In No Time At All

The original task of a genuine revolution is never mererly to 'change the world' but also and above all to change time. 

Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History




Sometimes, little phrases can reveal big things....

Take the title of this post for example. It was only when I was cycling back from this morning's outing (outing the Self), that I thought to myself, 'God! I'm back already'. It almost seemed instantaneous, the 3 hour duration from leaving my flat to arriving back in it. I wondered how this was possible that no time could have passed whilst all the clocks said differently

.

I thought of what I had written about 'being the territory' and 'slipping out of time' years ago when I lived in Warsaw and had an epiphany much like today's about being extemporaneous.

http://wandersthroughwarsaw.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/map-is-not-territory-it-is-one-of-great.html

 

I then considered the phrase that had just popped out of my head - in no time at all. At first, it was just 'in no time' but of course the normal collocation is 'in no time at all'. It was then that I understood!

To be 'at all' is to be one with the earth in the same way that Mallarme's chirping cricket or Wallace Steven's singing blackbird is one. We have, unperturbed by time and its pressures, transcended our society-bound selves and entered into our true Selves. In that instant we have become the land itself. Time exists, sure, but in a whole different way to what we have been taught, and to how we ourselves have been tabled. We have time-space out here, not time. Indeed, one might add 'mind' to this mix too, a mind that, furthermore, has been emptied of all extraneous detail. In the space left behind, the mind enters a sort of reverie and waking dream state. Time is no longer felt; it is absorbed. 

In this sense, we can say with complete impunity, even with regards to a life and not just a three hour cyclic excursion (is life not part of a cyclic excursion anyway?), that this 'event' has passed 'in no time at all'....

A flock of whooper swans over Neilston flying south.

Uphill & Into the Wind: Barrhead to Paisley Canal via Fereneze Hills

There's a lot of physics in my metaphysics. Kenneth White

It's true that these journeys are as much metaphorical (and metaphysical) as they are physical. Take today for example, cycling through the wood (Pollok Country Park), jumping the train to Barrhead from Pollokshaws West, and then cycling up the Gateside and Foreside Roads into the wind. The struggles and the wonders... and the sheer work (synergetic enterprise) involved. Then, around the bend, onto the snow-covered lanes of the plateau, nothing and no-one but the light...

The transcendental aspect to all of this, the breakthru into the light and stillness (and the nirvanic extinguishing of the wind) is a thing of beauty. This is the joy of valley-cycling, the subtle shifts of light and wind, and soul. You try that in a gym surrounded by man's own noise whilst stuck on a hamster-wheel. The 'gym' in fact (as the roots of the word show) is the body, and the body is the person plus the environment that gave rise to him. How could you not count the land as a mother before all other mothers, and to disregard it as part of your larger body? There is a reason why all my 'selfies' include the earth...

At any rate, up here, it is all Earth, especially when the tarmac has been concealed beneath a light dusting of snow. This is all you need in order to break on through...

 From the wee shelter on the Foreside Road looking south-westish...

The tracks are still fresh...!

 Cycling on snow, especially up here, is an absolute joy!

 Just beside Howwood Fishery, looking north towards the peak of Mistylaw.

On the way back to Paisley Canal via the sustrans path I noticed that where I had just been was now grey and rainy looking. Which simply made my discovery of the light even more joyful.

The Burnt-Out Car

Carbon-based life-form? How about just car-based?

Man's relationship with machinery has brought him to the brink...

Whenever I see a burnt out car in many of the hidey-holes around the strath's periphery, I smile, and think to myself not that one less car on the road is a good thing but of the symbolic nature of the image confronting me: that man is a car... that man is burnt-out... that it's time to re-evaluate how you move.... and how you love.

To love requires that you move under your own steam...

Legs + Move = Love...

Do not be a car!