Cam­era: GoPro HD Surf HERO Edit: iMovie 11 Lo­ca­tion: Rock­away Beach, New York Surfer: Fa­ther Kevin Gabriel Gillen, O.P. "The wave is a mag­i­cal in­stru­ment. It's the fun­da­men­tal force of en­er­gy through­out the uni­verse. It's the fin­ger­print of God. So when I surf on a wave, it's a fore­taste of heav­en." Dr. Peter Kreeft, Boston Col­lege. When there are waves, I spent my day off surf­ing in my home­town of Rock­away Beach. As you can see from the video above, I some­times surf on a waves­ki with a pad­dle to pro­pel and ride on the waves. Some surfers have a dis­dain of the tow-in-surf­ing; stand-up pad­dle boards and waveskis; pre­fer­ring the purist at­ti­tude that surf­ing is about noth­ing but the man, the board, and the sea. Laird Hamil­ton, one of the co-in­ven­tors of tow-in surf­ing, ex­plained that it was the only way to catch the mon­strous sized waves such as those that can be seen a Peahi (Jaws) off the coast of Maui and the coast­line of Tahi­ti. He also has called stand-up pad­dle boards a re­turn to an old, tra­di­tion­al Hawai­ian way of surf­ing. Hamil­ton does not speak about waveskis but thank­ful­ly no one in Rock­away gives me a hard time about it. Al­though I've surfed some pret­ty good size waves, it is still hard to imag­ine tak­ing off on a 30- 50 ft wave. Being caught in the falling lip of a wave can send surfers un­der­wa­ter so deep and so fast that the pres­sure change breaks their eardrums and the cap­il­lar­ies in their lungs. Dis­mem­ber­ment, frac­tures, or bro­ken bones from con­tact with the ocean floor, your board or from the seething force of white­wa­ter are so com­mon that Hamil­ton stopped count­ing his stitch­es after a thou­sand and both of his feet are dis­fig­ured from bro­ken arch­es. The sea can cer­tain­ly be dan­ger­ous but she has a way of get­ting into your blood. Ev­ery­time I moved far away from the coast I al­ways ex­pe­ri­enced a deep long­ing to re­turn to her. In Chester­ton's book Or­tho­doxy he de­scribes a man who sets sail from Eng­land in order to dis­cov­er a new land. He ac­ci­den­tal­ly gets turned around and re­turns to Eng­land, think­ing it is the new place he had sought to dis­cov­er, and finds him­self look­ing at fa­mil­iar things as if see­ing them for the first time. Chester­ton's story of dis­cov­ery is a metaphor for his own spir­i­tu­al odyssey and my own. After the sud­den death of my sis­ter from aplas­tic ane­mia I set sail in search for a new land. I moved into Man­hat­tan from Rock­away, to work as a stock­bro­ker, hop­ing Wall Street would be my Promised Land. I re­mem­ber driv­ing to the beach one morn­ing and hear­ing a song on the radio by Simon and Gar­funkel and could never get it out of my head af­ter­wards. The lyrics are based on a nar­ra­tive poem writ­ten by Edwin Ar­ling­ton Robin­son in 1897. They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town, With po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions to spread his wealth around. Born into so­ci­ety, a banker's only child, He had ev­ery­thing a man could want: power, grace, and style. But I work in his fac­to­ry And I curse the life I'm liv­ing And I curse my pover­ty And I wish that I could be, Oh, I wish that I could be, Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory. The pa­pers print his pic­ture al­most ev­ery­where he goes: Richard Cory at the opera, Richard Cory at a show. And the rumor of his par­ties and the or­gies on his yacht! Oh, he sure­ly must be happy with ev­ery­thing he's got. But I work in his fac­to­ry And I curse the life I'm liv­ing And I curse my pover­ty And I wish that I could be, Oh, I wish that I could be, Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory. He freely gave to char­i­ty, he had the com­mon touch, And they were grate­ful for his pa­tron­age and thanked him very much, So my mind was filled with won­der when the evening head­lines read: "Richard Cory went home last night and put a bul­let through his head." Al­though Richard Cory was a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter, I had met sev­er­al Richard Cory's in Man­hat­tan. The ques­tion that I kept ask­ing my­self was, "Do I still wish that I could be Richard Cory?" That same week­end that I was home my mom dragged me to Sun­day Mass. In the homi­ly the priest told the story of a man named George. George was born in Wa­ter­ville, a very small town in Up­state New York. His par­ents were poor im­mi­grants but told George every day, to study and work hard and he would ful­fill the Amer­i­can Dream. George was self-ed­u­cat­ed, worked very hard and in 1884, George played a lead­ing role in trans­form­ing pho­tog­ra­phy from an ex­pen­sive hobby of a few devo­tees into a rel­a­tive­ly in­ex­pen­sive and im­mense­ly pop­u­lar pas­time. In 1888 he per­fect­ed the Kodak cam­era, the first cam­era de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for roll film. In 1892, he es­tab­lished the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny, Even after the 1929 mar­ket crash George's wealth con­tin­ued to grow. George had ful­filled the Amer­i­can Dream. He was rich, rich­er than a king and like Richard Cory he too went home one night and com­mit­ted sui­cide. Every time I saw the stock quote EK trav­el across my com­put­er screen at work or in the news paper I thought of George's life. I knew if I con­tin­ue