A free-write about free-writing.

Walls of Time

A free-write by Sheel Khemka

The spot marked X wasn’t there, but there he was, just a spec, so I headed towards him and it was strange when I arrived - that prompt familiarity on the other side of the world, searing hot sun down nape of neck, faint liquid glow of a vaporous air, and nothing but the long, lonely stretch of an endless sand being washed over at its ends by recurring waves.

AJ was looking bronzed and slim, donning a pair of weather worn coal coloured knee length board shorts that were quite low hanging from the hip, his face slightly peeling at the nose and temples, you could see the cheek bone shining through. He’d been at it for a few days already, you could see, no doubt slightly chuffed with his beachcomber come surfer dude visage.

His eyes twinkled like shells as I met his, and we shook hands and looked out together as if to the horizon but for the first time I noticed the size of the waves. They were almost directly above us, or so it seemed, tubular and snake like smooth sculpted from the last legs of an infinite, perpetual ocean, by some large invisible hand or was it a masked wind or break before crashing violently onto the shore, soon to be followed by another, then another, like an ongoing, endless conveyor belt of undulating wave. Ariston.

We chatted and I unbuttoned my long trousers and shirt, safely decked out beneath with my new found acquisition of a pair of mother of pearl Villebrequins that I’d worn today in the place of underwear.

After a minute the coast was propitiously clear, no wave and there was also no one else on the beach that day – not even the locals.

All the more for us then.

AJ hurried into the water, then took a dive lunging with one long breath as far as he could until he resurfaced at some distance, arms popping out outstretched and chirpily beckoning me over with some not un-wilful semaphoring going on, but then he simply carried on. The idea was we were to break past the wave break point in some kind of a race. From where I stood that would be a good three or four hundred metres out- quite far out you know- he’d had the start but I knew I was the better swimmer.

I carefully undid my sandals, chucking them with my shirt and trousers tied to far enough back so they wouldn’t get wet, and I sidled up to the water, almost tip toeing for no reason why. Then I plunged in projectile style, jettisoning arms forwards arc-wise, glibly chopping the low tide like whisks till I was braced with an onslaught of cold oceanic drift, which was followed by a rapid shivering, which soon started to abate as I slowly but gradually radiated from the core, arms accelerating into blade like movements against the sheer gelid of the water, and then into longer oar like pulls with my legs flapping semi-frenzied still. Hotting up it felt good though, and to be ocean borne again after who knows how long. The cold bite of salt water crest against arms and a torso that were being hot worked into lean muscle already.

Finally after a few strokes I propped my head up and scanned for AJ. The intervening drizzle, call it spindrift, was like a screened veil and it took me a couple of seconds before I could make out a scrambling, bobbing spec at some distance and it seemed like he was hollering something, but the separation between us was also gaining which seemed a bit strange, then slowly I could hear his echoes but then that too became barely audible, like a 1930s motion picture with just the puppet like movements of his arms, no sound. I could see he was making gesticulations to draw me over. I hollered something back but it was now my own echoes that were being as if returned, butted back by a now heavier, gaining wind. My every pull seemed to have the opposite draw. My arms and legs were doing the motions more than adequately, yet I was somehow travelling sideways in a line, floating but at the same time being drawn as if into the diagonal of an obliquely configured treadmill. So I started to swim without holding back. And, in spite of my past life - and proliferation of medals and countless trophies- my hands were tied. I simply couldn’t fight the current (which is what it was). I was being dragged. I also saw I was no nearer the wave, after so many strokes. Now that was bizarre.

So, with little choice I let it roll- and I swam directly with the tide. And if I’d guessed correctly I should still hit the wave just the other end of it.

Taking quick breath and raising head I turned my direction slightly, to about 20 degrees left, and carefully eyed up the new gangway. Road to heaven, or was it a stairway?

And, I rode with it.

Ducking, diving, free-styling, my head buried for speed, breathing at intervals like in training. Each time after a few strokes I nosed up for bearings. As long as I was still headed in the general direction of the wave it should be fine. Plunging in head first once more I could feel I was entering the zone, fresh Pacific salt water chill brushing triumphantly over the back of my head and rear delts, continuing for a good twenty seconds till I was smacked hard on the back of the head.

And suddenly I’d lost it.

Then thrown down and tumbled 360 degrees (under water), and then again in the opposite direction, and yet I wasn’t doing anything.

I’d lost control, disorientated, discombobulated, no idea, nada. Then I realised it was the wave, and then I accidentally kicked myself in the groin. The wave, it must have hit me on the head, I hadn’t seen it coming. Currents were all criss-crossing into each other and me caught in the middle, like a herring, rapids swishing and knotting everything with a kind of drum roll, so I kicked out hard but there was no end of the pool to kick against it was all water. Gyrating my pelvis I hoped to surface, but was pelted by opposing currents. At length I zig-zagged myself to the surface, only to realise it wasn’t air, then tumbled down again with a new rapacity, more reprisals sending me straight back, was it now the scaly bottom or was it the murky top, and still no way to find out, so little by way of bearings. Whichever way I turned the facade was a trompe d’oeil, and I was rolled like jetsom, further revolutions, mixed with some new found warpath of undertow wave. I remember being suddenly somersaulted twice or more, without reprieve. And finally I was about to lose it- when out of the blue was thrown into the air gasping like seals- for the breath that I knew had just saved me.

And then I didn’t see it coming. Treading water and a hyperventilating, shaking over what had just happened, about to sing my ave marias, and this time it was more sudden. More sublime. And it slowly crashed like a multi-storey car park into the base of my crown. Hammering, sloshing, in oscillating directions, then into a spin of some giant cosmic underwater washing machine, I was trapped as a kind of fodder by some curious operation of nature and now I couldn’t breathe, and no idea where to get air. My reflex curled me into a ball hoping to spring me back for thrust, but the great deluge of water had no sign of abating, only aggregating its lots for yet another go.

I was haemorrhaging air, asphyxiated in the sombre crush of that giant corkscrew, I could feel the gentle call of gravity creeping on in stages. Water around me filled up like a balloon, and my circumnavigation also spiralled downwards, into a series of pulling, and fading, like the end credits of a film. I knew that second I surfaced or else, but only to realise it couldn’t be anything but the else.

With zero reprieve. And it continued for two, maybe three minutes.

It was four ‘twenty foot’ waves in direct succession - or at least that’s what AJ told me after he’d found me ten minutes later all washed up on the beach, but still barely alive. How I’d managed it there to the grace of the powers that be, for it couldn’t have been any other. Or maybe it was those years of bloody swimming training I’d been forced into as a child.

Yes I’d been close to drowning.

We weren’t go back to that beach again, except for a once in a while wistfully re-examining that panorama from afar. There were plenty of other surf breaks in the area, and no point in taking the risk unless you fancied a not uncertain death.

Looking back the trick is to use the board to break through the waves, making sure that as the wave comes up you dive into and under it- lying face down, as if glued to your board- and once submerged you use the board’s nose as a buoy harnessing some of the energy of the wave as in a kind of opposite reaction, which then propels you and the board through the undertow and back to the surface of the water- where it’s now just behind the point where the wave breaks, behind the wave break point. Then if you were to look back you would see the wave augmenting and subsequently crashing behind you. Sometimes it’s easier done than said (honestly!), but this way you avoid the nasty tumble – and mind you, you never go in without a board, that is what is known as being a wally.

Out there past the wave break point it was different world. Valiant rip curls of cascading magnificence were simply not present- not one iota existent. All you could see was the ebb and flow of a gentle and long ocean face with soft rhythmical swells, as your board bobbs up and down quite routinely. Quite the God’s engineering to get your head around, a kind of Jekyll and Hyde.

Past the wave break point, on a typical day I’d see a gathering of bronzed slithers (surfers) on boards all taut and lined in clusters awaiting their ride, anticipating eagle eyed, chatting here and there within that ocean colour scene of blue unfazed, peerless calm as their voices carried – and then there was the casual allure of female often honed or tuned by the waves, then I’d wonder if I should get in to one of the clusters or stay put. But I wasn't too much bothered either way, surely I was here for the wave. The longer you waited you’d start to feel it, the tranquil inside. Pure zen out here. No care in the world. Silence except for the whispering and the simple bobbing of boards, the heat of a driving sun warming you like lizards against the cool of ocean spray, and what would anyone know they couldn’t reach you out here, you were also far enough disassociated to even think or really care. And just imagine for everyone else we were also just a spec, miniatures in a montage of endless sea of blue and green. And I was floating, absent of thought. I wonder if this is what it’s like for astronauts. Have you heard the story where astronauts go into space and have a melt down when the Earth starts to contract and disappear into tiny ball, and suddenly realise the grand insignificance of things, the earth, them, the cosmos, their whole life previous, everything just a spec of dust floating into a boundless eternity.

And this was bliss. Divine calm. No boredom this was therapy. Could stay out here all day you know. You needn’t think. Just lie back, the stasis, live the to-ing and fro-ing like a rocking chair. And the eery absence of things. The horizon, the expanse, the azure and some green, the bluebottle sky with its rumours of wind brushing through you to remind you that you were simply still alive.

Then I almost missed it. Within that moment was the spattering of the water, frenetic, all directions, surfers’ bodies swivelling around as in a shoal, arcing round in the direction of shore, then all hurtling frantic into a paddle. I was still the other way, so I could see a swell of water that then started gaining – then it came up to me and started to rise, then I tried to do the same, and then arced round head down on the board and paddled fever pitch to catch the wave. Too slow. That wave gently hoisted and dropped me back to the same place where i’d started, while at the same time it also quietly passed under. Then I could see it start to build in front and for a second I could see it transitioning. Others had caught it already and were now on it, sliding over it’s peak just as it broke and then articulating the hollow of its curve as it arced and then also gained, and then plunged right through in a long ridge like form to somewhere close to shore eventually.

My juices were also up and being induced into a state of outward flow, of their own. Having been up that close I could see there was surely little else to stop me ride the next wave like a silver surfer (or was I deeaming?), chiselled with years of swim training for an hour each morning before school, or else what was it all for? And yes surfing might look simple, but you also have to be quick off the mark and on-it, balanced, agile, and not just keen. Yet all the same..

I was processing what had just occurred less than a minute ago, when fragments of the posse started hurtling back on their boards, blobs of heads and boards paddling back at pace, the cheek (!) having ridden that wave they were right back on it, flushing themselves back over the wave break point and within moments reinstating with superlative ease in virtually exactly the same place they’d been stationed before. And there were two guys who’d settled dangerously close to me both sides. So presumably I was in the right place then. But I wondered what would happen, with the risk of us sliding over each other if we were caught together on the next wave, isn’t it pretty unsafe verging on spasmodia, or does that simply not happen?

The adjacents chatted over me in what sounded like Portuguese but could have been Spanish, I couldn’t make out a word of what they said.

We all gazed out expectantly on our boards, treading water, flapping and bobbing, little said but serenaded all the while by unspeaking rings of a mid-afternoon sun.

Now also I could feel it rising up again, in the base of my gut, as the next swell like a portent approached. Again the spearmint bodies of surfers swivelled like a compass towards shore, and now it was about skimming for speed like motors to catch the new crest of wave - as it heightened and billowed like a leviathan God of the seas rising from the deep to demonstrate its power and then reclining on its back turned on its axis like a great giant silver foil, frothing gallons of its own vaporised plume. Then I was on it, as indeed a multitude of others, teetering forwards in unison then thrown like confetti with the new force of the wave that like a great behemoth or combine harvester of the seas ploughed through its stretch without recall, at what must have been a hundred miles an hour, maybe eighty, and I insanely rode that wave with my chin stuck fast to the board (for I daren’t stand up), adrenaline and synapse coalescing like a soft rush to the brain, for a moment fusing atoms before strands of my gut stood each on end, hollowed out clean for a good 8 to 10 seconds as I skimmed down the incline like a spliced stone. Until the point I was flipped over, board tossed out in another direction but still roped to my ankle. I gasped air, then treading water again I pincered the board between knees and pulled like buckets back to shore.


Surfing as an experience for me shares something with free-writing, they could both be seen as analogous in that they both begin with that precious zen experience followed by a high octane euphoria, albeit the high octane part of surfing is more physical.

For me the zen of a free-write has great power, in that when you’re in the zone, it’s a self enclosed space, no-one (other than you) has access. You’re locked in and protected, just you. No judgment. And your focus is unwavering, unbroken. And then you also have the luxury to be immersed in purely raw truths (swimming around in an untrimmed medley in your consciousness), as you can’t lie to yourself. Truths are less complicated to deal with, as they’re true; and they all make intuitive sense - as they’re true. They are also eye-opening, as they’re truth revealing. And enlightening, in the sense of creating a feeling of euphoria - as it’s all honest and true. All in all, it (the zen of a free-write) is a golden harvest of truth.

And then whatever it is that your ‘soul’ is, you’re connecting with that ‘soul’ – your soul – through the occult practice of free-writing - and that’s a good feeling indeed (both with reference to the zen and the high octane part). Better than drugs, as there’s the heightened euphoria without the come down. You also end up with some interesting bounty in the process – raw truths about yourself and situations that were latent in your memory, something you can build on. Liken it to a treasure hunt, but where the journey itself becomes part of the treasure. And then when you find the golden nuggets, that’s only the beginning of a longer journey of pleasure to come (your life long practice of engaging in free-writing).

In a sense my proposition re free-writing as a source of heightened pleasure could also be seen as linked to the ancient Greek Epicurean prognosis that the highest pleasure in life is to be derived in the study of philosophy (or ‘sober reasoning’, Wikipedia) – which for them was the search for truth through logical argument.

On the other hand with free-writing, while it is also focused on truths, it – and this is the key - taps into our subconscious (as well as conscious – therefore going deeper), and engages the creative as well as the rational. All this surely makes for a more overwhelmingstate of heightened pleasure than the Greek Epicurean idea of philosophy or sober reasoning.

Had this been put to them about free-writing, would the Epicureans have agreed?

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21 February 2022