In my review of Into the Wild, I suggested that by the time Chris McCandless met his tragic death, he had decided to return to civilization, perhaps to enter Harvard Law School. What kind of life would he have led, had he lived?
The documentary Surfwise seems almost designed to give one answer to that question. Stanford Medical School has had many distinguished alumni. I doubt if any of its other alumni, however, has been as peculiar as Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, whose life and family are the focus of this film.
Doc Paskowitz more or less quit medicine, except on a piecemeal basis, and became the ur-surfer. He was surfing, in Hawaii, in California, in Israel, before most people had ever heard of surfing. But Surfwise isn't really a surfing documentary. Instead, it's about the way Paskowitz raised his eight sons and one daughter, and -- like Into the Wild's treatment of McCandless -- it's about the odd duck sort of guy Paskowitz was. (And still is -- he's still hobbling around, still being argumentative, and still surfing at age 86.)
While surfing, he and his wife, a Mexican-Indian who sang Bach, produced a kid every year. He packed all nine kids, his wife, and himself into a small camper, and, for 25 years, that was home. The family traveled wherever he felt inclined, whenever he felt like it. They surfed. Surfing was mandatory for all the kids, and was not a debatable option. He was a Jewish patriarch, whose promised land was the ocean. He ruled his family like a patriarch, with deep love but as a despot. His children of course became outstanding surfers, and in the 1970's they were considered the "first family" of surfing.
None of his kids went to school. None was home-schooled. He felt that schools -- from the worst ghetto school right up to his Stanford alma mater -- taught only "knowledge." Surfing "educated." To him, this distinction was vital.
Eating right -- no sugar, no fats -- was also vital. The kids ate a multi-grain boiled cereal every breakfast of their lives. Honey was a rare and treasured luxury. As kids, they were lean as poles. The daughter, looking back, said that when they were lined up for a photo, in order of descending height, they looked like a human xylophone.
Exercise was vital. Mainly surfing, but also just the hard work of daily life. Paskowitz felt humans should live as much like other animals as possible. If there were two ways to do a chore, they never did it the easy way. They had no income, except for a surfing school that they ran at times in California (and which one son still runs). Everyone remembers the day in Louisiana that their dad laid a coin on the table and announced to the family that they were looking at their last dime. Doc Paskowitz was exhilarated by the challenge.
He told his kids that there were only three careers worth pursuing -- being a surfer, a rock star, or a bum. He raised them so that they had few other alternatives. Today, as adults, they each pretty much fall into one of those three categories. The exception is the daughter, who calls herself a conventional Jewish housewife.
The kids have mixed feelings about their dad's "experiment," as do we the audience. In some ways, they had childhoods filled with difficult physical challenges and hardships. On the other hand, with the exception of a son who preferred drawing to surfing, they feel that they had the happiest childhood imaginable. It left them, however, totally unsuited for life in American society today.
One son tells how, as a teenager, he decided to be a doctor, just as his dad had been. A counselor told him that he would need ten years of education just to bring himself up to the point where a first rate university would be willing to consider him. He gave up. He felt he had no other choice.
For some reason, their up-bringing caused them all to give up, in various ways. They don't seem to have the energy to cope, to overcome the hurdles posed by their limited education. While their dad is still lean and sinewy, the adult sons seem flabby, with one being seriously obese.
In any other era, one son notes, their dad might have been viewed as a great Jewish leader and mystic. But in our time, in America, the son concludes, he was a failure at most levels of his life. If "Doc" had passed on his ideals to his children, but had also given them the education they needed as adults, their verdict now might be far kinder.
To their dad, the failure lies elsewhere. "My kids are lazy," he says, strutting along the beach. He means lazy physically, and lazy mentally. Doc Paskowitz may have made many mistakes in raising his family, some of which he concedes. But no one would call him lazy.
He proselytizes. He actively promotes his new book, Surfing and Health (by Dorian Paskowitz, M.D. ©2007). He acts. Last summer, this Jewish doctor personally delivered 15 surfboards to Palestinians in the Gaza strip, talking Israeli border officials into opening the border for that purpose. He speaks firmly and assertively, staring intently into the camera. He is one with himself, one with nature.
The lean old man stands straight as an arrow, solid as a surfboard. He stares out at the boiling ocean surf, the surf that gives profound meaning to his entire life.
-----------------------------Surfing's a metaphor. And indeed, that's just what it is, a Pillar, a post to tie Health and Lifestyle to. Health is much, much more than just not being sick. Health is the presence of a Superior State of Well Being-a vigor, a vitality, which must be worked for each and every day of your life.
--Dorian Paskowitz, MD (blurb for his book)
