Dichroic Reflections

flinging myself into it

Richard Bach is best known for his mystical new-agey stuff like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: Confessions of a Reluctant Messiah, and One. As mystical new-agey stuff goes, they're not bad, which is to say I enjoyed them on first reading but don't reread them much now. His aviation writings are definitely worth rereading, however. They are a bit more grounded, if you'll excuse the expression, and are suffused, shot through, totally saturated in the love of flying and airplanes.

In one essay (probably collected in A Gift of Wings) Bach tells of talking to a seatmate on a commercial airplane. The man spends most of the flight talking about his WWII military experience in loving detail, then winds up the rest of his life in one sentence :"And so I came home, got married, got a job with the company, and here I am." In contrast, Bach asks a recreational pilot what he remembers about his life and gets, "What do I remember? WHat don't I remember! Just yesterday I was out at the airport and ...." and he's off, spinning stories, hanger flying, living and reliving his life.

That's what pilots are like. That's what rowers are like. That's what people who compete (at any level) in any of those sports now going on in Greece and people who read SF and go to cons and people who knit and people who do just about anything they really, really care about are like. It's true that college was a seminal time for me, and that my wedding day had wonderful memories and so on, but if I thought those were the very best times and it was all downhill from there I think I'd have to shoot myself. My goal is never to be able to summarize my most recent decades as "and so I settled down and here I am". I don't want to settle down, if that ever means not caring.

And so I'm off to Masters Nationals tomorrow, and even though I'm not terribly fast I'm going to row each race knowing that I have at least a chance to do well in it. I'm going to fling myself into this weekend without worrying about how I'll get out of it (well, I do have airfare home!) and I'm going to suck the marrow out of it.

I don't know why I thought of Bach today. I haven't read him in a while. Maybe this is my brain's way of reminding me of what I need to remember now.

Posted by dichroic at August 17, 2004 02:02 PM