To feel the wind in your hair

A friend sends you an email with the subject line: you gotta read this. 

You open it to find nothing but a web address: 

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=2839005&type=story

Which you enter and start reading...

Drive out there. Get off the interstate, put Palm Beach, Orlando or Miami in your rearview and keep going until the road ends at the horizon and the telephone poles sag like old Cypress trees. Roll down the windows. Listen to the eerie silence of the Everglades, a seemingly endless run of fields landmarked only by the railroad tracks, the dike along Lake Okeechobee and the state penitentiary. Race past sugarcane field after sugarcane field until it feels like you're not moving at all. Then stop at the gas station with no gas by the convenience store with no name. Don't worry, you can't miss it -- there at the crossroads of the place they call Muck City. 

A box of corn husks sits next to a box of mangoes on the cement island where the pumps used to be. Men sit all around, in sweat-soaked T-shirts, jeans and greasy caps. Is it true, you ask, what they say about this place? They laugh. You must be lost. And who are you anyway? When you ask again, the old men stop laughing and look you straight in the eye. Yes, they say, it's true. 

See what he's doing, the writer? The first paragraph is all imperative sentences -- commands, where "you" are the understood actor. In the second paragraph, he switches to the more customary declarative sentence -- but "you" are still in the story; and so, you must keep reading. Nice. Really, really nice. 

We do it in corporate work, you know. We write: Make sure you understand the role of outsourcing in your vision for what F&A is and does. Create a roadmap toward achieving that vision. Establish guiding principles. And always look ahead to upcoming renewals and renegotiations. And we feel the wind in our hair when we do it.