Saturday morning, I'm cycling into the town... preparing to go for a swim and then over to a friend's for coffee and metaphysics. As I reach Buchanan Street I feel physically sick at the sight of so many dolled up people carrying massive designer shopping bags. It's a lovely day, it's actually the first of April, but this shopping malarchey ain't no joke. How do people do it I wonder? How can they do it?!
I am so disgusted at the throng of mannequins, I pass on my plans for the day and head for Queen Street station and the 12.01 to Edinburgh via Croy. I manage to catch it with a few seconds to spare. Four pounds seventy return. 12 minutes journey time.
By 12.30 I am at the foot of the fells at the bottom of the Tak Ma Doon drove road that sneaks up and over the hills into Stirlingshire. I can breathe! My brain and body is alive! Not half an hour ago I felt like dying. It's amazing what some pastoral countryside can do for the spirit, a few moderate hills, a little physical exertion, and all that fresh air and space!! Just cycling up through the wooded lower slopes, not another person or car in sight, I can hear birdsong, I can feel the cool breeze behind me, and I am surrounded by trees and plants and soil. I can also, and herein lies the rub, hear my Self.
I find myself comparing this to the cityscape I just cycled through and how utterly different these two scapes are. On the one hand you have a quiet breathable world of myriad life-forms where you can hear yourself think; on the other, you have a noisy, polluted world whose bio-diversity is actually zero diversity, and where thinking is not something you actually do, but which is done for you. In other words, on the one hand, you have a world in all its vitality and variety, and on the other you have a coagulated and incestuous (per)version of this.
One of these scapes is alive. The other is dead.
I cannot stress this enough.
There is human-ness here in the hills, not so in the city, for the human who has bricked over the soil has also bricked over his Self.
The other important point is that one of these scapes, through your elemental and existential exposure, scrapes away the drivel that you have been coated with, whilst the other serves to coat you with more of the same.
Always remember that 'Identity is what you take off and not what you put on'...
Only when you get rid of all this nonsense, all this ego-driven narcissism, will you begin to appreciate the idea of nakedness, (not as nudity but as being yourself ). Going into the hills helps with this 'taking off' - the space, the air, your own locomotive force.... the genius of solitude that reveals that you are anything but alone.
In the city, you are hi-jacked by excitement and stimulation, by bright lights and music, primal triggers that have been corrupted by profiteers hell-bent on relieving you of the contents of your wallet. One is preyed upon constantly in the city, and yet the prey appears to enjoy this. Your nature in other words is perverted in the city. In the hills it is highlighted and revealed.
This is why the city can continue being what it is. Because as soon as people enter it, they are blindsided by the distractions, and infected with the contagion of crass unnatural commerce. The organism cannot hear itself. And if the organism cannot hear itself what chance has it of hearing others? The organism is besieged and bludgeoned in the city. In the hills it is resurrected and resuscitated.
There's really no excuse now for people. Even if you don't have a bicycle. You have your feet and your lungs, and your brain.
Go now!
Body forth into your Self.... via the fells.
No comments:
Post a Comment