It could be prescience, but highlighting Grant Washburn’s expression only a couple of weeks ago about the oppressive effect of successive waves on the wiped-out surfer, has turned into some real, personal truth.

In my earliest days as a practising journalist, electronic reporting did not allow for much in the way of bylines. Then we decided to go interactive and put names and phone numbers on every story (people did not have email back then). I still prefer the kind of journalistic group anonymity favoured by The Economist, though it must be said that more recently it has been retreating from that style.

The self-disclosure encouraged by blogging is still something that I’m not totally comfortable with, although the experiment seems necessary. Facebook, compared with MySpace, actively invites us to say who we really are. And indeed, it helped a cousin contact me only the other day to express condolences.

Only a few weeks ago, by way of explaining an absence from blogging (or “a worryingly long apple harvest” as Michael, one of my good friends, described it – because my last post had been about an over-enthusiastic seasonal fruit display at the Bath Farmers’ Market), I disclosed the death of my father. I was going to remain silent on the subject of my brother’s sudden demise, which took me off to Ohio last week. But it seems inconsistent.

Those awaiting more Kino pictures will understand why I still have not produced any. And those who have contacted me in that regard will understand the silence. It was indeed odd to be focusing on the loss of Viktor Tsoy and then to be suddenly brought up short by a more tangible bereavement.

The death of two family members in three months (and three if one includes my great aunt), is devastating in an obvious way: an archetypal double whammy, I guess. But I am also struck that such losses are much easier to narrate than some that I and others will have suffered, where the complexity and invisibility of the experience mean that it is beyond ready comprehension or sympathy. I have an intension to write about those other losses at some point in the future – possibly through the blog, possibly through some other medium.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to write and deliver two eulogies in quick succession – something I could not say I was comfortable having to do. It can be tricky enough dealing with one’s own loss without having to contextualise it adequately for others.

But the title of the post is to focus on that sinking (or even floating) feeling a surfer experiences when plunged beneath a wave that is completely overpowering. One is out of one’s element. There is an eerie silence, a numbness, and a not-knowingness of which way up is.

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