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Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31 Number 19 August 6, 1968

Young Man Going Places

Young Man Going Places

James put on his sandshoes and started running. On Tuesday at 1 a.m. James started running from Upper Hutt to Wellington.

James once wrote:

Flinted sparks cracking away at the impact of cells of thought. Minds moving past. And around. And away. All cripples. And many distinct parts of one that has no identity. Unconscious, but perhaps vaguely aware of sleep. The brilliant clarity of the realisation of being alone. Single. One. All union being transitory, physical. Flickering touches of warmth. Log fires on the tundra—quickly covered by snowdrifts.

Or drops of water, shimmering on a salt-pan. Jetting onto the crystal surface from a rare and unseen source. And evaporating in a cool, hazy flash.

A seagull soaring over cliffs, caried by a silent wind. Then gone, into a blue sky.

Millions of pebbles shuffling on a grey-black shore. With great waves wearing. Erasing.

Stalagmites in a huge cave, straining to reach partners pour—towards them from a lofty ceiling, And always waking to grey skies with great banks of scudding cloud.

Then he put the words in a drawer and started running. He practised often. Once he ran from Upper Hutt through to the Hutt Road, to Tinakori Road, up Glenmore Street and across the Viaduct, through Kelburn and down to the Station. He went home and read some words in a drawer.

Quite early on Tuesday morning, about the time the milkman comes to my place. James ran up Tinakori Road and Glenmore Street and onto the Viaduct. Then he jumped off.

Miss Beale of the Design Branch. Town Clerk's Office, Wellington City Corporation, tells me that the Viaduct is 65.48 feet above the road. And Mr D. C. Harvie, a lecturer in the Mathematics Department, assures me that falling object would take approximately 2 seconds (2.02 seconds, actually) to travel from the Viaduct to the macadam. No allowance has been made in these calculations for wind resistance.

I guess that in those two seconds James thought something like this: "I am lonely. Help me."

Splat.