I went sliding the other day for the first time this winter, over at the Derryfield Country Club. Putting on clothes for sliding is like putting on armor. We strap on a breast plate of sweater, slip gauntlets of wool over our hands, push our feet into heavy sollerets of insulated leather, crown our head with a heaume of fur, and thus accoutered, stride forthrightly (if waddlingly) into the teeth of the downhill, dragging behind us the frail Rocinante of a toboggan or sled or a Johnny Zyla's plastic orange flyer with yellow nylon rope handles.
The sole purpose of sliding is to get to the bottom of the hill as quickly as possible, riding some edge of permissible, but not too dangerous, risk. True, some people don't like to go too fast, preferring a gentle slalom to a headlong careen, and some don't even want to go down at all, standing at the top of the run shouting encouragement in cheerleader decibels.
But I like to go as fast as I can. I imagine I am part of a champion bobsled team, or the lone man on a luge, balancing on edges through the perilous sine waves of an ice-hardened decline. I can't go as fast as they can, but just like them I want to experience that point at which control and giving-in to gravity are balanced; I want to feel the pin-sharp attention of my senses as the world slashes by. It's that focus at the moment of risk that makes a good slide good. Yes, a safe arrival at the bottom has its own charm, relief its own high; but between the ordinariness of standing at the top and the ordinariness of arriving at the bottom is all of life's danger packed into a pitched compass made of wood, muscle, scream, ice, consciousness. For a brief moment we are no longer at the mercy; we are not watching time's sand run through the hourglass, we are the sand rushing through the pinch of glass between the weight above and the pile below. We are not Sisyphus doomed to endless labor; we are Sisyphus' rock as it tumbles downhill in its lithic release.
But the headlong rush is only half. As people speed down the hill I imagine blooming behind each of them one of those multi-colored parachutes drag racers use. These enlarge as the velocity increases until the people are gently deposited at the bottom of the hill. These drogue chutes go by many names -- some are affection, love, the friction of good friendship; I'm sure you can think of others. These things keep the iced edge just inside the danger. A full run needs both chute and shoosh, the exhilaration experienced in sense and space, the exhilaration cooled into narrative. In the acceleration we pre pare for memory; in the recall we prepare for excitement. This keeps us from abandon, allows us to take another run, and then another.
Miami
Getting Angry