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Return of Memoryfest - Day 16/31
16. Middle School (?)
We were driving back from Lens Crafters; I'd just gotten a new pair of glasses and was admiring the way the leaves on the trees looked so sharp and defined from the rear passenger seat. As we approached the T-shaped intersection between two residential streets on the way to our house, where the road we were on dead-ended and we needed to make a right turn, I shifted my gaze to the white picket fence along the perpendicular street and thought about how easy it would be to just keep going straight, drive right through the fence and across the lawn of the house there, maybe even into the house. I wondered what prevented someone from doing that, from just not turning the car.
That’s the first time I remember conceiving of the human instinct of self-preservation.
We were driving back from Lens Crafters; I'd just gotten a new pair of glasses and was admiring the way the leaves on the trees looked so sharp and defined from the rear passenger seat. As we approached the T-shaped intersection between two residential streets on the way to our house, where the road we were on dead-ended and we needed to make a right turn, I shifted my gaze to the white picket fence along the perpendicular street and thought about how easy it would be to just keep going straight, drive right through the fence and across the lawn of the house there, maybe even into the house. I wondered what prevented someone from doing that, from just not turning the car.
That’s the first time I remember conceiving of the human instinct of self-preservation.
no subject
I remember sitting on a rough stone wall on the Greek island of Hydra, looking out at the slate-grey waves and down at the water frothing between the rocks. I was fourteen, and I had a wild, almost overpowering urge to jump - or rather just to let myself overbalance and fall. I didn't understand it. I didn't want to die, and I was terrified at the idea of my body breaking on those rocks, but I had to climb off the wall because I was so afraid I would do it without meaning or wanting to.