All Our Waves Are Water
Page 19
Eben, the younger, has not learned fear yet. Repeatedly he runs into the violent waters.
“Stop already!” I shout after his fourth attempt. “It’s too big today.”
“No!” Eben screams, running toward the churn.
I chase him, scoop him up.
“You have to wait till you’re bigger,” I say.
“I’m already bigger,” Eben shouts.
Then I have to tickle torture him. Laughter is often the only way.
We return to our sand crab moat. Kaifas, looking self-satisfied that he did not get scolded, says, “I like small waves, Dadu.”
“You do?” I say. “What do you like better though? Big waves or small waves?”
“I like all waves,” he says.
It’s a good gig, parenting. A time you realize everyone must be forgiven forever and ever because we all went through dealing with our parents. When your toddlers are climbing on you at 5:30 a.m. and you haven’t slept in three days and the coffee doesn’t work anymore and your sentences aren’t quite forming and your wife reminds you that you didn’t get half-and-half or toilet paper yesterday like you said you would, well, you know all should be forgiven. Always and forever. In the words of Rotten Robbie, “This shit ain’t easy.”
But at least we are in the same sinking boat, humans. Nobody gets a lifeboat until we all do.
After some friends and I raised a bit of money for Sonam but once again failed to get him home, Sonam called me a few years ago, saying he’d left his vows, had gone and gotten married, had a baby, and was now, while living in Queens, broke and unable to send money home anymore.
“I still good, Ja-ma,” he said. “But I tink dis parent life America bery hard.”
I agreed. I wanted to make things better. I tried to get a book proposal together about Sonam and I returning to Tibet to see his family. And many times I thought it was the right time. But in the middle of each attempt, something would thwart me.
I spoke to Sonam the last time a couple years ago and was finally planning a visit to New York to meet his family. But then Eben was born. Then we were moving. I delayed and delayed. Sonam doesn’t even really live in the modern world. Email is something he catches up on once per year. I’m not much better. By the time I could finally go to New York, Sonam had stopped responding to both calls and emails. He was not on social media, and still is not.
I have not been able to find him through our few old mutual friends in India, and about 20 percent of the Tibetan population is named Sonam.
Did Sonam finally go home to Tibet? Is he working too hard? Did he go too far in trying to find justice for his brother? I don’t know. But I know we will find each other when the time is right. I also don’t worry about Sonam. He is wise. He will land on his feet.
Still, I miss him. I want Amy and our boys to know him and meet his family. I want them to know the peace of those songs and hikes in McLeod.
So, if you meet a very happy Tibetan father named Sonam Wangdue—he apparently grew his hair long like one of those Tibetan warriors—please tell him to call Ja-ma. My phone number has not changed. I even sometimes check the old Yahoo email. Tell him that you read his story. That I’m grateful to have learned from him. And that I many many pray we Tibet going soon.
A Brief Note on “Reality”
Books are lies. This one is no different. Our memories fool us. Recent neuroscience suggests that the more we remember an event the more we change that event in our minds. Memoirists are doomed. To boot, language—being a symbolic representation of a thing or idea, a thing or idea that must be re-conjured by the reader’s faulty memories and faulty senses—can never represent reality. Nevertheless, language is what we have. It can be beautiful. And it’s possible, I think, to use language to point toward truth. That is what I’ve tried to do here. The stories are real and true to my memories of actual events. The facts have been checked. That said, I’m sure there are plenty of places where my memories, or language representing those memories, miss the mark. Also, there are places where I knowingly warped time. The section on Robert Thurman is the most imaginary. I attended a number of Thurman’s lectures at Columbia, as well as listened to a number of his recorded talks, and took in all the information I describe. Thurman’s words had the effects on me I describe and catalyzed the reflection on death I describe. But Thurman never went on that specific long-winded tangent in his class when I was there. For the narrative, I bottled the thrust of the message, and the feeling I experienced, into one lecture. And to stay accurate, I quoted his introduction to his own translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Book of Natural Liberation (the best translation I’ve yet to read). I’m grateful to Dr. Thurman and Bantam Books for allowing me to use the passage.
The second place I warp time is in Bali. I’ve made four trips to Made’s over the last decade, adding up to about a year there. Jimmy has been there each time and we have surfed hundreds of waves together. Perhaps it’s the ethereal nature of that place, but those waves and conversations have blurred together to the point that I can’t remember what was said when, which waves were ridden when. All of the things I describe in that chapter happened, but I collapsed time once again, partly because I can’t recall the exact order, partly to help the story arch.
Acknowledgments
Some of the stories in this book include adaptations from articles published in San Francisco Magazine, Yoga Journal, the Surfer’s Journal, and Shambhala Sun (now the Lion’s Roar). I’m grateful to all of the editors at those publications for the opportunity to write and for allowing me to adapt the articles for this book.
Countless people supported me through living and writing the stories contained in All Our Waves—too many to mention—but none more than my family, especially: my mom, Janice, who doubles as my coach, therapist, and editor; my dad, Peter, whose grace, humor, love, and honesty in facing his own death was key fuel for these words; my sister, Ciel, whose grit and compassion in getting through medical school and beyond has been a constant inspiration; and my stepmom, Margaret, who doubles as my social media publicist and never fails to get me laughing when I need it. I owe the biggest debt of gratitude to my wife, Amy, who encourages these quixotic endeavors (and helps edit them) while literally helping cure cancer by day, keeping our calendar in order, and being a ridiculously stellar mom. Can we get a date night soon, honey?
To our boys—Kaifas, Eben, Hanafin—if you ever decide to pick this dusty book off the shelf and see what your gray-haired dad was up to when you were just twinkles, know that, even though I loved my time rambling solo around the globe and am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to write books, I’ll never have a job that’s more enlightening or that I’m more proud of than being your dad. Every day you remind me what’s most important—and that if you keep your compass on love you’ll always end up on the best island. May you learn from your dad’s mistakes.
Of course, I also want to thank all the characters in this book. My memories and writing, I know, fall far short of being able to reflect who you really are or the experiences we shared. Thank you for putting up with my best shot. Thank you also to Karen Rinaldi, Hannah Robinson, Harper Wave, and HarperCollins for having faith in this project from its foggy beginnings, and for your combination of openheartedness and shrewd intellectual discernment. I’ll paddle out with you anytime.
About the Author
Jaimal Yogis is an award-winning writer, outdoorsman, and frequent teacher. He is the author of the memoir Saltwater Buddha, which has been made into a feature documentary film, and The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Survival, Success, Surfing and Love. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, he has written for ESPN: The Magazine, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Magazine, the Surfer’s Journal, and many other publications. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Amy, and their three sons.
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Also by Jaimal
Yogis
Saltwater Buddha
The Fear Project
Copyright
Excerpts from Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Understanding in the Between by Robert Thurman, copyright © 1994 by Robert A.F. Thurman. Used by permission of Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
This is a work of nonfiction. The events and experiences detailed herein are all true and have been faithfully rendered as remembered by the author, to the best of his ability. Some names, physical descriptions, and other identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
all our waves are water. Copyright © 2017 by Jaimal Yogis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover photograph courtesy of the LeRoy Grannis Estate and M+B Gallery, Los Angeles
Digital Edition JULY 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-240520-3
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-240517-3
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* I’m collapsing time here. These points were actually strewn over a number of lectures and writings by Thurman.
* There are, however, numerous studies going on at Stony Brook University and other medical schools cataloging that people who clinically die and are resuscitated often have out-of-body experiences in which they see themselves being resuscitated and actually know what was done to them by doctors while they were clinically dead.