1. 31 October 2006

    2006-10-31

    Life at the limit

    The classic what is life without strife taken to extremes: indescribable gratification from a near death experience.

    And what I can tell you is that, on both occasions, I felt an intense and unmediated sense of peace and rightness, something oceanic and pure and heartbreakingly simple. Here, at what I had every reason to believe was the very limit of a life I generally consciously experienced as a disappointment, I had somehow broken free into something so far beyond beauty that language doesn’t have the tools to convey it.

    I can’t say to have ever come near death, but the sensation resonates with me a bunch. The tumble while skiing or playing soccer, the best kind is when you just explode into the ground and bounce right back up.

    Tonight I also managed to come across this quote, with which I wholeheartedly agree.

    The great object of life is sensation — to feel that we exist, even though in pain. It is this ‘craving void’ which drives us to gaming — to battle, to travel — to intemperate, but keenly felt, pursuits of any description, whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment. Lord Byron, via here then here after a google)

    A few things that come to mind:

    • I was on skis, jumping off a real sharp edge in a jeep trail, through where the lift came through some trees. I had the few seconds to relax while I floated in the sky, but I just biffed the landing, hit the hill on my side, somehow bounced right back up onto my feet as if nothing happened, and took off. The worst thing about falling down while skiing is that the people on the lift saw you, you don’t know who they were, but you do know that they’re laughing their ass off at you. And whatever dashing lines you were making that run just end in a puff of snow. But my sister behind me was impressed at how cool it’d looked. So imagine whoever was on the lift, they must have been impressed.
    • Riding my bike along a new, dark, asphalt path, on my way down a hill. There’s a 90º bend with dust/dirt covering it – not a good recipe. I really was cruising, and before I knew what’d happened my bike had slid out from beneath me and I plowed head-first into the asphalt before sliding a few feet. Luckily I’ve made falling down an important part of my day to day routine ever since I was a kid, so I managed to catch myself, popped right back up, and came out of it with sore palms and a bit of a scrape on my shoulder. A friend was riding right behind me and seemed pretty worried, but all I thought was: I really shouldn’t just be laying here, so I got up. Worrying about how I should’ve maybe been wearing a helmet or could have possibly rode the break a bit harder always comes afterward.
    • Driving on a gray day, the sky had been losing slush and there was a bit of it on the road (again with the curves and the slipping). I was coming onto the freeway via a cloverleaf. 100 feet before the meter lights I started fishtailing. Did probably 4 good swerves. Managed to stay on the road, and somehow the car came right back under control just as it went between the poles with the meter lights mounted on them. That car could have gone off the road and tumbled down into one the ponds to the side of the interchange easy; it should have at least nicked one of the meters a bit. I’m glad it didn’t.

    But doing that kind of thing really does feel good, afterwards. It’s great to cheat, if not death, some other significant hurt or embarrassment. It’s the wonder of turning a bad situation into a good one; of coming out of the fire without getting burned; of proving that you really are all that. Or you’re at least enough of it to get lucky and look back onto some experience and know that it really shouldn’t have turned out the way it did, but for your supreme skills, or luck.

    But I don’t know, things get creepy when people go looking for this kind of thrill. Where do adrenaline sports like skydiving or base jumping turn into dysfunction; into self mutilation and the like? Adam Greenfield again:

    What I don’t buy is the coupling [...] of the sought-for ego-dissolution to the sensation of bodily violence. The latter, I’d argue, is immaterial, a distraction, the worst sort of red herring. What’s crucial is letting go of control.

    And he wraps it up better than I’d have been able to. It’s that something else – luck, god, circumstance – has caused disaster, and the same chose to spare us from whatever should have been the consequence.

    via Kjell Olsen2006-10-31

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