Trying

A horse will win the Triple Crown this year. Some things come full circle, and it’s foolish to ignore the tides. Which are indeed aligning. A deep full moon rises hours after the beasts run in Kentucky, the linear pull of the earth degraded in a way that may allow a normally nominal horse to become spectacularly supernatural (try saying that out loud). Fans with an eye for the sport may note the depth of the field, but fans of sport will notice the depth of illusion.

I’ve studied the field but have yet to come to a conclusion as to which horse it may be. But it will be one. Secretariat ran Churchill Downs in 1:59 and two-fifths seconds in 1973. The horse Sham finished second that day and quietly broke the previous time record in the second place slot. For now nearly three decades, it stands a sporting achievement unchanged by diet, medicine and modern training. Modern athletes (human, that is), jump higher, run faster, throw harder and are just flat bigger then any of their contemporaries. Much of this has to do with both our perception of training, and, frankly, improvements in drugs. Much of it also has to do with the import we attach to the modern athlete.

Myself, I put a lot of importance on coincidence. And we are due. Due for something special to happen, something old in its very nature. We live in an age where everything is diluted, where access to greatness is so elementary that greatness seems to be everywhere. As is the case with misery.

The weird are going to need to get weirder. We’ve entered a stitch in time where we’ve peeled back the casings of mystery so far that we’ve managed to singe our imaginations. Questions are easily answered, origins quick to come by, myth easily dispelled. Death but a function of quantifiable events.

To be surprised in a modern age is to be deaf to the age itself. Nothing is sacred. And even the things we hold as sacred feel like elaborate cloths draping the plain tables of hollow kings. The time of wonder seems past us. It’s why our popular fiction is mostly fantasy, because the depths of realism seem carved out already. Our hero is pragmatism, even when he has the ability to be a wizard.

But you can’t hedge every bet. Those giants with broad shoulders are either coming or we’ll never meet them. The people who can propel us past the current tectonic sparks in the clash between old world myth and modern clarity and data may arrive, or just soar past us into the cosmos. We haven’t seen the third side to the argument yet, but in the meantime, perhaps we can become content imagining again that quirky unresolved future.

By the way, Secretariat ran the final race of the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes, against only four other horses, and went off at 1/10 odds. We knew he was going to win before the race, and have forgotten after.