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Sunday, May 3rd Full Flower Moon

08 November 2009

Post up

If you haven't read David Foster Wallace, you're shorting yourself some Quality.

Full stop.

I hadn't read this piece before, which remains timely and relevant. Go read it, I'll wait.



















I would just add that, short of turning into one of those cyclists who make it about self righteousness of one sort or the other (whether it be lycraed out Serious Training, or Planet Saving Commute, or Traffic Law Obeying to the Nth degree as a matter of being an upright example to others, or maybe just some jackass on a computer-ahem), short of being one of them, being on a bike would make just about every example listed in the tedious workday struggle for conscious awareness a little more fun and, so, doable.
The ability to make the choice to step outside oneself and one's "tiny skull sized kingdom" -and man, I wish that line were mine!- is more accessible given the inherent freedom of the bike to take us a step outside the gridlock.
2 cents.

I found the article via Flick Lives!, which is frequently a good read. Thanks for the heads up, Flick.

4 comments:

Gunnar Berg said...

Okay, Hot Shot, you just hit one of my favorite writers. His writing is everything that I can't do. Sad though. He was a lot smarter than I am, but I'm better at living life.

Old Nevermore said...

Great read. I've forwarded it on.

I find those checkout lines "sacred" more often than not. A time of contemplation and wonder.

"Why is that lady with the Fendi scarf buying all of that discounted meat?"

Endless food for thought, see?

Of course, the rest of what he describes-- The job, the traffic, the exhaustion-- don't, or at least very rarely, exist in my sphere. I work three days a week, and ride my bicycle. I go to the duck pond, read some, write some. Try to be a Good Dad. Try to make most of my time sacred.

I've engineered my life to be as stress-free as I can make it, and over time, for better or worse, it's become my own default setting.

Juancho said...

I just picked up Brief Interviews with Hideous Men a couple days ago. That beautiful dead son-of-a-bitch can write, and he cracks me to the core. Thanks for that link. Right timely.

Robert H said...

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."

So fucking beautiful.