Every takeoff and landing, when the plane banked too much to one side, I prayed for a crash.
Chuck PalahniukAt almost every meeting since then, Big Bob has made me cry.
I never went back to the doctor. I never chewed the valerian root.
This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. If I didn't say anything, people in a group assumed the worst. They cried harder, I cried harder. Look up into the stars and you're gone.
Walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt. I wasn't host to cancer or blood parasites; I was the little warm center that the life of the world crowded around.
Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip. I prayed for wind shear effect. I prayed for pelicans sucked into the turbines and loose bolts and ice on the wings. On takeoff, as the plane pushed down the runway and the flaps tilted up, with our seats in their full upright position and our tray tables stowed and all personal carry-on baggage in the overhead compartment, as the end of the runway ran up to meet us with our smoking materials extinguished, I prayed for a crash.
Chuck PalahniukAt home, you'll sometimes wake up in your dark bed with the terror you've fallen asleep in the booth and missed a changeover.
Chuck PalahniukWherever I'm going, I'll be there to apply the formula. I'll keep the secret intact.
It's simple arithmetic.
It's a story problem.
If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 60 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall?
You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).
A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall.
If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall.
How I met Tyler was I went to a nude beach. This was the very end of summer, and I was asleep. Tyler was naked and sweating, gritty with sand, his hair wet and stringy, hanging in his face.
Tyler had been around before we met.
Tyler was pulling driftwood logs out of the surf and dragging them up the beach. In the wet sand, he’d already planted a half circle of logs so they stood a few inches apart and as tall as his eyes. There were four logs, and when I woke up, I watched Tyler pull a fifth log up the beach. Tyler dug a hole under one end of the log, then lifted the other end until the log slid into the hole and stood there at a slight angle.
You wake up at the beach.
We were the only people on the beach.
With a stick, Tyler drew a straight line in the sand several feet away. Tyler went back to straighten the log by stamping sand around its base.
I was the only person watching this.
Tyler called over, “Do you know what time it is?”
I always wear a watch,
“Do you know what time it is?”
I asked, where?
“Right here,” Tyler said. “Right now.”
It was 4:06 P.M.
After a while, Tyler sat cross-legged in the shadow of the standing logs. Tyler sat for a few minutes, got up and took a swim, pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and started to leave. I had to ask.
I had to know what Tyler was doing while I was asleep.
If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?
I asked if Tyler was an artist.
Tyler shrugged and showed me how the five standing logs were wider at the base. Tyler showed me the line he’d drawn in the sand, and how he’d used the line to gauge the shadow cast by each log.
Sometimes, you wake up and have to ask where you are. What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand. Only now the fingers were Nosferatu-long and the thumb was too short, but he said how at exactly four-thirty the hand was perfect. The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute Tyler had sat in the palm of a perfection he’d created himself.
You wake up, and you’re nowhere.
One minute was enough Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
You wake up, and that’s enough
This is a terrible way to travel. I go to meetings my boss doesn't want to attend. I take notes. I'll get back to you.
Chuck PalahniukMarla doesn't have testicular cancer. Marla doesn't have tuberculosis. She isn't dying. Okay in that brain brain-food philosophy way, we're all dying, but Marla isn't dying the way Chloe was dying.
Chuck PalahniukIt turns out, my suitcase was vibrating on departure from Dulles, according to the security task force guy, so the police took it off the flight. Everything was in that bag. My contact lens stuff. One red tie with blue strips. One blue tie with red stripes. These are regimental stripes, not club tie stripes. And one solid red tie.
Chuck PalahniukEverything, including your set of hand-blown green glass dishes with the tiny bubbles and imperfections, little bits of sand, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous aboriginal people of wherever, well, these dishes all get blown out by the blast. Picture floor-to-ceiling drapes blown out and flaming to shreds in the hot wind.
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