The Man Who Fell To Earth

The world is divided, he once told me, into two. There are those who - when it comes to their plane plummeting from the sky - will put their own mask on before trying to help their child. And there are those who will, instead, rush headlong to help the child, risking both their lives. In that battle, he told me, the end will come. 

It's possible, he also told me, to influence the outcome of a Spurs match simply by choosing to arrive at two forty-five rather than two fifty. Arrive earlier and the entire stadium is different. Arrive earlier and you encounter a different thousand people. Arrive earlier and, as you squeeze past the young bloke wearing a 'Kane 10' shirt leaving the toilet, the young bloke you wouldn't have seen if you'd arrived later, his train of thought may be shifted from The One Who Got Away to what his mate Darren said earlier and when, in the opening minutes, Danny Rose dribbles down the wing near where he's standing and chooses the wrong pass, this young bloke may scream at him and Rose may start to doubt himself.

Yes. The world is divided, he once told me, between those who hear the call of the Carolina Wren in the woods and find it enough, and those who are determined to identify the bird and make poetry from its song.

And there are five meanings of Dao, none of them exact, he once told me, but this morning I can only remember one: 'the ultimate metaphysical entity that was responsible for the way the world is and is responsible for the way it ought to be'.