Do you ever just want to take your car out onto the highway and gun the engine as fast
as you can and then close your eyes and see what happens?
If I've learned anything in twenty-nine years, it's
that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70
percent of his or her radar. My gift - bad choice of words - is that I can look at you, him, her,
them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of
insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its
many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a
narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.
There are a number of things a woman can tell about a man who is roughly twenty-nine years old,
sitting in the cab of a pickup truck at 3:37 in the afternoon on a weekday, facing the Pacific,
writing furiously on the back of pink invoice slips. Such a man may or may not be employed, but
regardless, there is mystery there. If this man is with a dog, then that's good, because it means he's
capable of forming relationships. But if the dog is a male dog, that's probably a bad sign, because
it means the guy is likely a dog, too. A girl dog is much better, but if the guy is over thirty, any
kind of dog is a bad sign regardless, because it means he's stopped trusting humans altogether. In
general, if nothing else, guys my age with dogs are going to be work.
Then there's stubble: stubble indicates a possible drinker, but if he's driving a van or a pickup
truck, he hasn't hit bottom yet, so watch out, honey. A guy writing something on a clipboard
while facing the ocean at 3:37 P.M. may be writing poetry, or he may be writing a letter begging
someone for forgiveness. But if he's writing real words, not just a job estimate or something
business-y, then more likely than not this guy has something emotional going on, which could
mean he has a soul.
All systems have failed me. In five
minutes I'll be fine again for a while, but right now the inside of my head feels like Niagara
Falls without the noise, just this mist and churning and no real sense of where earth ends and
heaven begins.
Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just
something we haul into the grave.
Inasmuch as I am a spiritual man, I do believe in God - I think that He created an
order for the world; I believe that, in constantly bombarding Him with requests for miracles,
we're also asking that He unravel the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles
would be a cartoon, not a world.
My brain feels like a cool, deep lake.
Douglas CouplandI think God is how you deal with everything that's out of your own control.
Douglas CouplandI felt like I was walking on an airport's rubber conveyor belt.
Douglas Couplandwhat I remember is the silence in spite of the noise. In my head it
might just as well have been a snowy day in the country.
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