catching the antelope

An antelope is running circles in my brain. I've tried everything to catch it - running harder, setting traps, you name it. The bugger's got endless energy and he's no fool.

I'm finally waking up to the idiocy of my approach. Karen Blixen, dead nearly 63 years, helped me see the light.

In her book, Out of Africa, she says:

Out in the wilds I had learned to beware of abrupt movements. The creatures with which you are dealing there are shy and watchful, they have a talent for evading you when you least expect it.

Those lines caught my attention. The antelope has pulled many getaways, the sneakiest of which happen when I feel I'm getting close.

Blixen continues:

The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it. The art of moving gently, without suddenness, is the first to be studied by the hunter, and more so by the hunter with the camera. Hunters cannot have their own way, they must fall in with the wind, and the colours and smells of the landscape, and they must make the tempo of the ensemble their own. Sometimes it repeats a movement over and over again, and they must follow up with it. When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find that it is the same in all her music.

Yes.

The stillness of becoming one with what surrounds me. My frenzied attempts to catch the antelope have not taken me there.

And perhaps that's why my surfing has been so awkward lately. Stress paddling at the first hint of a set, forcing turns on mushy shoulders, counting the waves I should have caught. Each session a restless hunt instead of a dance with the ocean.

Tomorrow is another day, and I'm now wondering if that antelope is running from me at all. Maybe it's trying to show me the way.