slept through one particularly harrowing section of highway.  The driver continued to test our luck as he screamed the van passing semi-trucks packed with cargo headed to the coast, whipping around blind corners, having confidence in headlights appearing in the darkness.  

Eventually I fell into a deep slumber on the precarious jungle highway, lulled to sleep by the humid night air and the comfort of being out in the world unknown. James helped me knot two seatbelts together, which held me in a perceived womb of companionship as we rode together through the darkness.  After crossing the world many times in the past, I still managed to find that special place again.  The place where unknown visions lie around each corner.  Where anonymity and novelty blend to make the one of life’s most wondrous and most precious gifts.

Seven hours later we finally emerged to the healing aroma of the Indian Ocean, a blanket of salt air seeping its way into my nervous system, awakening a cascade of neurotransmission leading to restoration and ultimate relaxation.  Our day to day routine had been discarded and solace was found in the unknown.   

The town of Krui moved at a pace on the other end of the spectrum of daily life, vibrating at a frequency that followed the swells, squalls and tides.  Hidden along the Southern Sumatran coast and protected by the precarious stretch of mountainous jungle highway, Krui felt like an oasis protected from the insidious grip of globalization.  No Starbucks, no nightclubs or selfie worthy glamours beach lounges. The locals smiling while riding their mopeds lazily and happily along the coastal byways, with warungs serving spicy nasi gareng and Coconuts that had just been harvested from the trees swaying in the wind above.  

At night I dreamed of waves – finding my way inside the tubes of oceanic energy unloading onto the coral reefs. Warm, tropical water immersing me and taking me under the depths.  The sweet smell of the jungle lining the sea, humidity mixed with tropical plants and the rising steam from the moist floor of the jungle. 

I awoke as the sky turned from black to deep cobalt, the presence of the sun just beginning to reverberate the sky from the east.  From my room I could feel the building strength of the Southern waters, the latent power rolling through the open ocean.

I tried to wake quietly to give myself time to make a brew of Sumatran coffee, in which James did not partake, but James also lay awake as the sky shed its darkness, his mind and belly rolling with the same restless intensity.  Before my small mug was dripped full of the rich chocolate hued brew, James’ door would swing open and he’d come to meet me in the kitchen as the sun rose behind the mountains behind the villa.  Then we would begin our quiet frenzy heading towards the surf. Like a rabbit nearing its release from the cage, we tried to calm our minds and bodies.  I would do yoga asanas and practice pranayama while James waxed his boards and shifted fin sets around.  

The days we surfed the beach break out front, there was no need to wait for one another and soon James would say “see ya out there mate.’  I would find him in the lineup. 

We would move through that tropical landscape with its motor bikes and smiling faces, of wafting smells of burning trash mixed with pleasant birdsong and ocean breeze.  Other surfers rode their motorbikes along the small littoral highway.  We would meet other characters along the way, but in the end, it was just us.  Of coarse there was Levi, the lengthy surefooted Australian from the Sunshine Coast.  Trading waves with him at the Smack, silently encouraging each other to push ourselves over the slab like left.  He followed us along the coastal jungle highway and we ate peppered fish and spicy green beans for breakfast.  We would see Levi cruising his bike around Krui in the days that followed, meeting once more in the water at Ujung Bocur.  

Slowly and steadily I began to sync to the frequency of the Indonesian rhythm.  

With just two days left, there was one more wave to discover.

We looked out from the beach at Way Jambu, our Moto bikes parked upon the grassy bluff behind the sand.  The sand quickly opened to coral reef and out beyond the white water poured across the shallows.  We could see bombing sets out at the edge of the reef, three meter long spray flying from the bellows of the waves.  I hid my fear as best as I could, breathing deep and rhythmically.  But of course, Watman could feel it.  He sensed my fear like a shark senses blood, and he sank his teeth in to my shrinking urge to surf the heaviest barreling wave I had ever encountered.  ‘Come on mate, you have all the skills.’ He said encouragingly.  James paddled out first as I continued warmup and stretch.  I can’t much as surf without a solid stretch, so I took my time, secretly waiting for the sets to calm.  After ten minutes of delay, I paddled out. Part way across the reef realized I left my Moto key in the ignition of the bike.  I had to paddle back, lock the bike, and properly stored the key in my board shorts.  I once again crossed the reef, making my way to Watman’s position in the epicenter of the swell.  I sat twenty meters to his right as the set of left-hand barrels began to roar across the reef.  

He called me closer, waiving me towards the peak.  I finally paddled deeper, positioning myself in the epicenter of where the waves hit the shallow reef – waiting for the set to come.  Soon shadows lined the horizon, like a tribe of horseman approaching the battle line.  

To match the speed of waves coming from deep in the Indian Ocean, reactions must be lighting quick and hesitation must be vanquished.  As the lines began to stand up into walls of water, Watman paddled farther out and deeper still.  I watched his face turn to a growl and with all his strength he paddled into a big turquoise blue pit that began grinding across the coral.  As the wave began to go vertical, Watman went full steam into a free fall – his board pointed strain down as he fell through the air.  His fins locked into the water at the bottom of the trough, and he pulled up, angled and held his line, straight into the roaring cavern.   As he got completely covered by the water cavern the wave screamed past me and out of site.  

In seconds the next wave was upon me and there was no one else around. It was just me the ocean.  I paddled with all the strength I had, all my training could afford, the titanium in my cervical spine lifted upwards as I dug deeper into the water.  As the back of my board was lifted with the surge of water, I pointed my board down the cresting wave-face the had gone vertical.  My reactions were nimble as a jungle cat, and the board was under my feet in a sudden breath. I slid down the wave, pulled around the bottom turn and up into the opening of the tube.  Pressure on my back foot to slow my momentum, and under the lip of the Indian Ocean water cavern.  Stillness within the chaos.  Sucking, whirling sounds as the water drew from the reef and was hurled over me.  Seconds stretched to eternity, time crumbled and it all flashed before me.  My broken spine, and the albatross flying gently overhead while I lay on the sand in South Brazil waiting for the ambulance to arrive.  The training, the yoga, the stillness in the healing.  

After that the sets got bigger – the adrenaline rose higher.  The Indian Ocean provided its foot soldiers, marching across the vast depths, and I would be alone to meet the steady rollers.  The next wave in the set appeared less intimidating, but for the slightly smaller wave to break it would need to shoal on yet shallower reef.  I took the smaller, angry beast of a wave, and after pulling the drop the lip of the wave hit me like a falling coconut, hammering me from my board, and wiping me out in a violent tangle with my surfboard.  I was spun and whipped, ripped and thrown – at the mercy of the ocean, with the nerve racking anticipation for my board to come crashing into me.  I made myself flat as a flounder, keeping my body light and without putting pressure into the water.  I could feel the reef beneath me.  The coral raked my hands, my feet, but my body lightly skimmed across the coral without any solid blows.  And then like a boomerang, I felt the slicing impact into my left foot, which I knew was the fin as my board came crashing by.  I looked to see if my big toe was still attached.  No major injury, but blood started to steadily well from a two inch slice on the top knuckle of my foot.   The adrenaline quenched the pain and I was moving again, paddling back towards the peak.  

My brain was flowing with stimulation, dopamine and noreapenehrinoe pumping through the synapses.  More waves and more drops into the unknown. 

Two Aussies paddled out and we traded waves.  As I paddled over a bombing set I watched one of them charge the drop, leaning on his heal rail and directly backside into the pit. 

And so it was for seventeen days and seventeen nights. We rode or mopeds around the peninsula.  Krui was part of us, our veins pulsing with adrenaline from the surfs and motorbikes, and our bellies bubbling with spicy roadside meals.  Just as Krui made its way within our mind, body and being, ever so subtly we became part of it. Like drops of rain on the ocean, perhaps even Krui was ever so slightly different after we passed through.  

On one of our last nights, we left our villa and walked along the beach toward Ujung Bocur, careful not to step on a chunk of coral hurled from the sea that lay hiding in the sand.  The sun sank down below the coconut trees, leaving streaks of crimson lines with purple hues layered across the horizon.  We came around a bend and three travelers sat on the sea wall having Bintang’s and talking amongst themselves.  We said hello and I got the idea that these weren’t just hungry surfers looking for the most empty waves.  These were travelers.  Like myself, just as intrigued by the conversation as by the adventure.  One girl surprisingly was from the States.  Her travel companion, a friendly Kiwi guy.  Along with them was another girl, also from New Zealand, who had tattoos of faces and figures twisting up her arms. Behind the reflection of the setting sun in her eyes, was the glimmer of intrigue.  A certain hunger for novelty that only one who possesses can see in another.  The looks of one who truly travels. 

Our new found group talked and shared stories, and they told us of taking mushrooms while floating down the river that emerged from the jungle.  The sky grew dark and we soon said goodbye. James and I walked in darkness, back along the sand towards the villa, feeling our feet around the blocks of jagged coral.  

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We road our motorbikes through the organized chaos, floating above the sprawl, in and out of the presence of the world.  Passing by the rolling hills that reached the bay and stretched into the mountains of jungle where Sumatran rhinoceros still roamed and hid from man.  Like a soldier battle hungry, we would awake each morning to find the roaring waves pounding the coast.  Whatever the ocean held, we always knew we had to paddle out.  We would dive deep beneath the lip, dodging the cresting weight of the ocean.  I could feel the great distance between ourselves and the World beyond.  Hidden on this coast in South Sumatra, time dilated and we moved through our days in synchrony with nature.  We would travel up the coast with our driver as he sucked air through his teeth, his thin sinewy form folded between the seat and steering wheel.  We met few people and were always focused on the prize, constantly moving, chasing, waiting for the swell to fill in.  For the tide to drop, or to rise – always waiting for our moment to strike.