First Light on the Water

The sea at five in the morning is a different material. It has not been talked about yet. I park the motorbike behind the kiosk, walk down with two boards under my arm, and stand at the waterline for a minute before I do anything. Nobody is paying me for that minute. I take it anyway.

My first student today is a man from São Paulo who has never stood on a board. He apologises three times before we even reach the water. I tell him what I tell everyone: the ocean does not know you are nervous. It is not being cruel. It simply has other work to do.

Teaching Is Mostly Repetition

By the third lesson of the week I have said lie down, look at the beach, three strokes so many times that the words come out flat. That is fine. Beginners do not need poetry. They need the same sentence at the same moment, until the body remembers it without asking the head.

You don't fight the wave. You get in front of it and agree with it.

He stands up on his fourth attempt and falls immediately, and comes up laughing with salt in his eyebrows. That laugh is the whole job. I have never once grown tired of it, and I have been doing this since I was seventeen, which is not very long, but long enough to know.

Afterwards, the Kiosk

We drink coconut water at the kiosk by the lifeguard tower. The man who runs it knows my order and opens the nut with two strokes of a machete, the way his father did. I sit with my back to the sun and let my shoulders go quiet. Salt dries on my arms and leaves a thin white line.

Rio does not hurry before nine. I learned that here, not from anyone telling me.

The afternoon will bring wind, the wind will bring different water, and I teach again at four. For now there is a green coconut, a wet rash guard, and a student who will fly home and tell people he surfed in Rio. That is a good morning's work.