Now, if
only he pitch his standard low enough and keep free from pride, almost
any one can achieve a sort of excess. You can go through contemporary
life fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, never really hungry
nor frightened nor passionately stirred, your highest moment a mere
sentimental orgasm, and your first real contact with primary and
elemental necessities, the sweat of your death-bed. So I think it was
with my uncle; so, very nearly, it was with me.
But the glider brought me up smartly. I had to find out how these things
went down the air, and the only way to find out is to go down with one.
And for a time I wouldn't face it.
There is something impersonal about a book, I suppose. At any rate I
find myself able to write down here just the confession I've never been
able to make to any one face to face, the frightful trouble it was to
me to bring myself to do what I suppose every other coloured boy in the
West Indies could do without turning a hair, and that is to fling myself
off for my first soar down the wind.
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