The Spirit of Blane: Milngavie Circle Via Blanefield

This late November morning, I can feel the cold but I can also feel the dryness. I head up to Milngavie with a view to seeing the holy mountain, Dumgoyne, from afar. From the Old Mugdock Road just above Strathblane there is an awesome sight of the Campsie Fells draped in a light mist. I am toasty already, half an hour out, having just scaled a hard-to-kill hill up to Mugdock. I am surrounded by Earth and not by machines and people. I skirt through Strathblane holding up as many cars as I possibly can as I dawdle through the village. Just on the left there is the Blanefield road which will take us up to Carbeth where we will nick onto the West Highland Way down to Mugdock Wood via Craigallian Loch. I pass a few walkers along the way, all oldies who seem to have realised a little too late in life what life is all about. I head on down to Mugdock Wood and out the other end, down the hill and onto the train. Never hurrying, I arrive back at 13.24 having left the station at 12:07. Amazing, absolutely amazing!, the territory, the sights, the Earth encounters, that you can see and feel in less time than it takes you to watch a shit movie. Alleluja! 

 

Announcing Your Presence: The Dumb Stalker Cyclist

I think I did it once when I was about twelve and then never did it again having realised just how dense I was being. I am of course talking about the DSC and this dumb voiceless automaton who refuses to use his voice (he doesn't have a bell) to let those in front know he's coming through. It happened this morning and I couldn't believe just how docile this cyclist was being by not announcing his presence. He hung behind this headphoned teenager for a good ten seconds before I came up behind both of them and hollared 'Coming through....' And I wondered just how long he would have waited there. I mean, this vitiates the whole act of cycling does it not, not having your wits about you and behaving like a car driver. The whole point of cycling is, if I could be so bold, to 'announce your presence' and show the world how to move without shitting all over it. It is to use your whole body - cycling is bodying - which includes the voice. For me, even though I have a bell which I use, the voice is supreme and can never be outdone by a bell or other. It is also 'wild' this voice and so it sometimes irritates those in receipt of it (which pleases me also). For the mechanically-minded and over-domesticated mongst us, they much prefer the tinkle of a bell than the happy howl of an ecstatic cyclist. Yet, the point still remains: announce your presence. In the wild, if you crept up on someone like that you would likely be set upon. Indeed, when I am in the hills, people seem to be aware of this, but down here in the city anything goes. Anything, that is, if I'm not behind you.

 

 

 

The Art of Wet-Drying & The Paradox of the Periphery

There is no greater coincidence of opposites than cycling through a wet and windy November strath. Here, in the blissful peripherals there is nothing to break the wind, nothing to distort it or tame it. The same applies to the rain: all is open, nothing tempered. And so today, as I was cycling through God's washing machine I was also cycling through God's tumble dryer. As I was getting gently seasoned from above my forward travel into a headwind expedited an air-drying too. And so it was that as I was getting wet I was also getting dried. God bless the paradox of the periphery.

 

Nevertheless, and as much as my poetic license will allow me, by the time I got back to Paisley Canal I was duly drenched. The rain always wins, doesn't it?

Legassy & The Law of the Leg

Legassy means that you use your legs and ass. In other words, if you're a legassy person, it means you walk (or cycle) everywhere whilst eschewing the act of being stretchered. Here, legassy is an adjective as opposed to 'legacy' as a noun. So, for example, you might say that I am a legassy person for all the walking and cycling that I do, and for the simple fact that I refuse to be stretchered. You could also say that the legacy of the modern world is not the legassy person but the de-legassied people whose legs and asses have been removed from the equation, and who now sit on their asses with their feet up in a state of suspended animation. The wild do not sit. At best they perch. The wild are always on the move. As such their animation (and 'anima') is never suspended. Their Soul and Mind is ever-present as is the Origin. The lagassy creature then is an aborigine in touch with everything.There is no legacy of the wild that is ever delegassied. This is what makes the wild wild, legass, and what makes modern man a farm animal, the absence of legass.

When your world has been removed from the law of the leg (and its adjoining ass) then you're in trouble because clearly you're obeying another law that is not the leg but a replacement of it: the law of the prosthesis. This prosthesis dismembers and displaces and does not renew or regenerate. Under this law we lose touch with everything and become miniscule and insignificant. We are no longer ambassadors of the Earth by way of our legs (and by extension our anima) but envoys of the filthy machine and all its ancillary features (waste, destruction, perversion). This is your legacy - disease and unwholeness - until you realize your essential legassy nature which conjoins and unites the creature in a universal connaturality with all things.

 

 

Cycling as Assertiveness, Driving as Obedience

Cycling is, if you do it properly, ultimate awareness. It is moving more rapidly than you would ordinarily do if you walked, therefore your awareness has to be stepped up to accommodate this extra speed. One develops a taste for distance and space and the fact that one can see things coming. This is all the more so when you are out in the countryside in the open - embodied, energized, and quiet - and there are no buildings to block your views. The cyclist thus asserts himself at every moment as he alters his speed to accommodate the space and whatever options may present themselves. This is how the cyclist tunes in to the flow and becomes wild: by never stopping, or at least when he does stop to allow that stopping to catalyze a contemplation and consideration of his surroundings and where he actually is. In this way the cyclist is 'genius' (by accommodating and harmonizing the great cosmic flow and thus sharing a solidarity with all creatures), whilst the car-driver is 'moron' (by going against the cosmic flow and allowing his self to be carried, and stopping). The car-driver is obligated to stop everywhere, and not for contemplation. He cannot escape the rigidity of traffic signals or other cars precisely because he has become outsized in his new chassis and too large for his own good. The wild cyclist by contrast is as slender as the body that powers the bicycle which of course is the slenderest creature of them all. This slender-ity allows  the cyclist to weave in and out, to avoid, to nip by, to jump over, to slip onto, without ever having to stop. Because the wild cyclist knows the secret of stopping: that to stop is to be stupid (look up their etymologies if you don't believe me), simply by recognizing a sign that is not Nature's sign, and by obeying it. 

 

The Drunken Bicycle

 I used a new manoeuvre today au velo - the drunken bicycle manoeuvre - to remind certain car-drivers that they're not on a drag strip anymore. The incident occurred on Hazelwood Road in the upmarket part (Ranfurly) of Bridge of Weir where two cars, in separate incidents, were haring it up the hill at what appeared to be (to my ear at least) an excessive speed. I was on foot with Pegasus at my side and so upon hearing the revving engine behind me I slowly started to weave out into the middle of this quiet and empty residential road. Naturally, the car slowed down as it saw me and was forced to come to a stop as I deliberately dawdled. No horns were sounded or shouts hurled in both situations, just a quiet recognition that, yes, this road does not belong to cars first but to people and children and bicycles (if not the odd scurrying fox, hedgehog, or low-flying blackbird). You can almost hear this acceptance in the quietening down of the car engine - the driver's realization that they've been caught red-handed - and the appreciation (in the lack of insults hurled) that the catcher has done this in such a way as to allow the car-driver to save face, (at no point do I confront the car or driver but as is apt for the drunk to do appear completely oblivious to them),  thus, perhaps, next time, allowing them to be reminded by this saved face not to do it again.

Houdini on a Bicycle

 

Houdini on the train heading to Paisley Canal where we will head along the sustrans path to Kilmacolm and then up and over to Finlaystone Park which we cut through to get to Langbank train station and the train hame.

 

Houdini on one of his favourite benches of serenity on the beautiful backroad between Kilmacolm and Finlaystone...

From Langbank station looking north towards the lang crags above Dumbarton.

 

How I would love to have a tennis court next door to me. In certain parts of the world having a tennis court in your back garden means you are a millionaire. In Scotland, the sick man of Europe, it means weeds and neglect and more weeds. No doubt some property developer will fill this space in with a block of pokey little flats, mark my words...

 

Why would you ever stare into your hand on a train when you have a cinema screen onto the world like this? [Here, passing Arkleston, looking north, between Paisley and Hillington.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The largest glass roof in Europe at Central Station offers some spectacular opportunities for the budding painter-photographer...

 

And that's how you break your chains: bike  + train = brain.... Get into the country, and out of the strait-jacketting city.... If you do this often enough you will have earned your nickname of Houdini. And if you do arrive back at Central Station, see if you can find the car park exit and you will definitely earn your escapist moniker.