Thursday Throwback

By in thursday throwback 2 Comments

[Originally published Sep. 15, 2011]

That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose. Try it sometime.

— Holden Caulfield

I spent a pleasant morning hiking up a small mountain to a steep overlook from a rocky outcropping. The fog was too thick to take any good pictures, but I didn’t mind. It was overcast and breezy, hinting at rain, just chilly enough to let you know that fall would be here soon. I only passed four other people along the way, so for most of the walk, there was nothing to listen to but the susurrus of the wind through the trees and the first leaves beginning their gravitational pilgrimage. After an hour, I got to the top and sat for a while to eat a banana and sip a thermos of coffee flavored with vanilla cha’i. The fog was thick enough to be vertiginous; if not for the rock underneath me, I could have just as easily imagined myself lost at sea.

So after sitting and meditating for a bit, I headed back down, only to see something etched on the rocks that I had missed on the way up:

Alas, ol’ Holden was right. But it made me wonder: what kind of person makes the arduous trip up the mountain, surrounded by all that natural beauty, with enough hate in their heart to make that the crowning achievement of the journey? There were worse defacements, many with spraypaint, but this was the only one I saw that was so angry. Not an affirmation of their existence, but a rejection of yours. Not a vain plea for attention and validation from indifferent strangers and an uncaring universe, but a denial of everyone else’s. This was the distilled essence of our unknown author’s eloquence, the depths of his or her poetic soul revealed to us, perhaps even to be found millennia from now by future archaeologists studying the collapse of Western civilization. A textual middle finger of salutation offered to the world.

As I pondered Caulfield’s words, I was inspired to a similar vision of being a protector of innocence. I wanted to do my part to shield unsuspecting children from having an enjoyable day in the mountains sullied by profanity etched into the splendor of the forest. I wanted to help preserve this little enclave of peacefulness for those who came out here to get away from the madness of day-to-day life.

So when I saw a small group of twenty-somethings coming up the trail, talking loudly, texting away on their phones, I became suspicious. Maybe I’m guilty of profiling, but it seemed to me that here we had a perfect example of the kind of people most likely to declare their eternal love for each other with a Sharpie on a rock, or a carving in a tree. These were likely the kind of people who left the empty beer can, ziplock bag and mismatched pair of socks I had passed on the trail below. Could I take a chance that the forest would be defiled further, right under my nose?

Of course not. So I waited for them to get directly underneath me before pushing one of the larger rocks loose, down onto their heads. One of the guys was only dealt a glancing blow on the shoulder, though, so to my severe annoyance, I had to give chase for a while through the undergrowth before I caught up to him. Luckily, his shrieks of terror and labored breathing made it easy to find him in the fog. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t about to lug his heavy carcass back to his companions, so he had to be buried separately. And to top if off, I got a really painful scratch on my calf! But at least I could rest easy, having done my duty as a vigilante park ranger.

It occurred to me as I was heading back to my car that I had apparently mixed my memories of Catcher in the Rye with Lord of the Flies, but please, let’s not quibble over the minutiae of classic literature.

They Bloat the Present With the Undigested Past

By in books, crime and punishment, nietzsche No Comments

In Sophocles’s play that bears her name, Electra speaks of her father’s murder as a sorrow (or evil) that cannot be forgotten and describes her own passion (or anger) in similar terms, though in this case the Greek for “not forgetting” (our láthei) might better be translated from its root meaning—“it does not escape notice,” “it is not hidden.” The image is of anger as a thing that the mind cannot bury, cannot help being aware of. Electra’s passion won’t let her alone. It’s intrusive. It bugs her. We do not control the unforgettable; it controls us.

The spirits of such unforgetting are called the Furies, the Erinyes. They cling to the memory of hurt and harm, injury and insult. Their names are Grievance, Ceaseless, and Bloodlust. Their names are Grudge, Relentless, and Payback. They bloat the present with the undigested past. “Most dreaded of the forces of insomnia,” they harry the mind, demanding for its release a ransom paid in blood.

— Lewis Hyde, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past

****

New caution.— Let us stop thinking so much about punishing, reproaching, and improving others! We rarely change an individual, and if we should succeed for once, something may also have been accomplished, unnoticed: we may have been changed by him. Let us rather see to it that our own influence on all that is yet to come balances and outweighs his influence. Let us not contend in a direct fight — and that is what all reproaching, punishing, and attempts to improve others amount to. Let us rather raise ourselves that much higher. Let us color our own example ever more brilliantly. Let our brilliance make them look dark. No, let us not become darker ourselves on their account, like all those who punish others and feel dissatisfied. Let us sooner step aside. Let us look away.

— Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Content Creator

By in the statusphere, walking No Comments

Michael Lapointe:

As I sampled the genre, as well as countless articles and ads attesting to the creative effects of walking, I began to feel uneasy about the proselytizing mission. Is membership in the “Order of Walkers” quite the liberation it seems? Even those lucky enough to belong to its ranks might ask themselves how undistracted solitude and untethered mind-wandering can prosper when walking is constantly justified in terms of productivity. The 21st-century walking revival may have begun as a political critique, but it has found itself co-opted by the very forces it seeks to resist.

…Much of this essay was conceived while I was walking. Sometimes I would deliberately set out to inhabit solitude, hoping my ideas would cohere. At other times, I found myself mulling over paragraphs like this one as I went about my day—strolling to the coffee shop or grocery store. Somewhere along the way, I realized that as a writer, I never walk without working. On Wordsworth’s better soil, I’ve built an office. In Kagge’s inner silence, my keyboard chatters away. I don’t need to buy anything from LifeSpan, because I already walk upon an invisible treadmill desk, constantly channeling the powers beneath my feet into the next paycheck. What would it mean, for once, simply to walk and say nothing about it?

Well, for one thing, it would devastate the entire online content-producing ecosystem. Millions of people would start exhibiting symptoms of what would soon be diagnosed as a new, digitally-derived form of delirium tremens, their thumbs reflexively jabbing the air as they attempt to provide meaning to their strange sensory experience the only way they know how, by filtering it through a social media platform for the approval of others. But most importantly, should you actually pursue this almost-adolescent ideal of pure activity or contemplation for its own impractical sake, you would quickly find it to be excruciatingly boring and retreat to the world of commerce, status-seeking, and mixed motives, where the cycle of dissatisfaction would start over again. As a long-time, deeply-amused observer of the way in which walking, of all things, has become a trendy way to signal depth of mind, nobility of soul, and a modern Romantic opposition to the dark Satanic homogeneity of popular culture and mass transportation, I’d suggest our tortured artist should just learn to love the absurd spectacle rather than bewail it.

Lapointe is described here as a writer and critic from Toronto. He additionally might want to look up a fellow Torontonian who could enlighten him as to the inevitable fate of any type of movement or lifestyle that presents itself as explicitly anti-consumerist.

Bridge of Theseus

By in foolosophy No Comments

We’re replacing the planks in our bridge. Philosophers can debate the paradox of whether it can be said to be the same bridge now. I just think it’s funny, the things to which memory attaches itself. For a moment, I reflected on the fact that these planks predate my arrival here. Everyone who has ever arrived here has crossed them — long-time residents, one-time visitors, and others in between, some forgotten, some dead. There’s some kind of compelling significance about physical reminders of an increasingly distant past.

Yesterday, I took an old t-shirt out of the closet to wear while working. It has holes in it, it’s rather shapeless, and it’s a generic sort of heather/beige color. Nothing striking about it at a glance. For a moment, I wondered why I still have it, and how it had survived the occasional purges of old clothing. I remembered, as I always do when I think about it, that I had been wearing it when one of my dogs had been put to sleep. For some reason, that’s one of the details of that day that stand out vividly in memory. I also recalled that I still have the hat and overshirt I was wearing, both very well-worn. The pants and hiking boots which completed that day’s ensemble are long gone. I don’t remember getting rid of them. Did I pause for a mournful moment’s reflection before doing so? I don’t remember that either. Why should I feel slightly more sentimental about the upper-wear anyway? What does holding on to it accomplish? There’s no rational explanation for it, of course. Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.

In his wonderful book of brief meditations on memory and forgetting, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past, Lewis Hyde writes in reference to Proust:

More striking still is the scene in which Marcel, revisiting the seaside resort of Balbec, bends to unbutton his boots and suddenly recalls the time when his grandmother had helped him with that simple task. With that memory, he finally knows fully that his grandmother has died, and he weeps.

Such are the “nows” that pass. Odette’s love has passed, Gilberte’s love has passed, his grandmother’s life has passed. The forgetting that has held each of these facts at bay might best be described as a species of dissociative amnesia. “That didn’t happen!” the mind declares, walling itself off from the painful real, refusing its proper burial. But then an apparently trivial trigger—a snatch of music, an overheard remark, a simple gesture—eludes the guardian amnesia, and of a sudden comes the understanding that the “now” of the past has truly passed, the memory recovered from the far side of oblivion revealing the self to be contingent, mortal, a creature of time.

It’s foolish, of course, to be overly tenacious in holding tight to the past. Even if we were able to successfully pull the brakes on the passage of time, the world of stasis that would result would be just another form of death. And yet, we can’t simply lie back like a branch on a stream and calmly surrender to the flux of time either, without seeming to dissolve something essential to our humanity. As Sam Hamill wrote in his poem “A Rose for Solitude,” we still need to reach for people, places and experiences as they flow past, to hold them for a moment, to look them in the eye, to recognize the significance of the fact that, however briefly, we met, and it mattered.

And if, as I pass,
I should look you in the eye,
do not be afraid. I want
only to glimpse the emptiness
at the center of your heart,
I want to reach for you
because I know,
as you do,
we might never have met.

Thursday Throwback

By in thursday throwback No Comments

[Originally published Jul. 20, 2012]

Dear Michel de Montaigne: I sometimes feel despondent over what I see as the Internet’s tendency to broaden one’s intellectual horizons while simultaneously, and ironically, facilitating the most rigid groupthink. It’s almost as if the sheer oceanic volume of information available to anyone with a broadband connection causes people to band together even more tightly around shared interests and beliefs for fear of completely losing their identities. Even some of the most interesting, thought-provoking writers attract a large number of puerile, sycophantic commenters and allow the echo chamber of praise to reinforce their prejudices and weaken their mental rigor. Am I wrong to think that an earnest truthseeker should strive after contrary voices in order to avoid being lulled into complacency by the flattery and easy companionship of the like-minded?

Montaigne Responds: I enter into conversation and argument with great freedom and facility, since opinions find in me a soil into which they cannot easily penetrate or strike deep roots. No proposition astounds me, no belief offends me, however much opposed it may be to my own. There is no fantasy so frivolous or extravagant that it does not seem to me a natural product of the human mind. Those of us who deny our judgement the right of making final decisions look mildly on ideas that differ from our own; if we do not give them credence, we can at least offer them a ready hearing.

Contradictions of opinion, therefore, neither offend nor estrange me; they only arouse and exercise my mind. We run away from correction; we ought to court it and expose ourselves to it, especially when it comes in the shape of discussion, not of a school lesson. Each time we meet with opposition, we consider not whether it is just, but how, wrongly or rightly, we can rebut it. Instead of opening our arms to it, we greet it with our claws. I could stand a rough shaking from my friends: ‘You are a fool, you’re talking nonsense.’

In good company, I like expression to be bold, and men to say what they think. We must strengthen our ears and harden them against any weakness for the ceremonious use of words. I like strong and manly acquaintanceships and society, a friendship that prides itself on the sharpness and vigour of its dealings. I like love that bites and scratches till the blood comes. It is not vigorous and free enough if it is not quarrelsome, if it is polite and artificial, if it is afraid of shocks, and is constrained in its ways: ‘for there can be no discussion without contradiction’ (Cicero, De Finibus, I, viii).

When I am opposed, my attention is roused, not my anger. I go out to meet the man who contradicts me and corrects me. The cause of truth ought to be a cause common to us both. How will he reply? The passion of anger has already struck down his judgement; confusion has usurped the place of reason. It would be useful if a wager were to hang on the result of our disputes, if there could be some material mark of our losses, so that we might keep a record of them. My man could then say to me: ‘Your ignorance and stubbornness on some twenty occasions last year cost you a hundred crowns.’

I welcome and embrace the truth in whosoever hands I find it. I cheerfully surrender to it, and offer it my vanquished arms as soon as I see it approaching in the distance. And provided that I am not treated with too imperious and magisterial a frown, I am glad of any criticisms upon my writings. Indeed I have often made changes in them, more out of politeness than because they were improved by it. For I like, by yielding easily, to gratify and foster the freedom to find fault with me, even at some cost to myself.

It is, however, difficult to induce men of my time to do this; they have not the courage to correct because they have not the courage to stand correction; and they never speak frankly in one another’s presence. I take so much pleasure in being judged and known that it is almost indifferent to me whether I am admired or criticized. My mind so frequently contradicts and condemns itself that it is all one to me if someone else does so, especially as I only give his criticism such authority as I choose.

Dear Michel de Montaigne: I agree with Maria Popova’s ideas about the combinatorial nature of creativity. But then I wonder if I’m only justifying my own lack of talent and original insight. In your esteemed opinion, is originality a prerequisite of valuable thought, or does it have more to do with fashion and a petty desire for distinction?

Montaigne Responds: Truth and reason are common to all men, and no more belong to the man who first uttered them than to him that repeated them after him. It is no more a matter of Plato’s opinion than of mine, when he and I understand and see things alike. The bees steal from this flower and that, but afterwards turn their pilferings into honey, which is their own; it is thyme and marjoram no longer. So the pupil will transform and fuse together the passages that he borrows from others, to make of them something entirely his own; that is to say, his own judgement. His education, his labour, and his study have no other aim but to form this.

Let him conceal all that has helped him, and show only what he has made of it. Plunderers and borrowers make a display of their buildings and their purchases, not of what they have taken from others. You do not see a high-court judge’s perquisites; you see the alliances he has made and the honours he has won for his children. Nobody renders a public account of his receipts; everyone displays his profits. The profit from our studies is to become better and wiser men.

Dear Michel de Montaigne: People say I’m crazy doing what I’m doing. They give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin. When I say that I’m O.K., well, they look at me kind of strange. “Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game?”

People say I’m lazy, dreaming my life away. They give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me. When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall, “Don’t you miss the big time, boy, you’re no longer on the ball?”

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. I really love to watch them roll. No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go. Should I be more ambitious, more concerned with my reputation, or is it enough for me to be content with tending to the bonsai tree of my life, happy to be forgotten by the world and left alone?

Montaigne Responds: Our life, said Pythagoras, is like the great and crowded assembly at the Olympic games. Some exercise the body in order to win glory in the contests; others bring merchandise there to sell for profit. There are some – and these are not the worst – whose only aim is to observe how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of other men’s lives, in order to judge and regulate their own

Dear Michel de Montaigne: I don’t know if I can believe any longer in the hope of salvation within linear time, whether of the religious sort or the scientific/technological alternative. But how can I possibly live in a world that holds forth no promise of evil’s eventual vanquishment? Why, then, resist the embrace of nihilistic oblivion?

Montaigne Responds: One must learn to endure what one cannot avoid. Our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrarieties, also of varying tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked one sort only, what effect would he make? He must be able to employ them together and blend them. And we too must accept the good and evil that are consubstantial with our life. Our existence is impossible without this mixture, and one side is no less necessary to us than the other. Any attempt to kick against natural necessity will be to copy the foolishness of Ctesiphon, who tried a kicking-match with his mule.

From What Stars Have We Fallen Together Here?

By in books, marriage, montaigne, nietzsche No Comments

Though Montaigne had some affection for his wife, Françoise de la Chassaigne, he did not ultimately judge that he was right to have married her. Though common people with “simple plebeian souls” might be suited for marriage, “men with unruly humors like me, who hate any sort of bond or obligation, are not so fit for it.” The problem is not that he chose a bad wife, but that he married at all. Looking back, he writes: “Of my own choice, I would have avoided marrying Wisdom herself, if she had wanted me.” Regarding the possibility of a bon mariage, the sentence which contains that phrase’s final occurrence in “On Some Verses of Vergil” summarizes Montaigne’s verdict: “That man knew what it was all about, it seems to me, who said that a good marriage was one made between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”  True friendship or good sex—do not expect that marriage will furnish either. Moreover, as the image of the deaf husband suggests, do not expect good conversation from marriage.

To grasp the depth of the contrast with Nietzsche, consider this stunning aphorism from Human, All Too Human:

Marriage as a long conversation. When entering into a marriage one ought to ask oneself: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman up into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation.

By itself, this aphorism does not establish that Nietzsche believes in the possibility of a good marriage. But when read in conjunction with the aphorism holding that “the best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship,” it seems difficult to deny that for Nietzsche, unlike Montaigne, “good marriage” names a genuine (if not frequently instantiated) human possibility. Whereas Montaigne does not think that the highest friendship is possible with a woman at all, let alone in marriage, Nietzsche does not hesitate to speak of “the higher conception of marriage as the soul-friendship of two people of differing sex.”

— Robert Miner, Nietzsche and Montaigne

I re-read Human, All Too Human a couple months ago and was pleasantly surprised by that aphorism, among many others (the book overall was better than I remembered it). Sue Prideaux, in her recent biography of Nietzsche, provides a lovely description of a fateful climb he made with Lou Salomé up Monte Sacro in the Italian Alps a few years after writing it:

Both of them described how similarly they thought and felt about things, and how words tumbled between them. They took words, like food, from each other’s mouths. Individual command melted as they finished each other’s thoughts and completed each other’s sentences. When they came down the mountain, he said to her, quietly, “I thank you for the most exquisite dream of my life.”

It was a short-lived dream and ended badly, but the experience was no less powerful for its brief duration.

The Lady of the House and I were lengthy-email-correspondents for over a year before we ever heard each other’s voices, and phone-friends for most of another year before we ever met in person. I recall a lazy Sunday in February, not on a mountain peak, but on the phone from early morning until late evening, with words tumbling between us and individual command melting. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t say it boastfully; I only want to testify to the truth of that vision, that possibility, of a relationship as a long, fruitful conversation, extending, with any luck, into old age.

Pride Groweth Into an Industry

By in animals, the geist of the zeit, the statusphere 1 Comment

I saw this the other day in town. The fact that “rescued” is in a slightly larger font made me wonder: is the pride supposed to be in the dog or the rescuer? I fear that pets have become yet another staging ground for barely-disguised moral preening, along with farmer’s markets, hybrid vehicles, and screen-free living.

To be clear, I also eat healthier than most. I’ve owned a Prius. I use my smartphone mainly for work, otherwise as a glorified music storage/playback device. And I spent many years being unofficially involved in pit bull terrier rescue — taking unwanted dogs from backyard barrels and veterinary clinics, nursing them back to health and socializing them at home, and often adopting them out to new owners. I have no quarrel with any of these things, but I also consider them mostly incidental to my character. I wouldn’t be much different if I ate fast food, drove an F-150, and bought dogs from a neighbor’s litter, nor would I be measurably adding to or subtracting from the world’s total quantity of well-being. Perhaps it’s not for me to judge, but I like to think that I manage to keep my ego from bleeding over into all of my possessions and activities.

I’ve seen a different paw-print sticker that reads, “Who Rescued Who?” Again, I love animals and am nowhere near above acting silly and playful with them. But that just strikes me as mawkish self-absorption. Do you honestly think of yourself primarily as a broken mess of a human being, capable of being made whole only by the unconditional love of an animal? Why would you advertise that about yourself to any stranger within sight of your rear bumper? If encouraged, egoistic self-regard corrodes any restraining barrier it encounters until it reaches the sea level of being noticed for any reason. “You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” Orwell imagined the ultimate totalitarian state, in the form of O’Brien, threatening to impose this from without. Ironically, the more comfortable and saccharine life has become, the more we’ve birthed it from within.

The Old Assyrian Stuff

By in beards, macho macho men No Comments

The fact remains that all the great literary rows you read about were between bearded men, whiskered men, critics who looked like bursting horsehair sofas, and novelists who had forgotten to shave for years. The Edinburgh reviewers were beavers to a man. The connection between whiskers and caustic criticism is not hard to see.

There is probably nothing which so soothes a man and puts him in a frame of mind to see only good in everything as a nice, clean shave. He feels his smooth, pink cheeks, and the milk of human kindness begins to gurgle within him. What a day! he says, as he looks out of the window. What a kipper! he says as he starts his breakfast. And, if he is a literary critic, What a book! he feels as he takes up the latest ghastly effort of some author who ought to be selling coals instead of writing novels.

But let a man omit to shave, even for a single day, and mark the result. He feels hot and scrubby. Within twelve hours his outlook has become jaundiced and captious. If his interests lie in the direction of politics, he goes out and throws a bomb at someone. If he is an employer of labour, he starts a lockout. If he is a critic, he sits down to write his criticism with the determination that by the time he has finished reading it the author will know he has been in a fight.

You have only to look about you to appreciate the truth of this. All whiskered things are testy and short-tempered—pumas, wild cats, Bernard Shaw, and—in the mating season—shrimps. Would Ben Jonson have knifed a man on account of some literary disagreement if he had not been bearded to the eyebrows? Can you imagine a nation of spruce, clean-shaven Bolsheviks, smelling of bay rum?

There is only one thing to be done. We must go back to whiskers. And there must be no half-measures.

It is not enough for a critic to have a beard like Frank Swinnerton’s, which, though technically a beard, is not bushy enough to sour the natural kindliness of his disposition. We must have the old Assyrian stuff, the sort of beards Hebrew prophets wore—great, cascading, spade-shaped things such as the great Victorians grew—whether under glass or not has never been ascertained.

— P.G. Wodehouse, “Back to Whiskers,”  Week-end Wodehouse

The clean-shaven Patrick Kurp can attest to the truth of this, given his boundless indulgence of potboilers, bodice-rippers, and emotive poetry. On the other hand, though, consider the prevalence of beards among today’s young hipsters, a demographic typically unacquainted with either combative ferocity or literary taste. Has cultural evolution decoupled the beard from its traditional representation of masculinity? Did facial hair serve to camouflage, as it were, the real marker of manliness to which we should have been paying attention? Grip strength has been in alarming decline in recent decades. You can bet the old critics of whom Wodehouse spoke all had, in addition to their majestic plumage, a firm, bone-splintering handshake. Today’s bearded youths prefer fist bumps and half-hearted lean-hugs; their feeble hands need only enough strength to keep their omnipresent phones from clattering to the floor. Is it any wonder most of the online literary sites wallow in touchy-feely solipsism? What is best in life? To crush your rival’s metacarpals, to savage his self-published memoir, and to hear the lamentations of his Twitter feed. We’ve fallen far from the old ways.

Contentless Progressive Ideas Meme Furiously

By in gender, ohferfucksake, the geist of the zeit, world football No Comments

A.G. Hamilton:

Almost everyone who read about this topic from mainstream press sources came away with the impression that the women’s teams were being treated unfairly in the World Cup despite the numbers clearly telling a different story. That’s a problem with the press, not discriminatory pay.

I shouldn’t be amazed, but somehow, as I see article after article repeating trendy nonsense about a gender pay gap in professional soccer, I manage to find a little bit of untarnished innocence deep down inside and say, “How can these hacks be so ignorant and/or dishonest?” Likewise, while watching the final yesterday, I heard the Nike “Dream with Us” commercial at halftime and was actually taken aback at the social-justice propagandizing. “Can you be the generation that ends gender inequality?” “Or will you show that champions in your sport can also look like you?” “What other maudlin, progressive, hashtag platitudes can we stick in here to make you gullible leftists forget all your reflexive, anti-corporate posturing and buy our athletic wear?” Aren’t they supposed to be at least a little subtle about it? Don’t people feel insulted by such blatant pandering? Will I ever become cynical enough to stop asking such rhetorical questions?

We Had a Close Call. Then Another One.

By in collectanea, foolosophy 3 Comments

We had a close call
I didn’t even see it, then another one
I hardly believed it at all
— Band of Horses, “The General Specific”

♫ Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back ♫—WHOA!

So, yes, I was working in the garage yesterday morning when I heard such a clatter, as if a garbage truck had picked up a dumpster and dashed it against the ground in a fit of rage. Running back into the house, I met the Lady of the House coming from the opposite direction. We converged at the door to the back porch, where we saw that one of our oaken neighbors had dropped in for a visit.

We had just had solar panels installed earlier this week, and for a confused second, I thought that somehow they had come loose and gone sliding off the roof. But no, the crash I heard was the tree destroying our above-ground swimming pool. The people who built the house had installed it; it was a really nice one, with a deck custom-built around it (pretty similar to this one.) Incredibly, the deck itself was unscathed. A section of the gutter was torn off (you can see it pinned to the screen in the picture), but it just so happened to be the section that we were going to repair soon anyway. The branches fell inches short of the roof; not a single shingle was damaged. The solar panels were safe, thank goodness. It missed the propane tank by a few feet, thank goodness once more (with feeling this time!). And the pool needed some minor repairs to the plumbing, so we hadn’t even opened it this season anyway. Insurance should cover replacement value, though honestly, we probably won’t bother to replace it. A check for several thousand dollars can be far more useful in other ways than replacing a luxury item that only gets used three or four months a year anyway. All in all, we couldn’t have possibly planned it any better had we tried.

Last year, our car got totaled when a high-school girl, late for her prom pictures, tried to dart across the highway in front of us from a side road and didn’t time it well enough. We clipped her rear end and sent her into a spin, where the truck coming up in the left lane got her on the opposite front end and pushed her into the grassy median. She was shaken up, but no one was hurt. As it happened, we were looking at the possibility of some expensive engine work on that car, but the insurance payout covered everything we owed plus another thousand or so toward a new vehicle (which we bought outright). Now, as someone who has logged over a million miles in nearly thirty years of various driving/delivery careers, I despise stupid, inattentive drivers. I’ve seen countless accidents and damn-near accidents, especially on interstates, and have probably spent a week of my life, if you total up the hours, being stuck in traffic behind an accident or detouring around it. As I’ve said before, bring on the driverless cars. People are too unforgivably stupid to be trusted with them. So, as you can imagine, I was furious at the time. We could easily have been killed by some hormone-addled, airhead teenager, the avatar of all the dangerous morons I’d seen over the years tailgating people at eighty miles per hour while fiddlydicking with their stupid phones. But once I’d calmed down, I had to admit: this was clearly the best possible outcome, all things considered. We couldn’t have possibly planned it any better had we tried.

It’s a strange feeling to be grateful for disasters. It feels a bit like making cutesy noises at a wild animal that could easily decide to maul you. These near-misses turned out to be quite beneficial, but intellectually assenting to that fact calls one’s attention to the uncomfortable reminder that very little of one’s life is actually under one’s control. I’m not a religious believer, but I’m still sensitive to when a situation calls for the humble recognition of how lucky we are to have as much good fortune as we do. No amount of human brilliance or technological mastery will ever completely remove fate’s teeth and claws. For every person who happily burbles about what a blessing in disguise a disaster turned out to be, there are countless more in silent graves who couldn’t be reached for comment. Maybe one day we won’t be so fortunate anymore ourselves. All we can do is be aware, feel small, and move on — perhaps a bit more tentatively at first, but eventually, as we always do, slipping back into complacency and self-centeredness.

«< 3 4 5 6 7 >»