{"id":695,"date":"2009-06-08T22:28:14","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T02:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=695"},"modified":"2009-06-08T22:31:18","modified_gmt":"2009-06-09T02:31:18","slug":"hello-world-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=695","title":{"rendered":"Hello, World."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So much for writing a little every day.<\/p>\n<p>I have been intractably depressed for ten days.  I am not managing life very well&#8211;and have not been, for many years.<\/p>\n<p>I picture a surfer on a medium-sized wave, his movement is swift, but not heart-stopping.  He has control; he seems happy.  I see myself floundering in the froth of a breaking wave, not far from the competent surfer, not moving any faster than him, but flailing about, and headed for the <span class=\"tglsz\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\n imgRsz(0300,0237,10,\"\/img\/HamptonPostCard.jpg\",\"imgright\",\"onclick='tglsz(this.name);'\");dw(\"  \" + this.name + \"  \");\n\/\/ --><\/script> <\/span>rocks.  <\/p>\n<p>I got caught in an undertow once at Hampton Beach.  The livid panic was amazing.  The beach there at low tide is shallow for quite a distance.  I was easily a hundred yards from shore, but even at that distance, the water was only just up to my neck.  I had been hoping to body surf in some of the waves, which were considerable that day, and were breaking at about that distance from the shore.  The first wave I chose to ride tossed me up&#8211;which is the joy of body surfing&#8211;but then under when it broke.  I was swept away, literally, by the massive flow of water near the seabed and caught in the churning caused by the inbound breaking wave and the outbound receding flow.  In the moment of hesitation between the two conflicting flows, I was barely able to get a breath before I was flipped under and tumbled by the next wave.<\/p>\n<p>The first time this happened, I am sure I thought my desperation was embarrassing, but that I should probably move a bit closer to shore.  By about the fifth time I was sucked under, my desperation was in earnest, and it was clear I was moving much further out, into deeper water.  If I had the breath to call for help, I would have.  But I was being so frequently overwhelmed that survival lay in being seen from shore, or saving myself.  Since rescue was not assured, I resolved to save myself.<\/p>\n<p>Standing on the seabed is what got me into trouble, with an inbound flow near the surface and a ferociously outbound flow deeper down.  And since I didn&#8217;t know how to swim any other way, I got into a position of floating on my back, and using a modified backstroke, started splashing away from death, vaguely toward the shore.<\/p>\n<p>In the dynamics of the undertow at Hampton Beach, which sent three victims to the hospital that day, my rescue was realized by simply staying near the surface.  My feeble swimming efforts helped, but honestly, swimming was just something to do while I stayed out of trouble, which was deeper down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So much for writing a little every day. I have been intractably depressed for ten days. I am not managing life very well&#8211;and have not been, for many years. I picture a surfer on a medium-sized wave, his movement is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=695\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[913,218,230,518],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-competent-surfer","tag-hampton-beach","tag-surfer","tag-swimming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":700,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}