Hedonist's treadmill, philosopher's comb (in praise of Folly (Beach))

The waves lap upon the shore as they have done since time immemorial and as they will do for time unforeseen. They were they are they will be: there, beyond the reckoning of any wreckage.

Sometimes they are perfect in form: a long, rolling ridge that rises and then breaks forward into a scroll that comes crashing down into a wash of foam. One after another they come, as incessant as they are patient as they are determined to meet a destiny the same as doom.

From my home in the Appalachian foothills of Tennessee to Folly Beach, SC, is as easy and unbroken a trip by interstate highway as anyone could want. It is also almost the shortest distance between two points: me @home and the Atlantic Ocean. A happy coincidence. As is the overlap between the name of the beach and the name of this blog.

I have been there before, a while ago: before a hurricane washed away all manner of manmade protuberances and appurtenances. Those are back, in greater profusion and lushness than before, tempting another reckoning with the wind, but bravely and brazenly and lushly squeezing every margarita moment until then.

The dry sand is soft and floury. But beyond the tidebreak litter of sharp, broken shells, where it has been wetted and pressed and molded by the onrushing water, it is terra firma suavis; together with the water it is the rhythmic flowing encyclopedicure that needs no looking up and that no algorithm can replace.

Feel is the oldest of the senses, and the deepest, and here is its home, après womb, the closest thing to the garden from which we have all been cast out and to which we seek to return. The other senses are not absent: from afar sight imposes the occasional as the ideal, with a classic sameness, a geometry of gravity upon a graph; sound highlights the distant crashing to which we are only an audience; taste does not seek the overweening saltiness; and smell is rewarded mostly by the absence of effluvia or the spritzy industrial bouquets of sunscreen.

But it is feel that wraps the experience into a single, singular inheritance that begins with a look back over the shoulder at the rising, approaching ridgecomb into which you are pulled by the outward rush of undertow and into the path of which you dive, thrusting the arms back and leaving them by the sides and surrendering to the force of the downward curl that throws you face-forward through the roaring, salty surf and propels you along until you stand in the shallows, always with one desire: to go back and do it again.

Body-surfing is the only way to experience this. Admittedly, compared to the grace and athleticism of surfboarding, it is ridiculous -- indeed risible -- to watch: a head disappears into the foam and moves forward fifteen yards or so. But the point is not to entertain or to be watched or to master a wave with a board. The point is to become part of the wave itself, part of the energy that rises and crashes and propels. You become part of the medium not by embracing it, but by throwing yourself forward into the force that sucks you in and throws you forward, propelling you in a liquid jet through face-striating bubbles and enveloping you in a soothing salt wash.

It does require a modicum of skill: catching the right wave at the right place and at the right moment in its breaking; maintaining a shaft-like form without legs so high or head so low so that you are roughly tumbled, which it seems even the smallest wave can do. But the child can ride as well as the geezer, and vice-versa.

Conditions can be better or worse. Mostly it's a matter of waves being too chopped up by wind or too becalmed or too rude can be better or worse, but current can be a factor as can the quality of the water. I was rewarded (for what, I don't know) this time at Folly Beach with warm (not hot) water and modest but majestic waves, chariots of water rolling in like clockwork.

The hedonist's treadmill. Not a hedonic one. The hedonic one is the one you have to tread to maintain the homeostasis that keeps you at a mere baseline of happiness. Nobody ever mounted a treadmill in pursuit of pleasure. On the other hand, the hedonist's treadmill -- the wave -- is happiness itself. It is flow inside of flow, the cyclical surf in which pleasure reiterates again and again, without any more effort than a little timing and throwing yourself into it. It is the possession of pleasure by the medium of pleasure. The hedonist's treadmill is the philosopher's comb.