Introduction 9.1

Introduction

9.1

Words and photos by Jeff Thorburn

We are coming out of a tough time of year if you are a skater with responsibilities, or a skater without the foresight to plan a getaway to places drier and warmer than Canada, or a skater that just has to make the most of one session a week. Winter as a Canadian skateboarder is nearly unbearable, but if you can stay at least halfway comfortable on your board during the dark months, Spring will in fact feel pretty sweet. You just have to rely on some cold sessions and good memories to get through it.

What’s that belief or thought process that there is no past or future, that everything is now? Eternalism? It’s about how all points in time are equally real. As in, that amazing ramp session in your mind isn’t in fact a memory, but something that is happening right now in an alternate universe. Or something like that. Somewhere, you are still 15 years old and skating with your friends that either quit skateboarding or maybe even died. Maybe the trick is, on a dark winter’s day, you just focus on the feelings from those memories, and you get a little bit of the feeling back from that exact moment. You can put yourself on the deck of that ramp at 18; skate the ledge behind the grocery store at 16; or do manuals across parking spaces in an empty lot at when you’re are 12; each time seeing the friends that still exist there, and getting the same feelings from those tricks landed and slams taken. This is on a non-linear tip. It’s like how the beginning and the end of the book are already there, and just because you’re in the middle doesn’t mean you can’t skip back or forward. It just might be hard to understand. So just because I can’t go skate today because of responsibilities or the weather, I am skating somewhere, and if I focus, or maybe try to not focus at all, I can get in on some of the best sessions.

This may all be nonsense, so if you happen to be well-versed in this philosophy, feel free to school me on it sometime. I’m just running with some nuggets of information that bubbled up in my brain on a rainy day before a printing deadline.