I started a novel the other day, and in the first paragraph, came upon a line that fundamentally resonated with me and within me. “I fear absurdity” was the line, Rushdie’s Midnight's Children being the novel. Now, what struck me to the core was not my own similar fear of the absurd; no, and nor was it my apathy to absurdity, indifference if you will. Rather, I stand directly opposite this statement, across the river, a wall between us, diametrically opposed in the concrete and abstract. Now to be fair, I certainly don’t loath normalcy either; nor do I abhor the sanity of mundanity. No, that would be absurd in and of itself. But as it turns out, I do vehemently dislike the unwillingness to relent to the inane from time to time. And so last Sunday, almost exactly 7 days from here and now, we the people yet again sojourned to the Soquel Demonstration Forrest, where I starred down absurdity under that most Tuscan of suns, and declared it unfashionable in the most figurative of senses. Indeed, I fondly recall previously responding to enquiries of my motivations to ride questionable sections of Soquel trail, with resounding negatives, stating that “no I wouldn’t be riding them” and that it would be “absurd to think otherwise.” And yet there I found myself, riding a panoply of previously unrideable portions of trail, and doing so with a style and grace reminiscent of red-dressed, pack-a-day lounge singers sprawled across black pianos with champagne glasses in hand.
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And so while riding these superlative sections of trail that I would have otherwise declared absurd only seven days earlier, my subconscious must have set a flag (subconciously) such that later that evening as I began said novel, I realized that I fear absurdity no longer.
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