Returning to the Source

 

[Rough draft of something I will edit and suss-out a bit more in near future]

 

I started skateboarding in 1985. I was 11-years-old. It is now 2024. I turned 50 last month. That means I’ve been skating for…39 years. 39 fucking years. After all that time, and so-called “experience,” I sit here still trying to figure out how I “relate” to skateboarding. “Relate” is such an inaccurate word. I don’t know what word I am really looking for here, or if the proper one even exists. All things that come close: Resonate. Integrate. Inter-relate. Experience. Personify. Allow-to-Flourish. Associate. Bring Forth. Present. All of these are somewhat appropriate, but none of them individually, or collectively, really hit the mark. Skateboarding, like life, is this big abstract phenomena, and things of that nature often fall outside the scope of language. I suppose that’s why two of my favorite philosophers (Lao Tzu and Heidegger) often dwelled on the limits of language. If this written blog is to focus on my relationship to skateboarding (in my “twilight years”), I’m off to a bad start if I freely admit the words utterly fail. So, let’s cast words aside for the moment, and move to something else: emotion(s).

 

Various forms of social media now suggest “reels” to people (thanks, insipid algorithms). Of no surprise, my “suggestions” are often modern skate clips. I occasionally look at them. Why, I don’t know. They always fill me emotion, and not good ones. Remorse. Sadness. Contempt. Alienation. Disgust. Indifference. Disdain. Despondency. Heartache. Mournfulness. And that’s just to name a few.

 

If you understand why I have those feelings, no further explanation is needed. If you don’t understand it, I am not sure any explanation is possible.

 

Well, a few days ago I saw something that was the opposite of all that. Navs (Darren Navarrette, the renowned vert skater) has been posting something totally out of the norm: Him riding a very old-school “pig” deck, doing some very “old-school” skating on some mellow banks, ditches, and other assorted street stuff. It was some of the most refreshing and fun-looking skateboarding I’ve seen in quite some time. And of course, me being me, I have been perseverating over the question “why?” Why was this refreshing? Why did I like it? Why was it magical? Why did it give me the emotional reaction it did? After a few days, I think I have a few answers.

 

·      There is no pageantry of difficulty or daredevil-ness.

·      It’s an overt counter-narrative to accepted (skate) norms (what I always liked about skateboard in re to larger society).

·      It’s clearly being done for pure, unadulterated, fun.

·      It’s “beginners mind.”

·      There is no cool-guy element.

·      It’s accessible and relatable.

·      It’s full-circle, return-to-the-source-energy.

 

All of these things hit somewhere very deep, at least to me. They are elements of the skateboarding I knew and loved. elements that have seemed to been lost to time…and mainstream normalization of the “sport.”

 

[Yes. That is it. That is what I am really trying to do now, at this stage of my skate life, and with this blog…is re-kindle, re-ignite, dis-cover, etc. those elements of skateboarding I knew as kid. To be clear, I do not wish to “relive the old days.” But rather, I want to better tap an old, ancient, and timeless Stoke that has been somewhat obscured with time. Hah. I think Heidegger basically had the same objective with the original concepts of Being and ontology, but he didn’t skate, so what does he know? Lao Tzu says it well in Chapter 16 of the Tao The Ching, “Returning to the source is serenity.”

 

I think, if anything, this blog will serve to be a chronical of my attempts to return to that source. Navs has pointed the moon. It is currently 11:52pm. Time to go roll for a bit under the star light.]