There are probably more than a few like me who have to wade through chest-deep apathy to think for a moment about Diana Nyad, the 61-year-old woman who yesterday tried and failed to swim from Cuba to Florida. And when those like me look up from our busy lives at this ever so fleeting spectacle, and when we hear the details of the story, we are gripped with piercing awareness of the sheer underwhelming nature of the whole thing.
In short, she’s 61, has shoulder trouble, and a lifelong condition of asthma, and she’s attempting to swim 100+ miles. She did make it half way before rough seas, acute shoulder pain and nausea led her to call it off.
I think it is interesting to note that she had kayaks with shark-deterring sonar padding around her, and a boat carrying medics and family members drifting alongside. What a production. The hook was that she was doing it WITHOUT a shark cage as other’s have attempted. ooooh. drama.
If she had made it, we would all say, “Wow. That’s really something,” and instantly forget about it. She seems like a nice lady and all. “The swim was in me,” she said.
The swim. Im not sure what that means, since apparently it wasn’t. One wonders, did she practice this first before buying the equipment, enlisting over 30 supporters, overcoming international bureaucratic obstacles, calling press conferences, and gathering her family in Cuba for the trip across to Florida?
She reportedly swam 12 hours a day for two years to prepare. But did she try swimming 103 miles at some other, convenient location, where after 50 miles she would have presumably remembered that she has asthma? That she failed 28 years ago (that’s right, attempted and failed at 33)? That’s she’s fodder for AARP? Might she then have decided to age more gracefully, accepted her mortality, spent more time with her family, and avoided the tens of thousands of wasted dollars to appear on international television as the not-very-surprising, crestfallen Icarus that we all now know her to be?
So now anyone who has run a marathon thinks I’m the biggest jerk for saying this. But I say, Fraah! Why must we know about these things? These are awful, tumultuous, apocalyptic times. We might as well see her denouement as a metaphor for the nosedive that western culture is currently in.
What? Forget anything so lofty as culture. We are all in a socio-politico-econo-religio-psycho-ecologico-hyper nosedive.
That’s what really bothers me about this already-forgotten average person. There’s just too much else to think about right now. Go away, ridiculous people.
I wrote this yesterday, but didn’t post it. Her story already seems a million years old! The stock market! The Middle East! The election! The bunnies! the bunnies! The bunnies!
