The Olympic Truce
Second, the way running itself runs like a thread through the life of Lopez Lomong:
And third, the difference a hundredth of a second makes — and again, the roar of the crowd:
That last clip has Morgan Freeman saying:
A hundredth of a second – it’s faster than the blink of an eye, faster than a flash of lightning – and it was the difference between Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals instead of seven – a hundredth of a second – just think of the cheers if lightning strikes twice!
I know — that’s the speed thing, not the beauty thing. And I’m an ideas man — an aesthetic man, not an athletic man.
So I take my long jumps sideways, in the mind…
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Wikipedia tells us:
US National Park Ranger Roy Sullivan has the record for being struck by lightning the most times. Sullivan was struck seven times during his 35-year career. He lost the nail on one of his big toes, and suffered multiple injuries to the rest of his body
Again I think of the poet Randall Jarrell, whom I quoted here not so long ago as saying:
A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.
Only the Muse knows what damage that does to the poet’s mind.
**
breath,
breath
**
To sum up:
If I were God — and friends, that’s not in nay way a risk we need to concern ourselves about, flat out impossible — I would be watching the Olympics in slomo from a dozen angles simultaneously, without commentators.
And I’d be praying everyone world-wide would take the Truce as seriously as the Games.
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