Leaping

A funny thing happened while writing this page. In fact it’s a mystery I count on. Bits of information, anecdotes and images attach themselves to a beginning idea. A passage in one book sends a tendril to another on the Internet and that connects to a story told by the person who cuts my hair. These lateral leaps correspond to the vertical leaps from high above ground.

David Brooks in his new book, The Road to Character, writes about the defining moment in the life of Frances Perkins. While having tea, among DAR friends in a lower Manhattan apartment in 1911, she heard fire engines rushing to a nearby building. She followed them to the scene of the Triangle Shirt Factory just as women were hurling themselves to their death from the 8^th floor. The sight turned her life around. From then on, she devoted herself to the long struggle for improved working conditions serving as Labor Sec. in FDR’s cabinet for his full term in office.

I then came across a report online noting a 27% surge of deaths by euthanasia in Belgium. I remembered once reading about a town hall in Brussels erected in the 15^th century. The architect, Phillip the Good, noting that the tower was off-center, was so distraught, he jumped from the belfry to his death. If rowing toward Eden is what we’ve been doing our whole lives I know of no better place than Bruges as a stand-in for Paradise. Memo: best not to go with a high fever and hacking cough.

This was followed by a footnote that the great Czech novelist, Bohumil Hrabel, was killed at age 83 when he fell out of a 5^th story hospital window while feeding some birds. For an instant he may have found a wind-draft, sprouted wings and then swooped with a colony of gulls as his final vision. As Wilbur Wright put it, No bird soars in a calm.

I might have to revise my wish for a last hurrah: sliding home with an inside-the-park home run... my demise coming in a cloud of dust called out by the ultimate ump.   

I have no memory of ever suffering from bouts of depression. If I had I might have considered jumping out of the window till suddenly remembering I lived in the basement.

Heather, my hair-cutter, told me today that her whole family including her 78-year old mother and father went sky-diving last week at 14,000 ft. Other than the view I can’t imagine why…. even if one landed in Bruges.  

The more I think about it the greater my preferred mode of descent: the elevator, the lift...which says nothing about the drop. We walk into a small room eleven flights up and walk out into a lobby. No gasping for air, no sweat and such an affirmation of trust. 

Truman Capote, writing about his cousin, said she imagined she could leave this world with today in her eyes. She had been looking for God and here he/she was all the time.

I came across a passage in the Character book that Gen. Eisenhower wrote a press release taking full blame in case the landing at Normandy had failed. Of course it was never published until his memoir. Peggy has taught me not to rehearse bad news. If it happens you’ll always think of something.