In his mind Vaughan saw the whole world dying in a simultaneous auto disaster, millions of vehicles hurled together in a terminal congress of spurtin… - J. G. Ballard

At the sales counter, the human race's greatest confrontation with existence, there were no yesterdays, no history to be relived, only an intense transactional present.

All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or ancient Egypt, is reassimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonise past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality in attractive and instantly appealing forms.

After the commonplaces of everyday life, with their muffled dramas, all my organic expertise for dealing with physical injury had long been blunted or forgotten. The crash was the only real experience I had been through for years.