Feb 21, 2006

i can relate

This is Donald Miller's introductory's author note from Searching For God Knows What:

Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come out of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched towards the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums. I unfold and find flight hundreds of feet above the center ring, the smell of popcorn in the air, the clowns gather below, amazed at my grace, and all the people chanting my name as my arms come out like wings and I move swan-like towards the apex, where I draw my arms in, collapse my torso to my legs, roll over in perfection, then slowly give in to gravity. My body falls back toward earth, the ground coming up quick, the center ring growing enormous beneath my falling weight.

And this is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net. And I wonder, What is the use of a circus? and Why should a man bother to be shot out of a cannon? and Why is the crowd’s applause so fleeting?
and… Who is going to rescue me?

4 comments:

Derek said...

GREAT BOOK!

Thurman8er said...

That book is in my stack. I'm looking forward to your thoughts on it to see whether it moves up or down my list.

tonymyles said...

I'd say go for it. I read it yesterday and was very impressed with its content. I just started "Blue Like Jazz" this evening and feel the same about it. Both good stuff... although Blue is a bit more "venty" while Searching is more "digestable."

Friar Tuck said...

This is an awesome quote