Quotations are an interesting thing. Sometimes I’ll be feeling a thought about something; food, defeat, happiness- anything, and I can Google a listing of quotes that refer to this. It’s a really simply way of finding the exact words to describe a feeling that i’m having, or a thought too intricate for me to do justice in the time I have. After all, if someone has already said it best, “steal from them and go out strong.”
There are problems with this, however. And it’s not what you’re thinking. Let me back up, I don’t mean to be presumptuous.
I take an issue with the ability to take a feeling as complex as love or hate, throw it into google, and be satisfied with the result, although I often do this. There are a handful of quotes I can pick from memory, but they don’t often apply. I can’t quote Palahniuk’s rebel yell against consumerism if I’m not feeling that same emotion. The square peg doesn’t always fit.
No, the issue is these quotes have no meaning to me personally. They are filtered out of their original context and placed on a page because they share a word or two with other famous sayings. The problem with this, in my opinion, is that these lines are often the fuse on the powder keg. By this I mean there is a motif or theme building up to these all-too-poetic, transcendent words. I feel these are sublime moments for the author, the white whale of their novel- the words aren’t right for weeks, months, or years and then, they fall onto the page and are nothing else but perfect.
Who am I to cheat an author out of his work? To disregard the rest of those novel thoughts and words without which the quotation wouldn’t be powerful, quotable. These authors didn’t have google or yahoo or whatever the new, flavor-of-the-day search engine is- they read everything, made notes in the margin, wrote letters to their friends recommending books. We have it too easy now- so easy to be lazy and allow others to do the work for us.
I’ve started to write down the quotes and things that move me, that make me step back from the page and think to myself about what I read. Those moments don’t come fast enough, which is good, but what is true about them is they conjure up a thought and emotion in me. Something that is mine. It was me that witnessed the creation of a thought, that inkling of wonder or serendipity. It’s as if we have thought all of these things before, but the words are l’esprit d’escalier; the words find us only after we need them.
Enough of that.
Today ended the first season of softball in my competitive league. We definitely came in last palce, which is altogether fine. I’m not worried about it, and we ended up going out to celebrate, or at the very worst commiserate, our season long struggle. I had an absolutely terrible offensive day, which I guess is forgivable seeing as how we lost by 12- Not much I could have done to sway the tide.
Speaking of tide, I’m starting to get tired of some cliched analogies: ocean, road, and car metaphors. If there are things in the world that are mentally grating to me, those are them. For some reason I don’t need to hear you are drowning in anything, an inspirational moment is not like coming up for air, and Robert Frost and Yogi Berra can talk about forks in the road, but you probably should leave it to them.
Why isn’t life like a bicycle? In fact, I like it better. Think about it this way: A bicycle is clean, ehalthy, self-powered, self-started, complicated gears working together to make things easier. If something is off, the bike moves forward but more difficultly, if things are really bad, you’re stuck. Compare to a car: Needs fuel, protects those doing the driving from the elements and the world, forward and reverse with a large turning radius- this isn’t life it’s a condom. It’s protection, keeping you from whatever is out there.
Let’s all agree to move on from the car analogies then. Perfect.