Convergence of the twain
August/September are the hardest months of training in the year for national caliber long track speedskaters. It’s when summer volume meets intensity. A convergence of two different physiological systems that leaves most athletes tongue dragging with exhaustion. April Medley’s t-shirt captures my mood exactly-
It’s a “convergence of the twain” that jars your body into becoming faster, even as it makes you want to sleep 12 hours a shot, and eat everything in sight.
The title of this post is a reference to the poem “Convergence of the twain”. A poem written by Thomas Hardy about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. I had to memorize it long ago & it has stuck. Brilliant words.
No one has done a similar piece of art that describes September 11th, despite Simon Armitage’s best effort at a poetic echo.
Maybe we are simply a YouTube world now, not a world of soaring poetic oratory. But one thing is for sure, September 11th changed our world as much as the sinking of the Titanic changed things 89 years before.
The Titanic was a smackdown of nature vs humanity, a hubris moment for technology designed to protect us. The horrors of WWI came shortly thereafter.
What was it about Sept 11th, in retrospect, that shocked us so badly? A smackdown of the secular vs the extreme fundamentalist worldview? An act of war against a country, serene in it’s security, that had not seen major devastation of a city since the 1860’s?
(So of course we reply with an act of war. Several in fact. Is our desire for revenge sated now?).
Don’t know how this post went from speedskating induced exhaustion to historical analysis between the world from 1912 to 2009.
Must be a symptom of tiredness induced clarity.
Filed under: from home
I don’t want to belittle acts of war by any means, but maybe because training is an act of war that you have going on with your body and soul you are musing on that world pain?
I’m not sure… I am even debating deleting the 2nd half of this post… Just because something makes a connection in my head does not mean the connection is a worthwhile writing topic.
Actually, the poem “convergence of the twain” was what I was thinking of when I realized it was September 11th.
I do still like April’s t-shirt..