I've just finished reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson for the second time, and i really enjoyed it. I found this quote, which resonated strongly with me.
-- Neal Stephenson, Anathem page 414
He did a new thing with a new set of people every day of his life. And that made him just as different from the people in the traffic jam as I was. ... Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives.
That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People ... had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why [people] were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you played a significant part? ...
[He] got all of this for free by living his stories from day to day, and the only drawback was that the world held his stories to be of small account. Perhaps that was why he felt such a compulsion to tell them, not just about his own exploits in the wilderness, but those of his mentors.
So we met for coffee. And after sitting on the sidewalk and chatting, we both felt a ride was in order. Kent's suggestion was the Cedar River Trail (30 to 50 miles) -- quite a bit longer ride than i was expecting. I was dressed for hanging in the city, not a long ride, wearing mostly cotton. But i was game.
I was pleased that my bike, my clothes, my legs and my food stocks were able to be flexible enough to take on a ride like this with no notice. All performed perfectly.
We rode through the bike tunnel, down Lake Washington Boulevard past Seward Park to Renton where we found a wonderful Mexican restaurant where we eagerly fueled up.
The Cedar River trail alternates between peaceful riding through the forest and riding along side (but not on!) a major highway. We chatted about life, the Universe and everything as we pedaled along the trail, turned and climbed up Cedar Grove road where we took a brief, but lovely detour into a favorite secret park for a bit of trail riding. The Log Cabin Reach Natural Area is beautiful, gave us a fun taste of off road riding and we saw cougar tracks along the stream.
After mistaking a powerline marker ball for a para glider we cruised into Issaquah, finishing our conversation, and our ride right as the Sound Transit #554 bus rolled up, allowing me to make it to a database consultation in downtown Seattle with perfect timing.
It was a great ride, and a lovely day, a day where we made and lived our own, small stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment