Of sex and surfing — what is the difference?
Think of the minutes in the approach to climax and compare them to the minutes after the orgasm. What a difference a few minutes makes — definitely less focused, suddenly more prone to reflection. The transformation is so sudden, one might ask what explains it? Here it’s hard not to psychologize or neuro-psychologize: those must be some powerful chemicals juicing through the brain, which then just turn off, damming the floods of engrossing pleasure.
Surfing, by comparison, is wonderful not because of a brain-juiced adrenaline rush (though there’s that), but because of what all of the enjoyment is about, beyond one’s mere state of inner experience. It’s about the the way one is harmoniously related to what lies beyond — to the wave, to its next moment, and to the ocean that’s serving it up.
My full post at Powells.com is here.
