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UNCODE.initRow(document.getElementById("script-175374"));"... with ALS when you lose muscle that includes tongue and throat and so swallowing can be a challenge and aspiration, choking can be a danger. So he does aspirate and choke a little bit sometimes... he feels like he’s able to get through that because of skills he learned from surfing when you get pounded and knocked under and your rolling around having to hold your breath underwater and stay calm and you know find your way through it and find your way up."
~Ruth Coleman for Michael
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Show Notes
Website of the brilliant author, polymath, and public intellectual Rebecca Solnit
What is ALS?
NOAA Weather Radio
Donate to ALS Research
Article Encouraging Thoughtfulness Among International Travelers from the Developed World
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UNCODE.initRow(document.getElementById("script-189389"));Interview Transcript
Introductory note about this show: I know from soliciting feedback from subscribers that many of you all are reading the transcripts rather than listening to the recording. In this case, I hope you will listen to at least some of it. As I note in the interview, Waves to Wisdom is on a fundamental level, a multidisciplinary exploration of how we can deepen and enhance relationship. Listening to the exchange between Michael and Ruth’s voices is, to my heart and ear, more powerful than the content itself.
All of these interviews are edited (the initial conversations can extend over hours) and I do not, as a matter of course, ask interviewees how they feel about the edited conversation. Rather, I ask for their trust up front. But Michael was hesitant about whether he wanted his voice out in the world and I wanted to make doubly sure he was happy with the result. He didn’t love the sound of his voice but, as he astutely noted, who does?
Transcript
Intro: My name is Maia Dery. This episode is part of a series called the Waves to Wisdom Interviews. The project is a simple one. I seek out people I admire, surfers who seem to me to have ocean centered wisdom practices.
Usually, I ask them to share a surf session or two and, after we’ve ridden some waves together, talk to me about their oceanic habits, about surfing, work, meaning, anything that comes up. All of the episodes so far have spoken to the benefits and beauty of a long, intimate relationship between two bodies, the surfer and the ocean. This one’s a little different. Michael Coleman has been a surfer for more than 40 years. Just 8 years ago, he was diagnosed with a debilitating illness meant he had to face letting go of riding waves and, eventually, getting in the water at all.
But the waves continue to infuse his life with wisdom, both practical and profound. He and his wife Ruth Coleman were generous enough to share some of Michael’s story and, although we couldn’t be in the ocean in the same place and time, both Colemans left me so deeply inspired I’ve carried them with me into almost every wave I’ve ridden since our time together.
Oceanic wisdom comes in many forms. In her book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit wrote about the way hermit crabs look for shells that weren’t really made for them and then mold their soft bodies to fit the shape of them. A set of internal claws clings to the shell while the external claws do their work in the world. She goes on,