[lit-ideas] Re: Aaaaaargh
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:47:57 -0400
>>Really you should get out and enjoy life.
A while back, I did a lot of flying and was changed by the
experience. Sitting in a plane at 40,000 feet, watching the
sun rise golden on the steel gray waters of the Atlantic,
all the vast world below, medium-sized cities looking like
computer chips with moss growing at the edges -- it became
clear how little I knew about anything, how small my
imagination was, how limited my understanding of the
complexity of the world.
I return to my apartment, sit at a desk in a small room,
turn on the computer, and get immersed in the positioned
news statements of competing factions. Back in that small
world, the insight of the plane retreats a bit, all the
interminable crises and bickering seem larger, the pessimism
about the world returns -- slowly and surely I grow a
carapace, my shell, my world view. My little, little world view.
Then it's flying time again. As the jet circles out of La
Guardia, the squalor of Queens organizes into grid patterns
of unimaginable complexity. The jet passes over my
neighborhood.
Down there's my apartment, I think, that place where I have
my world view. My opinions. My anxiety about the destruction
of culture. It all seems so important at my desk. What a
tiny world down there.
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