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.