Choire Sicha

Saturday, September 6

Indeed there are only two sorts of people: Brontë people and Austen people. The Brontë soul understands that people go unfortunately and suddenly mad; distrusts any organizing system of human intentions; finds even real love sometimes too sandpapery; has random overwhelming bad dreams even when life is placid.

The Austen sort is resigned to extreme bafflements of communication; finds the pain of other people intrusive or horrific; can adjust easily to a state of near-permanent dissatisfaction; often finds his own motives opaque and distant.

Surely we must breed these two neurotic races together until they are stripped of these deathly ills. None, sadly, are willing to take the painful first steps of integration via mating. So yet today we have this gulf. ⊕

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Tuesday, September 2

I've thought and wrote and meditated about this summer, and I've finally figured out how to exactly express to you what I've learned. It's troubled me: how to distill this summer but give due to its great abundance? After all, I've toured the deserted places of my childhood, stayed in my mother's house, fallen head over heels in love, recovered from falling in love and emerged with a great friend, seen the city where I came of age, visited with old friends and new friends, laughed til I cried, cried til I laughed, comforted the disturbed, disturbed the comforted, made serious decisions about my future, gotten a great tan, travelled by jet, yacht, car, and train, eaten great food, and still managed to finally take off that last ten pounds I thought I never would.

And so, just this weekend, while doing some heart-cleansing white voodoo alone at midnight on the black moonless beach, it came to me. A parable of our times, or at least, my times. With this story, I am plunging into autumn, and I hope you will join me in this tribute to peace and beauty. It's a fucking koan, people, and perhaps it will speak to you as well. Are you ready? Well here we go, ladies and gentlemen:

One day a forest ranger and his young trainee go up into the mountains to check on some isolated campgrounds. Up near the tree line, they take a break for lunch. While sitting on boulders in a clearing and enjoying the vast panorama below, a giant grizzly bear comes lurching out of the woods, heading right for them. Reaching into his pack, the forest ranger pulls out a pair of running shoes. He casually puts his sandwich down, takes off his hiking boots, and ties up the Nikes. The bear, sniffing hungrily, lurches closer, its giant yellow claws exposed and ready. Blood is in the air.

"Dude, what are you doing?" asks the trainee, scared shitless. "We all know you can't outrun a grizzly bear!"

"But I don't have to outrun him," the forest ranger says. "I just have to outrun you." ⊕