Leaving for Japan

(A photo I took of a surfer at Newport Beach)

I am leaving for Japan tomorrow. I don’t know what I feel, or even what I am supposed to feel. Friends have asked me if I am nervous, or anxious, or excited. Perhaps I am feeling all of those things. I think that the one thing that keeps crossing my mind is disbelief. I keep asking myself, “What is going on?” or “What the hell?” Moving to Japan is something that I want to do, but in the last 29 or so years before last April, I never thought that I would be doing this. (Well, a few times it did cross my mind.)

It seems to me that the surfer never quite knows what wave will come, but goes into the sea, and at some point a wave comes, and he just rides.