This is an amazing story. Dr. John Kitchin was a successful neurologist. However, he felt as if his life was a rat race – trapped in a routine that didn’t make him happy. There was emptiness inside. Dr. Kitchin abandoned his career and all of his trappings of material success, including a Ferrari, an exotic animal farm and a huge mansion high in the hills. Now, he skates all day, every day, in slow motion, at Pacific Beach. People know him as SLOMO.
This story has been billed as a story of escape, of “doing what your inner child wants”. Really? SLOMO has been at it for sixteen years. Would you want to rollerblade for sixteen years? The answer is in the video itself. If you hear SLOMO carefully, he says that he is meditating. This is not unlike the Sufi whirling dervishes who meditate while experiencing angular momentum of whirling.
The story of SLOMO is not a story of selfishness or escape. It is a story of a person who gave up all and found a way to commune with his deeper Stillness.
“Once we see the light –
then there will be no satisfaction
till we experience a kind of divinity”
– SLOMO