This Week In Not Surfing

1. I think perhaps there is a tremendous biological urge to self-sabotage. Deep down in the core-est, most fundamental-est DNA is a little trigger that that lives in constant state of speculation, built of an pragmatic understanding that stuff breaks, shit falls apart, nothing lasts forever. Evolution invites us, in our hubristic rationality, to fight it. The Buddhists take this to its logical conclusion, the wonderfully winking dictums of that tradition shaming us into an uneasy misunderstanding of the nature of life. Or rather, a cogent understanding married to the wrong expectation of success. We may train our genetic switches to turn on and off at survival-appropriate rates, these auto-embedded binary skills taking their form contextually : I should not eat bagels and this is positive because instead I shall drink kale (and/or) I shall not waste my ammo here for instead I will slaughter my assailant there. But the core system agitates towards the preemptive dissolution of comfort. Things are going too well and this is not good (or) y = x where y = complacency and x = eaten by tiger/lion/bear. And self-sabotage it may be if we don't pay attention. There is comfort in the negative, see.

2. Sunday night I was horsing around with my son and his friend on the subway platform waiting for a train up to the Bronx and we bundled a little too close to a wide-eyed black man. I didn't notice at first his apparent rage but pretty soon he was screaming "White Devil!" and telling me I might as well commit suicide by jumping on the tracks. He yelled and followed us. He gave us the middle finger. The kids didn't know what to make of it. I did, or sorta did, or think I did. In all likelihood, I simply don't. He eventually mumbled off, dragging his anger in two fists like heavy sacks.

3. Dark, brown, cold cylinders of shifting water have been hitting the coast near here. I've been playing hooky from my duties.