MILLION DAYS TO DARKNESS
Death, Diamonds and the Episodic Wave
BY MICKEY DORA
Creator and prodigy of the Malibu Mystique, high-performance
pioneer, standard bearer of the surf rebel, prophet of surfing's
apocalypse and angry icon to an ever-expanding audience he
unwittingly helped to create...Mickey Dora has led a life dedicated to
the ultimate free ride. Yet, in many ways, Dora has paid a high price
for his philosophies of freedom: harassment and incarceration,
gossip, notoriety and blatant commercial rip-offs have proved to be a
relentless nemesis. He dropped off the public surf scene in 1974.
Now, after years of wandering in the desert, both metaphorically and
literally, Dora has delivered a new and ominously literal parable of our
sport and our times. Without blurring the lines between fact and
fiction and self-delusion, let me begin by recalling a few events.
The interrogation starts:
(Big Brother): Were you ever in the Military?
(Man in Custody): No.
Did you ever serve in any other Armed Forces?
No.
Did you ever work for the Government?
No.
Do you own any property?
No.
Do you have a home?
No—just Post Restante only.
Do you have any insurance or a pension?
No.
Do you have a bank account or credit card?
No.
Have you ever been on welfare or food stamps?
Nope.
Do you own anything?
No.
Have you ever been married?
Nope.
Are you homosexual?
Isn't everybody in this screwed-up country?
Who the hell do you think you are?
Who the hell do you want me to be?
Just answer the question, yes or no. How do you make your living?
By the oldest of livelihoods, Free Trade.
Now what the hell would that be?
Barter.
You're a liar! You're trafficking in drugs.
You owe the IRS $300,000. Case closed.
To quote Faustus: "Youth and debauchery are magnificent, but
eventually you have the Devil to pay."
Stripped naked, I stood there manacled, shackled and chained, like
any other slave caught in the 20th century, where human beings are
trapped, brainwashed and otherwise destroyed by a mindless
disciplinary process.
No Amnesty International or bogus Helsinki Accord.
With everything I owned confiscated I was tossed a government-
issue jumpsuit accompanied by the inevitable standard caustic
remark, "Hey, man, what's your beef?"
With one of my particularly favorite prosaic facade expressions, I
responded "Among other things, improper abuse of credit."
A few of the local homeboys were checking me out as if I were a
two-bit purse snatcher. One blurted out, "Oh, yeah, went to Vegas for
the weekend, huh?"
In my best diction, I replied, "No, not exactly. Just took a wee trip
around world."
"Huh? Oh, yeah! How long were you gone, man?"
And I was able to make the triumphant declaration: "Seven years,
man!"
A loud cheer burst forth as the guard escorted me to my cell:
Maximum Security, Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary, Long Beach,
California.
From 1974 to 1981 I covered well over 200,000 miles over four
continents 90% of the time reconnoitering the coastal areas of India,
Africa, the Far East, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, South America
and hundreds of islands.
Only in Europe did Interpol or the Feds ever get close. Only after
five ~passports and millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on the hunt
did I, with a gun pointed at my head, volunteer to return to the USA
(just visiting, thanks), thus ending the most extraordinary surfing
odyssey in the history of mankind.
Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.
The way they laid down the law you'd have thought I was the top
Burgermeister of the Baader-Meinhof, or that I was in the power of
the Red Brigade, Black September and all their related modern
counterparts.
In the course of time, with a stroke of the pen, I was finally kicked
out of the pen with a federal misdemeanor, after being bottled up in
their suffocating reform schools for two very long, solitary years.
It was all too absurd: no trial, no dark suit, no presidential pardon.
They gave Nazi war criminals a better deal.
No doubt the question arises: Should I have gotten the firing
squad for all those amazing escapades I pulled off during the fifties,
sixties and seventies?
Anyhow, free again, I wasn't about to sit around waiting amid all
the trappings of modem urban materialism and let TV rigor mortis
infest my mind. I stand or fall, live or die, by my own decisions. To be
splattered across a California freeway is not my idea of a rewarding
end. I'll never rot in one of those jam-packed, clammy, dead-end
cemeteries of the North. I'd rather be consumed by a Great White
while riding perfect waves along the Wild Coast, or devoured by a
desert lion while diamond gazing somewhere in the Namib, the oldest
desert in existence, a land of splendor and grandeur, the land where
man first walked this planet.
What better place to end one's life than in Primordial Africa?
By adopting my particular type of self-imposed exile I can
outdistance these scourgers of mankind: those who believe in
consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence
without consciousness—these caricatures who go to ludicrous lengths
to assert their own importance, their own grotesque, overblown
ambition.
The preconceived, hypocritical values of these scourges are their
calling cards to the temples of mediocrity and cultural impoverishment.
These schizos are forever in motion, spinning out of control, unable to
slow down for fear someone might get a glimpse of their hollowness,
their vulnerability and lack of moral courage,
I wonder what the ancient Hawaiians would think of today's world.
The once-prodigious, noble Hawaiian Enlightenment, with all its
virtues, tribal loyalties and irrecoverable surfing skills, has in the end
availed them nothing.
Africa represents a last chance for the Human Spirit; one of its few
remaining opportunities to return to the place from whence it came.
Since most of you are not yet intimate with my idiopathic mind, let
me explain that I've been commissioned by SURFER Magazine to
formulate my general principles of self-aggrandizement. My
hypothesis is 180° opposite to present-day logic (The Fool Plus One
Theory); Quantum Waveriding being the prime factor in the equation.
As child prodigies sometimes do, I continue to discover my aptitude,
which has endured to this present moment. If you are willing to
accept the assertion that surfing is a colossal waste of time, then I'll
concede I've wasted my life. But in a better and more graceful manner
than any of my two-legged counterparts, no matter what the cost or
consequences.
As manifested in today's environment, it is extremely more
hazardous to compete with the five billion out-of-control human
beings endlessly copulating and howling to the gods of growth and
planned waste, rewarded with IOU paper promises to their
nonexistent Promised Land.
I’ve been globe-trotting since the age of three months. Getaway is
the name of the game, and I've been burning up the road ever since.
The flames are in my blood permanently.
I grew up in probably the most perfect climate in the world. In that
time dimension the California and Hawaii beaches were rarely used,
mostly wild, untamed and breathtaking.
It's hard for me to believe, but at the time of Christ (that's not even
one million days ago) there were only about 170 million people on
Earth. For over 1,000 years, the world's population stayed about the
same. Only near the turn of this century did the number of humans
start to become troublesome.
| Then, with the introduction of the massive credit system, which
gained momentum at the end of the fifties, unanimously endorsed by
the economists, politicians, professors and forecasters, the population
took off for the stratosphere.
Today, the world's population is out of control, raging like a prairie
fire. When will the finite limits of the globe suffer a cataclysmic collision
with a population gone wild? Will it take five, six or ten billion people?
It is all the evolution of the human race relentlessly approaching its
final destiny on this planet; a destiny which ultimately ignores the
futile efforts of those who think they are shaping the
world!
It's too awful for me to contemplate. When anthropologists look
back on the sixties, seventies and eighties, they will shudder in
disbelief.
"Let the fetus live so it can starve to death.”
Undaunted, I'm going to continue to live and evolve in this irrational
world, infected as it is with mysticism, superstition and grinding in-
competence. The virus has spread to every aspect of life on our
planet. Africa, in particular, is now riddled with demagogue dictators
who make the megalomaniac Emperor Bukasa of the Central African
Republic and Idi Amin look like pipsqueaks in comparison.
Reason and Justice are only mindless platitudes; the real rule on
this planet is “Might is Right." You must either conquer and rule or
lose and serve, triumph or suffer, be the hammer or the anvil. History
gushes with blood.
The coup de grace was the Berlin Conference of 1878, which was
bequeathed to Africa by the former Colonial Nations, cutting up the
continent so these power brokers could plunder at will, eventually
sapping the foundations of all tribal and linguistic uniqueness. It was
a blow that will take generations to undo—if such a I turnaround is
even possible.
And the world wonders why the Black Continent is coming apart at
the seams. Starvation in the hundreds-of-millions is inevitable. AIDS is
pandemic. If a two-legged Black Mamba doesn't slit your throat, then
a fervent patriot might just put a bullet between your eyes for
blurting out liberal U.S. propaganda. The Afrikaners, Germans and
British have no great historical compulsion to be unduly fond of one
another; they act in desperate partnership here only because they
realize that if they fail to hang together, they will hang
separately.
Each day 375,000 black workers descend some 3,240 meters into
the bowels of the Earth, to a depth at which temperatures increase
by 1°C for every 50 meters of descent. These are the deepest gold
mines in the world, and the richest.
The gold deposits of the Witwaterstrand are the greatest
subterranean treasures so far found by man. Hundreds of black
workers die every year through explosions, cave-ins, and so forth.
Thousands of tons of rock and gravel are dug just to produce a few
ounces of gold. Tons of the pure metal is shipped to Central Bank
locations throughout the world, only to be placed underground, once
again, in vaults.
The U.S. Government says this gold is worth only $42 an ounce, but
anybody with a bit of common sense knows otherwise. The U.S.
Government says gold is too valuable to be used as money. I
presume then money should have no value.
It brings to mind that great American fanatic, William Jennings
Bryan, who railed against crucifying mankind upon a Cross of Gold.
Better to enslave him in a sea of debt.
It's a funny thing, in all the years I've lived in Africa (no affront
intended to Irving Berlin) not once have I heard God Bless America
sung. Unbelievable, eh? I keep my mouth shut, my mind alert, my
eyes straight on riding a few extra- ordinary waves.
In 1970 Jeffreys Bay was still relatively unknown. It's been
deteriorating ever since (like everyplace else).
However, the real treasure chest of waves lies somewhere else. No
matter what the population of the world ejaculates into, nobody is
going to venture into this world within a world, wherein the Final
Destination is the ultimate solitude—madness or death.
South of the Tropic of Capricorn, north of the meridian of the
Cape of Good Hope, 30° south, 18° east…In the Heavens of the
Southern Cross...below the sinister cycle of survival by killing and
the endless sacrifice of the weaker in order in make the strong
stronger: There lies Namaqualand and, north, the timeless prehistoric
Africa, a world of primitive drives and desires, inhabited by the Gikwe-
Bushmen 25,000 years ago during the Middle Stone Age. Their
ancestors occupied the same territory continuously for 25 million
years, since the dawn of the world, when Man and Beast were
brothers. They are the oldest sitting tenants on Earth.
Near the mouth of the Orange River lay the richest deposits of
gem diamonds in the world. They were probably washed down by
prehistoric rivers from volcanic deposits inland. This soft material,
known as "kimberlite" or "blue ground," is a rich alluvial stew, the
most prized ingredient of which is the diamond.
In the language of the Hottentots, the word Namib, literally
translated, means Waterless Land of Death. The Atlantic shore of
Namib is known as the Skeleton Coast, a narrow belt of wasteland
some 80-180 kilometers wide and more than 2,000 kilometers long.
The Skeleton Coast begins near the Olifants River in the south
and ends near Mossameda in Angola to the north. Geologists blink
their eyes and scratch their heads in disbelief when they first view the
Namib. For myself, this is the most extraordinary geographical,
biological, phantasmagorical piece of real estate I have overcome
across. Bewildering and mesmerizing is this science fiction
landscape, and vain is my attempt to explain or justify it. Suffice
that it is one of the most savage and primeval scenes imaginable—
almost incomprehensible to modern man.
Few things have changed here over the last few million years.
Where great four-tusked elephants once made their own laws, roving
bands of black-backed jackals have now inherited this living
nightmare. Dwarf trees survive here that live 1,000 years, and have
tentacle-like leaves which produce a flower every 25 years. This is the
hideout of the baboon spider and the deadly black scorpion—and
their number-one enemy, the golden mole, a ferocious predator.
Like a surrealistic airbrushing, a few dust devils spin unconstrained
over glistening, bright-yellow sand dunes. These dunes look like
they've taken over the entire Earth, creating a mirage of unimaginable
proportions.
The shoreline topography is a junkyard of rusting history littered
with relics of old) and modern shipwrecks, interspersed with whale
skeletons, fossils and semi-precious stones. Sporadically, washed-up
corpses of giant squid—predator to the Sperm whales that roam off
the continental shelf in the cold South Atlantic depths—seem to
levitate over the hot sands. Their ghostlike, distorted cadavers
somehow reflect into the misty environment, encasing the sea and its
waves, just a few meters away, in a shroud of ominous adversity.
Far above, in the metallic African atmosphere, a black eagle winding
down on Current of air produces a very unsettling sensation.
This neck of land would make an impression on the most invincible of
minds.
The Theory of Probability rapidly works against you the deeper you
manage to penetrate into this surreal stretch of coastline, until the on-
and-off chance of getting out alive becomes zilch.
Standing to the right, sand dunes, higher than those of the Sahara or
the Gobi, play tricks with your sense of time. They were in existence
200 million years before the Pharaohs. In this dry air your dehydrated
body, too, would be perfectly preserved like the Egyptian mummies,
forever, into perpetuity.
Ever seen a man dying of thirst? Do you know what happens to him?
He lurches around in a tight circle, eyeballs bulging out of his head,
choking, his tongue hanging down farther than his chin... cracked and
swollen, like a chunk of rotting liver.
At this stage, it's a hundred-to-one shot he's going to kick the bucket.
Water gushing forth from subterranean artesian wells encircled by a
lush date palm oasis is simply a pipe dream.
Checking out the snakebite outfit and a couple of extra boxes of
cartridges for the 375 Magnum Express, my Bushman sidekick and
bodyguard makes our base camp only a quarter of the way in. The
Land Rover contains our entire water supply. It would be a worthless
piece of junk if anything major went wrong with it. Water is our most
precious possession, and radiator evaporation wastes too much.
Nature here does not yield her secrets willingly. That's where my
Bushman colleague comes in. His world is a very strange and ancient
one. There is no doubt that the psychic powers of his people have
remained more delicately tuned than ours. Keeping others alive and
fed is his expertise. Do you think anything in this domain cares a hoot
about Apartheid or Capitalism or Socialism or Religion or Man’s Greed
and Cruelties? This land remains totally indifferent to all human
pretensions.
I would take only a Bushman on this venture; he can be trusted. A
white man would freak out, drink all your water, put a bullet in your
back, and nobody would be the wiser.
It is no traveler's tale or stretch of the truth when I say over five
million carats of diamonds were recovered along these ancient
beaches over a 15-year period, making the legendary King Solomon's
Mines seem puny in comparison. Unlike those mined in the Transvaal,
these are formed by volcanic action under the sea, and there are still
millions more to unearth. The world-renowned, 128-carat Tiffany
Diamond was found along this very coast.
However, my passion for great waves overshadows my lust for
diamonds. If you think these are the sun stroked deliriums of a
paranoid, let me try to explain. Just as when a negative is placed into
a solution a faint image emerges, then only later in the process does
the full picture become clear, so only in retrospect will this narrative
become discernible, bringing the full picture into focus,
The average fathead would shrug them off as inconsequential
specks of glorified glass. Perhaps. It's all in the way you perceive
things. Have any of you ever held and turned in your fingertips a 20-
carat, blue-white diamond, the purest and most sought-after stone of
all? I think not. If you had, you would know you were holding a
mysterious, compelling substance.
Do you have any idea of its worth? If I told you half, you'd call me a
liar.
Its fiery beauty is as hard to account for as is its origin in the
volcanoes that turned night to day in the Proterozoic Period. They are
splinters of a mirror that simmered a hundred million years ago. In
their blue-white heart is the broken image of our Earth as it existed at
its birth. When you hold this gemstone you're holding a fragment of
the basic element of our planet.
Alas, the unquenchable allure of kleptomania is always present.
No one is immune. Lekker lewe: the sweet life or humbugged! Take
my word for it: If you are not a master of brilliant cunning, don't even
let it cross your mind. Let them lie where they are. You could lose your
life. Many a man has.
In South Africa it's an offense against the State if you are caught with
an uncut stone. The Golden Rule: If you find a diamond, throw it away.
A few years back this Australian bloke had a harebrained scheme
to sailboard in, make his fortune, then sail up near the Angolan
border. I warned him it would be a dangerous exercise in futility. He
was sure he had all the answers, though, including the best escape
route.
All brawn and no brain, puffed-up and arrogant, in full regalia he
sailed off into the fog and resigned himself to Fate... never to be seen
again.
A week-or-so later, near my encampment, I spotted a wandering
Strandloper landing south. The origin of these Strandlopers is
completely unknown. Even the Bushmen, who are conscious of
everything, are confused about their aboriginal ancestry. There are
only about a dozen Strandlopers left in existence. This naked
anthropoid was wearing the Australian's shredded boardshorts as his
headdress.
It's been said before:
"He laughs best who laughs last."
So, can one get out alive with his inheritance? It's highly unlikely.
First off, walking out is a Herculean task. You probably wouldn't last
the day. The Namib Desert is merciless.
To the south is the forbidden area of Consolidated Diamond
Mines, De Beers and the Central Selling Organization. They make the
law of the land, and their Dumond Detectives are harsh enforcers.
If you're arrested, expect to be held incommunicado,
fluoroscoped, your hands tied into enormous metal-type gloves, then
force-fed ample doses of laxatives. God help you if any diamonds are
found. These chaps are humorless, slow-thinking and insufferably self-
righteous.
There is no such thing as live-and-let-live in the diamond
business. I know what I'm talking about. I've been through it all.
So... to the north, Angola and the ANC. If they catch you, a
necklace party is guaranteed. I was once stopped by some Cuban
commandos who were going to waste me on the spot. One guy
understood a little French. I convinced him I was a French porno
photographer and gave him the address of my worst enemy in Paris.
I got their attention by promising that after they won the war I
would give them all positions as stunt thespians in my next
production. I ripped out a few sample pages from my outlawed,
smuggled-in Penthouse mag as a teaser. They looked disarranged as
I made a hasty retreat and got the hell out of there.
Of course, there's always the South Atlantic, but here we're dealing
with unimaginable actualities. For some 5,000 kilometers southward
from the Cape of Good Hope there is no other land, no shipping or
trade routes, no aircraft, no weather stations, nothing. There is only
the raging intensity of water whipped by the howling storms of the
Roaring Forties. Circulating anticlockwise, the Benguela Current
sweeps northward from Antarctica then collides with the warm
Agulhas Stream and the Mozambique Current, causing massive ocean
turbulences, generating chaos along the continental shelf and
inducing a Maelstrom Effect. This provokes a frightening instability
within the Coriolis Force.
One of the offshoots of these submerged disturbances is the
Upwelling Principle, and one of the main danger zones is between the
Walvis Ridge and the Cape Basin, where the real impending menace
looms as Episodic Waves.
From all my investigations, I am convinced the luxury liner Waratah
was hit by one of these rogue waves and lost without a trace in 1909
with 211 aboard.
According to my calculations, these killer waves are most likely to
occur during the Vernal Equinox. For example, the Mamohus, a 93,000-
ton tanker whose bows were swept away by one of these huge
waves in 1966, miraculously survived the encounter. Most ships are
not so fortunate; they are taken to the icy bottom in a matter of
seconds.
Lloyds of London makes reference to the existence of these rogue
monsters in its marine-indemnity policies as "the Episodic Wave
Phenomenon." An encounter usually means a total loss and pay-out.
Annually, supertankers carry some 600 million tons of crude oil around
the southern coast of Africa, bound from the Middle East for Europe
and the Americas. If these sea routes were ever cut by the Russkies,
Europe would freeze to death instantly and America's economy would
probably cave in.
The way I figured it, the deeper I managed to get in with drinking
water, the better the chances of getting back out alive. For this
elementary reason 1 buried a few canteens at marked spots along
the way, so that when I retraced my footsore steps I'd have an ample
supply to prolong survival,
Alongside this strand of sand, always within a stone's throw, is an
array of world-class point breaks.
This one: Out of the vast bed of South Atlantic Ocean there
emerges, like a flash of greased lightning, a symmetrically smooth, 8'
jet-black wall of water, spiraling over a craggy and jagged cluster of
fossilized reefs. From its rooster-tail blow-back, its silvery rainbow
spray glimmers, then vanishes into an inky, vaporous
mist.
It is a sight that would confound any observer.
Imagine a devastating, 100-yard, coiling stand-up cylinder breaking
in 4' of water over a razor-sharp, crustacean-covered bottom. A split-
second, vertical, semi-blind take-off must be executed with brute force
for serious follow-through drive. Compulsory is maximum
acceleration...and a full-out super trim.
One miscalculation and you're a dead man, being carried out of this
world. Injured-only is impossible.
That's why equipment must be perfectly balanced. Bottom curve,
rocker and rails have all been handcrafted from years of enlightened
theory (by the eye only). No power tools are ever used. This
understanding produces a heart-and-soul, 8'2" X 17-l/2"-wide, drawn-
to-the-limit, classic single-fin pin.
Rest assured, in this domain each wave envelops and lambastes
all five senses, leaving a lasting impression indelibly stamped in the
subconscious. Two billion brain cells are inflamed, stimulating
maximum concentration, computerized in Life-or-Death thrill ride that
is unsurpassable, making everything else in life, by comparison,
second-rate.
A day's walk farther north lies a panorama more deplorably
desolate than human imagination can conceive, created by a seismic
cataclysm a hundred million years ago. Here, I gaze at a sight no
white man has ever seen.
From my vantage point: the scorched-dry river terrace of an
ancient estuary. I can survey the ceaselessly heaving and churning
undercurrents and the savage shorebreak. Beyond, an apparition—an
optical illusion it seems at first, between the horizon and the
shoreline—rising from the depths: an immeasurably huge, writhing,
expanding wall of water. Its center looks like a hooded cobra head,
swaying and heaving; its reflection, magnified on the gray-black,
lacquer-smooth water below, exaggerates this abnormal monstrosity
for a fraction of a moment, then it explodes into oblivion.
My sense of wonder is heightened and renewed by this deadly
attraction. Lost in thought, I wonder if I have the courage.
Existing on Bushman rice (insect larvae, ants and their eggs),
chomping on other organic delicacies (snakes, scorpions, rats, mice,
lizards, frogs and locusts), jacked-up on a protein high, gnawing on
my last chunk of biltong, I am inspired by the gravity of this
remarkable spectacle. Unhinged, yet curious to confront this hybrid, I
am halted by a cautionary rush of adrenaline. There are very few
events left in life that are free from Social, Political and Religious
connotations, and this is unequivocally one of them.
Being sucked out through the rip was the easy part. Under the
circumstances, the channel seemed safe enough—no erratic sets. In
fact, 200 yards out, and nothing.
Going alone really doesn't rattle my nervous system that much;
I've been doing this my entire life, in hundreds of bizarre spots
throughout the world.
But this experience was unique.
First off, the water seemed to stick to my fingertips, making it an
effort to paddle with any speed. This was a bit unnerving. Then,
without warning, it happened: In close proximity, a huge bubble
erupted up out of the water. Within it appeared a gigantic, blunt
head, then a body in airborne suspension, three times the size of a
bull elephant, scaring the holy brownie out of me. I almost swallowed
my tongue in a coronary fright.
Wrapped around the immense head, flailing spasmodically, were
two tentacle-sucking arms and eight shorter ones. Then came the
shrill, ear-splitting sounds of a giant cephalopoda squid getting
munched, its black ink gushing and squirting like a broken fire
hydrant, bits and pieces of flesh flying everywhere.
The battle lasted a few minutes. Then, with one gargantuan gulp, the
sperm whale swallowed the whole goddamn thing. The 30', 400-
pound body—all this nourishment consumed before my eyes—went
down the whale's gullet in slow motion.
An enormous bloodshot eye gave me a quick once-over, but
bubbling away in its digestive juices like a saintly Jonah was not to be
my inexorable fate.
Temporarily disoriented, I found myself dead-center of an advancing
set of waves. I barely made it over the second one, punching through
the feathering mass.
Awestruck, unable to believe my senses, the third was a towering
peak, pyramode in shape, unimaginable in size. I began to
hyperventilate for my inevitable keelhauling, stroking for my life
toward the channel and a last chance for escape.
Now, with an unnatural hissing sound... bending... this tremendous
substance began to change its course, aiming straight for me. I knew
in the back of my mind that I had survived closed-out Waimea, but
this perpendicular, midnight-black wall of water with a Cyclopean
center core was something else altogether.
Now the colossus was on me. With all my strength I paddled
straight for the eye, then rolled and jabbed my stiletto through the
very top. At that precise second the sun broke through the hazy
atmosphere, illuminating the puncture I was coming through with
thousands of dazzling, iridescent water particles. In the next instant
everything was caving in.
I took my last gasp of air as the top third of this giant wave pitched
out, tore my true love from my hands and snapped the legrope. In
this fraction of a second, clinging like a spider to its web in a
monsoon, looking back over my shoulder I through this translucent
skylight, I could see my board spinning out of control far beneath me.
Grabbing my knees in an egg-survival position, I anticipated a
launch into eternity. During the plummet, I just missed cannon-balling
through the deck of my board. Fortunately, my back only glanced off
the rail as the cascade of water above caught up with me.
I tried desperately to thrash through the back, but it was not to be.
The water held me tight, like a fly in a gluepot. The next moment was
one of tumultuous, disjointed dispersion.
With most high-quality waves over 10', the exploding water is
projected shoreward. In this instance, just the opposite occurred. The
massive throw-out curved back into its own base, exploded inward
and upward, forming a wave within a wave, theoretically devouring
itself. Anyone caught in this Episodic Creation would be unmercifully
spun in a horizontal vortex and plunged down to the icy depths for a
soundless inspection of Davy Jones' locker.
The secrets of all my triumphs are never to panic, and impeccable
timing.
This Epilogue is not just entertainment, it is Real Life. To thoroughly
end my account of this experience would take at least 20 more pages.
Highly impractical, Labor lost. Superfluous to the limited attention
span of this magazine's frivolous fraternity.
In short, tucked away in a safe deposit box in Paris are all the
photographs, sketches, charts and maps of the expedition, including a
10-carat black diamond encased in a fossilized oyster shell. In
addition, there is my exhaustive data, collected over a 20-year period,
on the explanatory premises of the Episodic Wave Theory.
Conceivably, someday I shall finish this accounting verbally, over a
bottle of Mouton '45, with an individual who has a highly inquisitive
mind. Until that very hour the bourgeoisie must be reconciled to their
customary Orwellian entanglements, rushing to be saved by
technology...and then saved from it.
In the words of Confucius:
"Bloodhound who keep nose
too close to ground never see charging tiger."
quotes accompany Million Days To Darkness
Before talking about your movie career, Mickey, tell us about your
surfing career.
What career? My personal involvement died in the late fifties when
the introverts were pushed out and the phony organized masses
took over. All the guys I started with are washed up. Whoever’s left is
ugly and overrated. The only thing left of my “career” is being
persecuted by cops and lifeguards, which are one and the same.
You've been accused of being ruthless on waves. What do you say
about that?
It's a lie. I'm vicious. We're all pushing and shoving, jockeying for
position, and If I get the wave first—if I'm in the best position— then
I feel I deserve it. So, when someone catches a wave I'm involved
with—when he takes off in front of me—well, he's stealing my wave.
He puts me in a position of either losing my board or going on the
rocks. So, if he's in my way—well, he gets tapped. And then I get the
blame and people say I'm pushing my weight around.
Well, what's your solution?
We should have had birth control 20 years ago. It’s too late now...
send them to Saigon.
How about the Islands?
How about it? I'd rather go to Selma, Alabama. There're too many
hard feelings over there.
Really, Mickey, these answers you've given...you can't be serious.
Well, I'll leave that up to the imagination of your comic book readers.
—"Interview: Mickey Chapin Dora:
Surf Stuntman”
SURFER Vol. 6. #3
(1965)
"Malibu... is my perfect wave. And when it's right, it's right in the
palm of my hand. These wares will never change, only the people on
them...and that's what I remember, the waves I ride, not the crud
that floats around them.
"Up until '59 I had Malibu barren, with 6'+ power swells. These are
my cherished days I shall never reveal to anyone.
"(Today) I talk to kids I think, are in the know, who are still riding
waves for the sheer freedom they offer...(and) their concept of Malibu
is a complete Valley takeover, a fantasy of insanity filled with kooks of
all colors, super-egomania running rampant, fags, finks and pork chop-
ism. (And the) tragic thing is it's all true....
"However, I can’t help feeling there's something happening. New
philosophies are taking hold...in certain segments of the sport, and I
hope (they) want the same things I want: freedom to live and ride
nature's waves, without the oppressive hang-up of the mad, insane
complex that runs the world and this sick, sick war.
"Things are going to change drastically in the next year-or-so, for all
of us, whether we like it or not. Maybe a few will go forward and
make it a better world.
"These are incredible times.
"Thank. God for a few, free waves."
—"Mickey on Malibu"
SURRFER Vol. 8. #6
(1967)
What part does surfing play in your life today?
When there's surf I'm totally committed; when there's none. It
doesn't exist.
What is your general philosophy of life and survival? It's really quite
simple: freedom from affectation and affiliation. To expound upon the
subject will only bring more ridicule upon myself.
Are you planning to get married?
Possibly in my ever-vague fantasies of idealism, yes. As a perverse
realist, never in California.
Would you enter a contest for $1,000-$2,000 prize money?
I ride for my pleasure only: no thanks.
Professionalism will be completely destructive to any control an
individual has over the sport at present. The organizers will call the
shots, collect the profits, while the waverider does all the labor and
receives little. Also, since surfing's alliance with the decadent big-
business interests is designed only as a temporary damper to
complete fiscal collapse, the completion of such a partnership will
serve only to accelerate the art's demise.
A surfer should think carefully before selling his being to these
"people”, since he's signing his own death warrant as a personal
entity.
Practically speaking, if any of this makes sense to someone, all my
mail will be forwarded to my retreat in Madagascar.