Proposal for long piece

I have been learning to surf in the past couple years. My travels have taken from San Diego, to Hawaii, to Costa Rica (twice), and to Australia. I would like to write a travel piece. Less about what I found at each place, which was various oceans and more various people, but more about the search. The search for waves is a quest that more than one person has undertaken. I would like to view my own search through the lens of the period of my life in which it has occurred. This is namely a period of failed relationships, lowering academic expectations and a growing obsession with the film Point Break. Point Break may serve as a mirror for my own travels (meant somewhat ironically, but only somewhat). I would hope to create a rich landscape of beaches as well as a rich landscape of emotional change. Here is a link to the Amazon site for Point Break it should give you some insight as to the tone of this piece. Another link you might be interested in is the hotel where I have stayed twice in Costa Rica. The third link that relates to my piece is just a video of some surfers being interviewed about their favorite Point Break quotations.

Persuasion

There is a man at the head of the table, he wears a white cravat, a vest and an ornate military coat. All eyes are on him though it has nothing to do with his attire. This man is a man of greatness. His skin is slightly glossy as he surveys the good work made of the meal set before him. the air in the room is filled with the scent of young hens cooked golden brown and eaten with no utensils. The lighting, which radiates from several large candelabras makes everyone at the table look lively and healthy. The light turning their otherwise pale complexions to a healthy full orange tinted glowing hue. For such soft faces it seems odd that all they speak of is war. " we have a navy registry right here"
" oh you won't find my ship in there". This man, captain Wentworth, was sent out on a floating piece of trash. Nothing fit for the ocean, so it no longer could be found in the active registry. It had been destroyed for scraps years ago. As the captain speaks of the pitiful state of his old ship an older man, an admiral seems offended. The young captain was lucky to get any charge at his age. He should be happy to get anything, to get a ship , to get a chance with the admirals daughter. The young captain should be grateful to even get a seat at the admirals table. The admiral’s daughter, who is mute through this entire exchange, looks uncomfortable in a greenish white gown. Her and the captain furtively sneak glances at each other as hands flash over the feast before them, fingers are picking bones bare like locust flying above the table top.
As they all eat and the candles slowly burn down the discussion turns again to work. The captain does not know when he shall be at sea again and the admiral can only hope that they all “ have the good luck to live to another war”. This seems natural to everyone in the scene; it is normal for one to hope for war and hope for employment. But as I watch the scene, hundreds of years later and captured on a flimsy piece of plastic and read by a laser, I can not help but wonder. Why all the talk of war? The admiral does not see the looks that captain gives his daughter. But I do. The admiral sees in his mind his ships in the great royal harbor ready to strike out to all corners of the world. He can see the whole world, but not his silent daughter and the captain, neither of them seem too important at all.

Dialogue

The three of us were leaving the bowling alley, one of our favorite weekend haunts, and it was just about midnight. David, Greg and I had just parted from our friend Danny. We had known Danny from when we were all boys, so fresh faced and young. In the last year though Danny was aging faster than the rest of us. His months in Seattle could be measured by the shadowy circles beneath his eyes. He was wasn’t the same gangly eighth grader who had caught a baseball in his cap in the outfield. We had all changed but he changed faster.
Now, Our time with Danny done, we piled into a car and headed uphill, just as the three of us.
“every time I see him I get depressed” I chimed in.
“yeah, me too. But it is good to see him you know?” Greg could barely convince himself of this.
After his comment we all fell silent for a bit, slowly driving towards our homes and trying not to think too hard about our wayward friend.
“ hey lets get something to eat” Dave prompted. Nothing could make you feel better than a full belly. But as it occurred to him he followed his own thought: what restaurant could be open at this time?
In no time at all I knew:
“T.C.”
“Fuck that, No. I am not going to fucking Taco Cabana” Greg was not in the mood for Taco Cabana; not in the mood for the gangs or the drag racers or the police or the heavy smell of tortillas and grease that always filled the place.
“c’mon man you can get a carne burrito for like 99 cents” I was beginning to beg.
“No way”
“fine. Then what else is open?”
“taco bell” this was a slap in the face. An insult to Mexican cuisine everywhere. I would not stand for this affront.
“ No. man if we are going to get Mexican we are going to get real Mexican.”
“Please Greg” David, breaking his silence was finally on my side.
“ It hurts my stomach”
“stop being such a girl”
I wondered why this seemed to happen every time we wanted to go eat. It was a battle over nothing. The only thing won was a momentary reprieve from the other problems in the car. The battle over T.C. was no more than a distraction. But the battle did have a winner. That winner was me. In thirty minutes I would be so full I could barely walk and my lips would be burning from the spice. This burn would go on for another thirty minutes after the meal and would be welcome as yet another thing to think about.

Scene Setting

Anytime that anyone could see into that room, the air was moving. Not due to fans though, there were no fans there, only people. The people became the machine to move the air, running circles and circles and circles running grooves into the mats. All of the mats were red; they were the right color and they hadn‘t changed in years. With red mats you couldn’t really see when blood fell onto them and had to be cleaned off. It was always cleaned off of course, but with red mats, at least there was never any visible evidence. On one of the four walls, above the pull-up bars, there was a list of names, followed by a list of years. Sometimes a new kid, probably from the eight grade would stand below this list to read it and to marvel at it. He might sit there and think to himself, maybe my name will be up there once, maybe twice, maybe four times like Kurt and Steven’s. I myself knew I would not be a state champion that year; I didn’t really bother too much with the list anymore. I just had to stay focused and do what I could do to move the air. On the red mats there were nine white hollow circles, one for each pair to go to work. Circles that were meant to be filled with colliding bodies. They felt empty when filled with anything else. Sometimes a football team would put rows of white folding plastic chairs onto our mats so they could watch some tape in the room. They had no idea how invasive there presence was to those nine white circles. I wished they would have at least taken of there cleats. The mats can’t take sharp things, at least nothing sharper than elbows and knees and the occasional nose. The tile floor that lay beneath the red Styrofoam and white circles was blue, a fact that any new kid probably had no idea about. It was only once a year that the tile saw any light. It never saw real sunlight; in that room there were no windows. The only light that the tile floor or those mats or the machine of the team really saw was a mix of fluorescent cool blue and the filtered white coming from heavily frosted skylights. One man was a fixture under those lights, he was the coach. Though his name had changed, he had been the same man for over fifty years. He was gruff and used short phrases like “sprints. 20 of them.” The machine could be willed by his words and nothing more. If we had all our parts in order there would have been fourteen of us to respond to his every demand. Fourteen of us to be constantly glancing over our shoulders and hoping not to hit the walls, which were covered with red pads, but these did little. They were no friend like the mat on the floor, which would welcome us all at the end of the day, supine and suffocating with no air moving. We might get a rest, allow ourselves to halt the grind for a few moments then again maybe not. More likely we all would be lucky enough to hear the coach’s favorite phrase. It went like this “get tough”.

note on first story

I am not really sure how to get the indentation correct on the blog. I have been playing around with it but have not been successful. If any one can help me with that it would be apreciated.

The first story

A chance meeting

It was so humid in the computer room that I could feel my fingers slide around on the key board. The weather was fairly average for a spring break morning on the pacific coast of Costa Rica. Air slowly propelled by a fan overhead could only begin to be described as balmy; thick is a better word, coursing in and out of my lungs like hot mud. Little droplets of condensation were running down the computer screen. The glowing bright white emitted from the screen seemed offensive and out of place in such verdant air. My colleagues and I were finally allowing ourselves to take a break which we all felt was well deserved. But in that small computer room, which was hot as hell despite being the only room with air conditioning we had access to, I was going against the spirit of a break, harkening back to the place we had all tried to leave behind. From that sauna of a room through the wonders of the internet, I was able to see exactly what had transpired two thousand miles north of me. It took quite a bit longer than I had hoped; it is a constant marvel that a university which has one of the greatest computer science programs in the entire world has such a terrible web page. I couldn’t help but stare as the blank page filled one element at a time, a cup filling with water, much like the one I was drinking from. Water was a commodity in Costa Rica, one commodity that was indeed not hot, like everything else. I was pretty much sunk when I could see all there was to see on the screen. Drawn downwards away from where I was sitting, sucked up north to the cooler climate, and finally to another webpage. This time it was e-mail.

“Professor, I would like to make a meeting to discuss some issues concerning my performance in your class.”

With this I was able to brush it all off. My colleagues and I stepped out into the sun to go grab some burgers. The tables were red and white checkered, the flies buzzed conspicuously in our ear and the waiter spoke little English. He understood just barely enough to serve us all up a dripping mess of a sandwich which we all ate happily. That beef monstrosity cost us all about a dollar forty; a mid range meal. The thing felt like a rock in my stomach; I guess the extra fries might have been one step too much. The waves were groaning even louder than my belly and had to be satiated so with my board in hand I retreated from the jungle to the sea and as the water got rougher the landscape got smoother. Right down to the rocks on the beach, it was all just nice and smooth.
One can’t stay bobbing on a board forever. Sooner or later your hands turn to prunes and the salt starts to sear your eyes. As weightless as the boulder in my belly had felt in all that buoyant saline, on land it was clear it would set a bit heavy.
The meeting I had arranged was to be proceeded by approximately 18 hours and seventeen minutes of travel. To begin: a van ride through third world roads, this time I was sweating not from the light of the sun but from the oncoming headlights in my own lane. Next: a trip though a Guatemala airport. The man who sat next to me smelled strongly of body odors and as if he had been eating garlic in copious amounts. The snorts he emitted at 5 minute intervals served like a snooze button on an alarm clock for the entirety of my overnight flight. Almost asleep, snort, cough, ruffle tissue, repeat, on and on and on. Next: a seven hour layover in LAX, sleeping upright in a chair. The air conditioning in this building definitely worked, sweat was turned to shivers. The smell of an old McDonald’s bag in the nearby trash can welcomed me back to the US of A. Finally: Cricked neck and burning eyes and tan skin, I emerged in North California, awaiting what lay for me only a few miles ahead. Only the final fraction of my travel remained.
I am never quite sure how unprofessional I look while riding on a skateboard. My gut instinct tells me the answer is very. To get to my meeting I was forced to bob and weave like a boxer. Instead of avoiding deadly blows, all I had to do was dodge the silken grey strands and two inch long grey-orange furry insect larva hanging in wait from sweet smelling trees. Arriving by skateboard to an appointment is questionable; however, there is no question that it is a faux pas to arrive with some lesser life form as copilot on your shoulder. The caterpillars aren’t even satisfying to squash, not on the way to a meeting. They don’t make a crunch. Soon enough I found myself on the final stretch, surging down the street on a piece of particle board. Wheels make miniature thunder as they fight with cracks in the asphalt. There is no handicap ramp to the office where I was headed, so the board was silenced. All that was left was the leaves rustling and the slow mulch of caterpillars eating and falling and swaying. The office door was somewhat plain, and closed, bright blue. The hallway was cool blue and filled with the low hum of an ice machine, which only made the place seem colder. Knock Knock. No voice could be heard, just the hum and the cold and the acrid smell of some chemical, maybe vinegar. Knock Knock. Where were the flies and the garlic body smell now? Knock Knock. Nothing but the hum of the ice machine, then from behind, in an ambush. “Oh hello”