Post title stolen from the Real McKenzies' song of same name (good stuff and a true story to boot).
Autopilot of the Gods Part II (read first part here: part I)
Passion can get you close, but not all the way. So can joy, focus and even anger. Some initial intensity seems to be required, while fear appears to be a strong preventative. There is also a repetition component, training of body and mind to perform the necessary tasks without hesitation. The next component is what seems nearly impossible to pinpoint. As lame as this may sound, it happens when it happens. Maybe what separates us mere humans from the great athletes is the ability to achieve this at will and prolong it. I have discovered no reliable formula to attain the state with regularity. Upon approach, any recognition will cause it to turn and run. Imagine starting to fall into a blissful sleep and musing how nice only to jangle yourself awake again. Blink an eye, gone. A random thought like a bucket of black ink sloshed over fresh snow, and it's gone.
Time spent there is incomparable and defies description. How can something be quiet and loud? Surreal and feel like home? Full of everything and still empty? Serenely peaceful and utterly violent? Impossible and yet real? It is the line where sport and athleticism meet art and inspiration and become dance, your partner the laws of physics seemingly at their most limber, mathematics contorted to incredulous positions, probability distilled to possibility and alchemized into reality.
I come back to the computer program analogy, coded in our brains, an intimate knowledge of the universe we move through, unfortunately more than CTRL+ALT+DELETE is required to access. If you want to get really metaphysical, it makes sense if we accept the fact that we are all part of something larger than ourselves and have origins in the same universe, so why wouldn't that information be imprinted somewhere in our DNA? The issue is retrieval.
Best of luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment