The Idiot's Guide to Surviving a Machete Attack

Kay Wilson survived a machete attack. Her TED talk is superb. I wrote to her and asked for a transcript. She doesn't have one, so I typed up a few of her words as I watched. I didn't get the entire talk. Here is what I got:

The forest rings out with this cosmic symphony

They scream Allahu akbar,

My Christian friend, Christine, cries "Jesus help me."

I hear my own pathetic whimper "Shma Yisrael"

His knife missed my heart by four millimeters

I knew I wasn't in hell because I couldn't hear any country music

How can two men who were once little boys hack at innocent, defenseless women without blinking an eye and smoking a cigarette afterwards.

Choose life. There's more to you than being stabbed. You don't have to live your life in perpetual victimhood.

How can I absorb something so evil into my soul without it consuming me or defining me?

As I trudge through the valley of the shadow of death I have to choose to look to the light

I choose to listen to the songs of the birds and not just the whimper of my friends

Life is the sound of a cork popping out of a 2010 Golan Heights cabernet sauvignon

You can watch her stunning talk here: