amor impetus

"Once we'd pulled out and started to roll north out of the city, I'd begun to feel better. It always helped to move. Connected me with time somehow, made me feel like things were in mesh... Motion—even random movements—made me feel closer to reality, closer to God. Not that I ever thought much about God—but I knew what I was talking about. Ask the man in the street and he'll tell you that God is a "Supreme Being." But "being" is only the common side of God—his transcendent side is motion. Monks on hilltops know nothing about contemplation, all that's just idle daydreaming. I knew a lot about that, too, I'd spent a lot of time flat out in the back yard staring off into infinity, but I knew you had to keep moving if you wanted to find out who you really were and what the world was all about. It was the real reason I'd always loved trains—not to escape west or east or any other direction like that, but to pull back from the illusions of fixed places so as to make the vital contact. If I'd had time for theology, I'd have revolutionized the goddamn field."

-Richard Nixon

from

The Public Burning

a novel by

Robert Coover

1976