“There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement.” — Eric Hoffer
It was a twelve-mile trip to work, and I had only been biking for seven when I was hit. Leaving for work at nine in the morning should have spared me any problems with traffic, and it was one of those clear days in May when you can see for miles. But it turns out “traffic” is only a broad, statistical risk; there is no accounting for the individual driver. Every moving thing on wheels or on water is a potential collision, a destroyer of worlds. The regrettable part is that the whole thing was probably my fault. I listened carefully as I pulled up to the trail crossing, but I was too heavily invested in a hard-won store of momentum I had going to seriously consider stopping, and the shrouding bushes made it inconvenient to get a good look at the road. I heard nothing, incorrectly associated the peace and quiet with safety, and was consequently hit by a very quiet car.
Getting hit was actually the best part of the experience. People who all their lives fear the experience of dying will be well advised to be fatally struck by a fast car while riding a bike. The sensation was like one of suddenly having a thousand cords suddenly snap and let you go like a kite out of a hell. In fact, the most intense sensation I had by far, in the split-second after my demise, was one of bursting, uncontrollable strength and speed that had cried out for exercise since the moment of my birth. My lungs seemed unlimited and the strength of every motion I made felt ridiculously amplified. I whirled about for a bit in a sheer fury of physical elation, which lasted only for a second or two before I settled towards the ground again, standing upright with my hands on my hips, master of the world.
I think perhaps my unconcerned state of mind at the moment of impact made my experience less traumatic than one would have expected. In fact, at first I felt little real emotion at all when I saw the body on the ground, motionless and bent in an odd way. I had the attitude of a captain supervising something being done just the way it ought to have been done: the driver progressing through various stages of shock and frantic concern, the police taking down the report, the medics cleaning off the road. Such wild, capricious serenity as I then felt seems now so clean of sentiment as to be nearly inhuman; it betrayed less than the interest of a bystanding child — it was, rather, the briefly-stayed curiosity of a west wind.
Should I go with the medics, I asked myself; it seemed fitting, but I had a feeling that it would be nothing but unpleasant. Overhead, the blue sky was beginning to show rents and rifts, here and there, like clouds parting. Through them I could see space, the stars, and, much nearer than before, the round orbs of the planets in motion around the earth.
…Most people say the turning point was John F. Kennedy’s inauguration…But I am the son of a hat designer. And my father, Allen S. Krulwich, had a different explanation. The president who de-hatted America, he thought, was Dwight Eisenhower.
I’ve often wondered why, exactly, men no longer wear hats here. It turns out that cars and hats may be mutually exclusive.
“With an American, becoming an actor is rather like a lady becoming a nun. Whereas with an English actor, it’s like becoming a plumber.” — Michael Caine
“In this idea originated the plan of the “Lyrical Ballads”; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.” — Two approaches to elevating your readers’ hearts and minds: either to procure “poetic faith” by directing them to the supernatural or romantic — or to “open their eyes” by giving “the charm of novelty to everyday things.” This quote would have gone into my little book if I’d seen it before press time. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1817. Biographia Literaria ch. 14 p314 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by H.J. Jackson, Oxford, 1985)
My thoughts on some words of Jack London’s to a young writer that have been making the rounds.
It is a sobering fact that this many people didn’t know the Titanic was real. It’s not as though the Titanic was some scandal which has been hushed up and censored from history. It wasn’t even that long ago.
It makes me think there is this mass of people out there who wade in ignorance about even the recent past, and who take almost no pains to understand the difference between fact and fiction. I am wondering just how big this group is and what else they don’t know about and don’t care about.
(twitter screen capture taken from kottke.org)
Our first little annual book is here: The Annual Yarn: 2011. It’s a little something we’re sending to friends and family, but there are a limited number available for order. More information here.
“It was only later that I realized the value of being bored was actually pretty high. Being bored is a kind of diagnostic for the gap between what you might be interested in and your current environment.” — Clay Shirky, How We Will Read
