It's a rare thing when I nudge someone on a bike or when I accidentally brush a pedestrian when cycling, but it does happen albeit as an event as rare as Haley's comet. Take this morning for instance when I (lightly) collided with a man's shoulder as I was rounding a narrow bend on an even narrower foot-cycle path in Elderslie. I had done this before not so long ago, this time with a woman, who simply refused to budge out of my way as I hollared 'coming through' from 100m away. This chap did try to move as I shouted to him with plenty of warning, but he actually moved into my corner and not away from it. As I brushed his shoulder he quickly said, 'Sorry' before I did, realising his mistake, but it was no big deal, just a case of 'friendly fire'. Yet it is amazing how many people I see out and about who are so caught up in their own egos (it's a rare thing to see a person walking without any modern technological crutches or pets) and unaware of what's coming at them. Even when they do see me coming they seem particularly inept at getting out of the way. This may well be a Glasgow thing - 'am no moving' intransigence - but it may just be that people are becoming increasingly inept in their own bodies having outsourced most of it to machines that destroy its capacities and capabilities. As a cyclist I see everything, but particularly how people are now so inept at walking - people waddle, they no longer walk. Walking after all, much like cycling, is a form of waking, and if you're not awake then you're not walking but involved in just another egofest that destroys your awakeness. And so the gentle skelp, the friendly fire, is there to tell you this, in the hope that you yourself will realise how primally inept you are and do something to remedy it.
Comanche-Romanche
I used to consider myself as some kind of Glasgow Apache but now I am more likely to side with the Comanche. Why? Well, for one they were equestrian nomads of the great plains which kind of appeals to the wild cyclist within. They were one of the first tribes to acquire horses from the Spanish and breed them to any extent. Their name, Comanche, deriving from their language Ute (itself deriving from the northern branch of the Uto-Aztecan languages) also appeals to my wild animal within. Why, you may well ask. Because it means 'enemy with everyone' or 'someone who wants to fight all the time'. This was the name applied to them by outsiders who only saw this side to them. Their own name was Nermernuh which meant, simply, 'the people'. Their Comanche appellation as 'the permanent berserker' may seem rather bellicose and unfair in comparison, but if your land and people were being raped by invaders you'd be rather bellicose too. The Comanche also fought with other indigenous tribes for the best lands well before any Spaniards arrived, like the Apache who they drove south from the Wymoming Shoshone into the barren deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. So this is me: Comanche-Romanche on a bicycle, enemy of everyone friend of no-one, someone who is not afraid to stand up to the invaders, the invaders being those who have allowed technologies (like the car, the smartphone, the aberrant economy) to overtake (and violate) their own bodyminds (not to mention this fine land now paved with roads, heavy industry, and pollution). And like the Comanche, especially now given their tiny numbers, I feel alone and outnumbered in my crusade for land and freedom.
I actually have a tomahawk believe it or not, a very sharp one. Not sure if it would be a good idea to carry it with me, although it would show car drivers that I mean business ;)
May the universe bless the aborigines of the Earth and all who Listen to Nature...
Cleaning Your Bowl
It came to me at the end of a two hour pastoral cycle as if as some reward for the clarity of mind attained from that elemental excursion. The cycle itself into the empty misty back roads between Barrhead and Howwood and then along the sustrans path to Paisley Canal was remarkable if only for the complete absence of people and cars en route. To be sure, my routes are always blissfully quiet (that's why they're roots) but today was unduly blissfull. It seemed that in spite of covering some 20 miles I passed no-one and no-one passed me. And it wasn't even cold in spite of it being mid December. Sure, there was a little drizzle, and it was overcast and misty but surely people know how to walk in the rain? Apparently not, which suits me just fine. Because it is the emptiness and complete lack of distraction, along with that moving blood and those pastoral and primal landscapes, that lets you into your Self. And it's this Self, this Master, who will tell you to 'clean your bowl'. And of course, the bowl is not a bowl but an animal body and the 'vessel' that contains emptiness.
Who are you, the pupil asked the master. There is no who, the master replied. Then, what are you, the pupil asked. And the master replied: I am awake!
When In Rome...
When you're on a bicycle don't behave like a car driver. It seems a pretty obvious thing to say but I constantly see cyclists like the one today in Elderslie waiting behind cars at traffic lights. Not only are you sucking on that exhaust pipe like a big old Cuban cigar but you are also vitiating the purpose of cycling: spontaneity, flow, and freedom. So, when I passed this middle-aged cyclist waiting behind a long line of cars in Elderslie I said to him: 'You're on a bicycle man, get to the front.'
This is where you belong, at the front. Are you not, after all, the vanguard of a new world order that says 'move everywhere under your own steam, spontaneously and renewably'? But this is man, not the aborigine. And so man needs telling once again: when you're in an animal body do not behave like a robot.
The (Cosmic) Circuit
I've been cycling this 'circuit' between Paisley and Bridge of Weir and back again via the plateau of desolation, Kilbarchan and Johnstone, for years now. It is one of many circuits and routes through the strath that I have 'engineered' over the past twenty or so years. Like routes (roots), if you put together enough of these circuits, you get a bona fide mother board (or tree). This mother board or treeness allows one to tap in to the Earth in a way that had previously been kept from you. One taps into the current of the Earth by moving as its animals and plants do (of their own accord) and moving as the Earth herself does, that is, circuitously.
Is the Earth not a circuitous entity? Does she not perform a circuit of the sun every year? And in so doing, does the Earth not become more cosmic because of this?
Never Look Back
Look not behind thee... Escape to the mountains lest thee be consumed.
Genesis 19:17
Car drivers look back all the time. Cyclists, not so, because a cyclist's ears have evolved to become their rear-view mirror. Car drivers by contrast have halted their evolution and growth by aligning with the unclean machine. Compared to cyclists, car drivers are thus inferior beings, deliberately so, for I have never met a car driver who lamented the fact that he was 'forced' to drive. Car drivers are obligated to look back for they have created a device that is outwith their own organic self-cleansing technology. They are no longer 'being' whilst sealed into this pollutant perambulator, but rather 'having' as in 'in possession of a machine and technology that usurps and violates the aboriginal bodymind'. This causes man to have to look back. And in looking back man defies natural organic momentum. He loses the moment and replaces it with 'that which has already been'. By doing this he begins to 'stop'. But 'Stop' in all manner of ways in terms of growth, maturation, and overall health. And by stopping man loses contact with his own body (and, by extension, his own land) and becomes stupid. This stupidity (a function of being stupefied) encourages man all the more to putt-putt-putt about in his mobile gas chamber. And the more he does this the more he stops, and the more he stops the more stupid he becomes. Never look back. Never behave like a car driver when you're on a bicycle.
Rainbow & Fox
This morning, the sun and the wind equals rainbow. And it arrives just before the train does as I stand on the platform at Pollokshaws West train station. I marvel at its sturdiness along with another person waiting on the platform. We discuss the scarcity of rainbows within the Glasgow region considering there is so much cloud movement and moisture in the air. 'Scarcer than a golden eagle' we conclude before hopping onto the train. A couple of hours later, after a brief wander in the hills above Paisley and Barrhead, I arrive at Paisley Canal train station just before the train does and I see a flicker of gold crossing the railway about a hundred metres yonder. No, it's not a golden eagle or a rainbow, but something more rare than that. It's a daytime fox scuttling between shrubbery. I feel blessed at such sights. What life there is when your eyes are open!