Ingredients:
1 ripe kiwi, sliced in a pleasant way
3 kilos joules (universal energy)
60,000 aware breaths (do not substitute for
regular breaths)
Method:
In a quiet space, over a low mantra, prepare the present moment by slowly adding steady amounts of universal energy with breaths.
Stir by accepting all that is, was, and will be.
The present is done when it is still and settled.
Add one ripe kiwi before serving, cut to facilitate a profound connection with the kiwi fruit and an awareness that the kiwi is the universe and that you are too.
Serve with the light and giddy realization that
you are a kiwi and the universe is the vine you grow from.
Your perceptions of death are as meaningless as that of the kiwi’s fear of being eaten.
Difficulty Level: Hard
Tom “Lowey” Lowe, was once king of Mullaghmore. Lowey took off his crown when he moved away. He left the Emerald Isle to follow love and a career in surfing. But — Cornwall born and Ireland forged — the once king of Mullaghmore now commutes back here from the small Maori village in Aotearoa where he lives with his wife, Tess.
Conor Maguire is king now, having picked up Lowey’s crown. Conor is a pro surfer whose only job is to keep up when Lowey comes back to his old kingdom. He visits only on the biggest of North Atlantic pulses as a man who has transcended loyalty; he has become an element. When Lowey is here, King Conor and the rest of the crew have to factor in the Lowey element along with the tide, wind and swell.
I see Lowey’s beat up van at the gym after a surf and rush in, hoping I haven’t missed him, hoping that he wouldn't just be leaving as I am going in, hoping we could have a proper chat. When the swell is big and he’s doing his thing, it’s hard to have anything other than small talk, ships-passing-in-the-night exchanges. But now the swell is small.
In the changing room, I hurry into my boardies. I’m thinking about catching Lowey for a sauna chat, thinking about what I’ll say. When I finally did see him, I had my head down and ran straight into him. We are both in boardshorts but I feel naked, caught way outside the present moment.
Although the Mullaghmore crown sits on young Conor Maguire’s head now, Lowey has become a demi-god throughout the big wave surf world, riding the biggest waves at Jaws, Mavericks, Puerto, Nazaré. He is an Eddie Aikau invitee. Giddy at his fame and anxious about what I will say to Lowey when I run into him, I blurt out the question, “What age are you anyway?” (I hadn’t even said hello yet). “Forty-one,” he says. I’m surprised, but I shouldn't be.
I do not enjoy being an atheist, yet Lowey and I — except for the ships-in-the-night conversations over the past two decades — occasionally chat theology. We are both in love with the same wave. I know this wave brings us closer to what many people call God.
Lowey is built of strong, trim muscle. No bulk. No fat. His lean body is covered in tattoos. But although his skin is filled with ink, he does not look much different than he did two decades ago. When I first met him he was hanging with Mickey Smith, a Cornish filmmaker, and Fergal Smith (no relation), who was then the best surfer in Ireland and one of the most famous athletes in Europe.
Back then, sometimes Lowey and Fergal would stay with me. Back then, they all lived in County Clare, a four-hour drive away. The first time Fergal Smith stayed, my wife Stefanie was just back from her first winter in the Antarctic. I told Ferg I was going to run to the shop to get ingredients for dinner. I had one floppy carrot and two rubbery stalks of celery. I had no potatoes, pasta or rice. And besides the flaccid veggies, we only had condiments in the fridge. Fergal told me that I didn’t need to go to the shop, “You’ve got plenty right here,” he said, holding up the limp celery and the carrot.
“Looks fresh,” Stefanie said before she mouthed, “Go,” and pointed me out the door.
I bump into Lowey in the gym and I’m straight into the present, bumped out of pondering the future. I’m looking at his tattoos, a curated collage of images by different artists. They fit together like a collection of short stories. I ask about them. Lowey is neither shy about showing them to me, nor is he showing them off.
I don’t have any tattoos. I’ve never had the spare money or time and I always say I’m proud of my lack of ink. But looking at Lowey's tattoos I realize something.
I don’t have any ink because I’m scared of pain.
I kinda want the waves he gets at Mully, too, but know I’ll never get them. I only want them from a distance in both space and time. Being honest with my actions in the present moment, I know how I feel when those big set waves stand up in front of me. I know what I will do. I’ll paddle out to safety, just like I’ll run like hell from a tattoo needle, run faster from a shark tooth, hammer, and pot of ink. Some of Lowey’s tattoos were done in New Zealand, in that traditional way, and are representative of family ancestors. I want a Maori tattoo only when I’m not living in the present. Only some ideal self would want that.
I like to surf big waves at Mullaghmore so much that I have conversations with the waves. Every set wave that comes in is a quick chat. I’m sure Lowey does that too. Sets march in, and those big ones stand up. It’s your turn to go, you are in position and the crew starts hooting like owls.
“Spin round and paddle into me,” Mullaghmore says. “I’m going to give you the best ride of your life.”
“Ok, what do I have to give?” I ask.
“Give me all you got,” Mullaghmore answers.
And I’ll rejoice in the consent. I want to ride this wave that wants to be ridden.
Some waves stagger around the point oversized, wobbly like some alcoholic wind had got to her. “I fucken dare ya to ride me,” she says as she staggers, all drunk and giant and beautiful like Marilyn Monroe’s ghost showing up in your living room singing Happy Birthday and demanding to see your John F. Kennedy.
“I do appreciate the offer,” I say to her as I paddle out of the way. “But I’m scared that you will hurt me.”
Lowey’s brain is different. He makes it that way by preparation.
When Stefanie was back from her second winter in the Antarctic, Lowey stayed over. I cooked dinner while he and my future wife stayed up and chatted. Lowey said he found the meaning of his life from his time spent with Mickey and Fergal. He could relate to Stefanie’s mission to conserve the stuff the Irish explorers left behind in their ice huts.
“Anyone who will spend six dark winter months in the Antarctic in the name of science or anything at all,” he said, “is as committed as they come.” Nearly twenty years later, Stefanie still talks about Lowey’s preparation for the big swell when he stayed with us.
The morning of the swell, he ate one kiwi over the course of an hour. He took deep easy breaths as he floated in lotus by the window. I was amazed that he was floating. Stefanie was amazed he could sit and eat a kiwi and make it last an hour.
“In Antarctica," she said, “people would rip each other to shreds for a kiwi. They would probably swallow them, furry skin and all, within a second.” My future wife watched Lowey float by the window and chew meditatively in full lotus. "I’ve never seen anyone take their time to enjoy a kiwi like that.”
Stefanie is a scientist who developed a fetish for fresh food after spending her first winter “on the ice” eating dried, processed, pickled and canned meals. No fresh food and no sun for six months. She asked Lowey many questions about his diet while preparing for cold and big surf sessions.
Most big wave surfers eat supplements and drink coffee. Some eat like twelve-year olds, sugary cereal and sausage rolls, pastries and fast-food. One big wave surfer I know has two cigarettes and a shit for breakfast.
Then there is Lowey, one kiwi and three hours of meditation before a long surf in big waves with the cold and the wind on the west coast of Ireland.
Before the swell hits, Lowey likes to feel his anxiety, to breathe and stay in the present moment, to listen to the deepening sound of the rising swell on the reef, nearly impossible with me and Stefanie throwing questions at him and bickering with each other. He wants to feel the anxiety of the coming surf fully. Whereas I try to ignore it, he tunes himself in while I tune myself out. I want comfort. He wants a cold mountaintop ledge to twist his legs into lotus, to feel the pain of his tendons stretching and the cold wind biting his skin. But he doesn’t stay at our house any more. Now he stays at a farm house with a family, none of whom surf.
In the sauna that day, we chatted about our kids, families, jobs. Some sauna regulars — town Shams — are in there with us, including a soccer mom in her late forties like me, and two Irish guys, the older one with some IRA tattoos that he usually flaunts. The sauna is a steady 110 degrees celsius, and as we sweat our chat turned to death.
When Mullaghmore is huge I often do rescues with a ski. I’ve picked Lowey out of the impact zone many times. Sometimes he’d be broken; once he was three fourths drowned and needed oxygen. He paddled out again after sucking on the mask.
A friend called me at 3AM one night asking if I had Lowey’s wife’s phone number, saying, “He might die”. Lowey was in a hospital in Tahiti after buckling himself on the reef at Teahupo'o. But today, when I ran into him in the gym, I looked at Lowey’s Cholo style Virgin Mary tattoo, the flock of seagulls rising from his hip and flying under his arm, the wavy checkered warpaint of the Maori family pattern on his torso, his Jesus folded across a crucifix, and I remembered that particular phone call. That night at 3AM, I thought that Lowey must be dead. He almost did die. “Thank you,” Lowey says in the sauna like he just read my mind. “You’ve always been there for me.”
Complimented by the demi-god and feeling a little light in the head from the sauna, I geek out, “I love your feature film Arnow,” I say, “And I loved Harry Briant’s edit Postcards From Motel Hell… especially when you gave the boys hot whiskeys on the morning they arrived in Ireland. It set the tone for their trip.”
I blabber on about how great surf edits have a solid storyline, and I look at his tattoos again. The Cornish Lugger Boat, the Cornish Boxers, the Triskelion, the dagger with Tess written into it, the Sphinx. “You’re not a king or a demi-god… you’re an element.” I say, starting to hallucinate with the heat. His tattoos are moving like Moana’s. “You know that I’m a writer, Lowey, yea?” I say.
“Dylan,” Lowey says. “You’ve written three articles about me already and you are about to ask to write another.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I’m sweating and I know he’s accepted. I remember a session a long time ago, well before the rise of Conor Maguire, when Tom Lowe was a prince, heir to the throne of Fergal Smith, the man from Mayo, the land of Yews. It was just me and Lowey surfing the wave we both are in love with. I’d like to say we were trading waves, but that would not be true. Lowey was catching waves and I was trying to. The swell was rising and conditions were getting worse. I hadn’t caught a wave and really wanted to give up, to paddle back to the safety of the channel. But Lowey would not give up on me, and when the ghost of Marilyn Monroe came around the corner and dared me, Lowey screamed me into the best wave of my life.
“It was really nice to surf with you,” I say. Meaning not only that session a long time ago, but all of our sessions — even the small wave session we shared earlier that day. Lowey’s presence adds to the atmosphere, to the fun of it all. He nods his head and sweat drips. When he stands up to go out, I get up too, and the cold shower was cold enough to burn.
“Do you think having kids affects what you do?”
“How could I not do what I do, do what I love? I could never tell my kids anything if I didn’t.”
“What did you see,” I asked him, “when you died?” I was asking about Tahiti, the night when I got the 3AM call and the doctors brought Lowey back from the other side.
“It’s hard to say what I saw,” Lowey says. “It was a feeling, mostly.”
“What did you feel?” I ask. The cold shower burns my skin and I’m in the present moment.
“That everything is going to be OK,” he says, “when we die.” He smiles big. “That neither you nor I have to worry about a thing.”
