NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,
And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Rudyard Kipling, The Law for the Wolves
Human, from the Latin humus meaning soil.
Man, the human without the humus, without a soul.
Corporate power is in the body...
Human roots within his own internal engines....
The pathfinder plies his trade into himself.
The brain is the body, the body the brain.
The cyclist is art.
The person who allows his self to be carried, inert.
There's something very different in terms of fluid dynamics when cycling on your own and cycling in a pack. There is a strength and confidence that comes from the latter that does not necessarily emerge in the former. There is also an added motivating force which comes out of being together as a single working coordinating body. I once wrote in a moment of lightness that animals do not speak, rather, they coordinate, and it is here, when cycling together as a small group of three, that you realize this. Talking, when cycling at 25 miles an hour with gaps as large as a hundred metres between you and the next cyclist, is just not practical. Hand signals are not much better when you need both of them on the handlebars. The talking rather comes in teh form of coordination, moving and momentum, and holding the dynamic of the pack.
There are three cyclists to be sure yet there is but one force. When coming down from the hills into the city, this force, with the wind behind and the benefit of gravity, can be quite something, and one wonders when weaving in and out of these big dirty cars holed up at traffic lights, with their overweight and under-oxygenated 'drivers' (flabby bodies, flaccid minds), why everyone isn't cycling. There is plenty of space after all. Glasgow is not London. We have hills and helter-skelters, B roads and back-roads that have had enlightenment conferred upon them by their upgrades, the motorways. Coming down from Glasgow's southern periphery for instance, just behind Newton Mearns, is a superlative slalom that doesn't just hone the body-mind in terms of navigation, but which powers up the bodymind in terms of its openness to the elements and gravity. There are forces here, on a bicycle, that one just cannot fathom when hidden behind a plagiarizing engine that is not yours. The auto-mobile is you, not some machine that pollutes and rapes your matricial Earth, and ultimately, you.
There are moments of exquisite emptiness in this peripheral aura of well-being, in this feeling of great and vital coordination. One enters a more awake state, by necessity, of being. One's wits and coordination are heightened, as is the ability to think on one's feet (or better, to think with one's whole body). A small pack of three, a cycling triumvirate, is all you need to imagine yourself as a member of a great flock of geese caressing the clouds as they travel the planet, each individual taking its turn, quite naturally, to be on point, at the head of the field, powering through.
There are moments of exquisite emptiness in this peripheral aura of well-being, in this feeling of great and vital coordination. One enters a more awake state, by necessity, of being. One's wits and coordination are heightened, as is the ability to think on one's feet (or better, to think with one's whole body). A small pack of three, a cycling triumvirate, is all you need to imagine yourself as a member of a great flock of geese caressing the clouds as they travel the planet, each individual taking its turn, quite naturally, to be on point, at the head of the field, powering through.
The nomadic ways of early humans have been surrendered to sedation and illusion. The human has lost its way and become man, an abbreviated version of what he originally is. You get a sense of this, out there is the misty hills of Eastwood, the human, the nomad, the natural and wild one inside... the full force of the pack.
In a world beset by carraiges and being carried, cycling-walking-moving-under-your-own-steam, can be a real revolutionary act.
As can foraging for your own food... healthy natural organic healing food... for the mind, soul, or body.
