Just to fend off any concerned emails and letters I’m going to start this off by saying that I have no death wish, or attention wish for that matter. I just want to jump.
My brother lives on the 35th (ahem penthouse ahem) floor of a highrise on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Him and his girlfriend love to spend time up there with their dog and just take in the skyline on a daily basis.
Now it’s a roof. Which means there are edges that drop down to the street. 35 floors is nothing to sneeze at. It’s not Philippe Petit height, but it’s not exactly the jungle gym. It’s scary to look down at the asphalt to say the least, vertigo kicks in after a few seconds, and after that, well I assume there’s vomiting involved.
I am scared of heights. Well, no, I’m paralyzed by altitude. I made it to the first section of the Eiffel Tower, I wouldn’t even go inside the viewing section of the Empire State as a kid, and well, the Hoover Dam is just a drive-by attraction for me. But there’s something about being on top of that building that scares me in a deeper place than pure height does.
I just want to jump off. With a parachute, or wings, or whatever mind you. I see myself getting a running start and leapfrogging over the barrier facing New Jersey and looking down on Riverside park. I guess I didn’t realize how crazy I sounded until I actually wrote it down. But like I said, there’s nothing depressing about this. It’s just something to do.
I feel like Christopher Walken in Annie Hall. He turns to Woody Allen and says “on the road at night… I see two headlight coming toward me. Fast. I have his sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car”, to which Woody replies “Right. Well, I have to- I have to go now, Duane, because I, I’m due back on the planet earth”. That sudden impulse to just do something completely destructive engulfs more people than you think, it’s just that most people wouldn’t admit it.
I mean, yeah, I might be slightly crazy. I’ve explained the concept to a couple friends and they give me that “Yeah, I completely understand what you mean. This one time I really wanted to cut in line at the cafeteria, but I didn’t. I was really close, but I thought some one might give me a bad look”. Well to tell the truth, that’s the kind of stuff I usually wouldn’t do. I’m a big wuss when it comes to slight breaking of rules. The big stuff though, that’s fine. I don’t know what they call that, but there’s a probably a name that ends with “mania” that describes exactly how I feel. Destructomania maybe? That’d be a good name for a monster truck.
I don’t think I have a destructive personality though. Most think a destructive personality is developing a healthy coke habit or eating endangered species, but honestly that’s just the surface of what most people want. Jumping out of a moving car, juggling flaming chainsaws, I would probably draw the line at Russian Roulette, that’s for the real nuts.
Or diving in a shark tank. That’s some bullshit.
1 response so far ↓
Chuck // August 18, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Freud said that the balance of the human psyche isn’t quite 50/50, it’s about 51/49, in favor of living over self-destruction. According to him, we’re all constantly on the edge of doing something that will probably kill us, but most of the time we don’t go through with it. It’s not a real ratio, or else we’d still be killing ourselves about half the time, the meaning is that there is only narrow margin by which our minds prefer the body to live rather than die.
It doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about it, though. We’ll stand on the craggy precipice but we’re not really goin down, unless something (or someone) pushes you past that psychological limit.
What do you think? Even though I feel like Freud turned out to be a quack in more ways than one, the ideas are what’s interesting. I think your vertigo might be your id’s way of preserving the limit!