James Dickey - September 14th Page 41 lyrics

"Do you know what sliding is?" "No. You want me to guess?" "I'll tell you. Sliding is living antifriction. Or, no, sliding is living by antifriction. It is finding a modest thing you can do, and then greasing that thing. On both sides. It is grooving with comfort." "You don't believe in madness, eh?" "I don't, at all. I know better than to fool with it." "So what you do..." "So what you do is go on by it. What you do is get done what you ought to be doing. And what you do rarely-and I mean rarely- is to flirt with it." "We'll see," Lewis said, glancing at me as though he had me. "we'll see. You've had all that office furniture in front of you, desks and bookcases and filing cabinets and the rest. You've been sitting in a chair that won't move. You've been steady. But when that river is under you, all that is going to change. There's nothing you do as vice-president of Emerson-Gentry that's going to make any difference at all, when the water starts to foam up. Then, it's not going to be what your title says you do, but what you end up doing. You know: doing." Then he waited, and I woke up fully, where I had not been before. "I know," he said. "you think I'm some kind of narcissistic fanatic. But I'm not." "I wouldn't put it that way, exactly," I said. "I just believe," he said. "that the whole thing is going to be reduced to the human body, once and for all. I want to be ready."