Tumblin' in the Seaweed

One time in late 2002 or early 2003, a little boy looked at me and said, “Tumblin’ in the seaweed,” when I was tumblin’ in the seaweed while trying to surf in Santa Cruz. He said it just like that. Just looked at me and told me what I was doing, as if he or I might not have noticed it otherwise, as if the words brought the action from abstraction to reality, and then to far deeper abstraction. Just a kid! Tumblin’ in the seaweed. Just making note of something beautiful and interesting and curious. Something banal and uninspired on the one hand—the mechanics of waves, my lack of skills, the nuisance of slimy seaweed. Another Santa Cruz beach day. But the kid said the words, and I’ll never forget it. Suddenly it was cosmic, magical. What would possess a kid, of these soulless times, to say a thing like that? I still wonder.