peripeteia

But besides that I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offense, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself.

Sometimes I think: I am older than this tree, older than this bench, older than the rain. And yet. I'm not older than the rain. It's been falling for years and after I go it will keep on falling.

But there’s a less obvious yet surprisingly powerful explanation for introverts’ creative advantage—an explanation that everyone can learn from: introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck once observed, introversion “concentrates the mind on the tasks in hand, and prevents the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.” In other words, if you’re in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you’re more likely to have an apple fall on your head. Newton was one of the world’s great introverts. William Wordsworth described him as “A mind forever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought alone.”

There's something mystical about baseball. Some wholesome and gleaming quality that makes it as much myth as game. I watch it because it soothes and comforts, it bedazzles and bewitches. When a player steps up to the plate with a bat in his hand he ceases to be a man. He becomes the embodiment of hope. He becomes a magickal force capable of battling sickness and black despair. When someone knocks a ball over that back wall you can make a wish on it like a shooting star. A man who swings that bat becomes a force of nature, an act of divine intervention. He punches a hole through the darkness and reminds us that miracles have not vanished entirely. He is a sibyl in a sport jersey, a conduit through which all that is good shines its light.

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?