Back to the Dome

What a great route from Kilpatrick train station to Milngavie train station via Duncolm (401m), the desolate Kilpatrick plateau, and the official middle of nowhere. Three hours is all it took and yet... such experiences cannot be quantified in temporal language. There is ecstasy up here in the solitude, space, and silence, and so necessarily one becomes extemporized and ecstatic. This is one of the many existential curiosities to be had when engaging the self in the wilderness: isolation. This is the true wilderness of your own savage interior, and it offers us the opportunity to explore it, and come to grips with our real self. So, excursions like this are not just physical, or indeed mental, but spiritual and existential. Going into the hills, and exploring one's own wild interior, has never been more urgent.

Cycling Meditations: Kilpatrick to Milngavie via Duncolm

(see route map here)

The Seven (Cycling) Samurai

 

The Length of a Shit Movie

79 minutes. That's all it took to cycle beautifully and languidly (granted, I had the wind behind me) from Paisley Canal to Langbank via Elderslie, Bridge of Weir, Kilmalcom, and Finlaystone Park. That's less than the running time of a shit movie. Or even a good one for that matter. But the real movie is of course here, on the saddle, watching the world disappear as a new dimension emerges. This is how you 'alive' and switch yourself on. Your bodymindspirit is a lamp, and it needs to be switched on before it can radiate its light. This is done by embodying yourself and eschewing the carry-cots that man has filled the world with. 80 minutes is all it takes to get that heart energised. And if you cannot afford eighty minutes out of one thousand four hundred and forty (24 hours) then you are in deep trouble, for it means that you get up in the morning but never actually wake up. And with this apparition of aliveness, your heart (and your soul) remains asleep.

The Aim of Life

The aim of life, the French actress Jeanne Moreau once said, was to die in good health. 

'I am going to die very young, maybe 70, maybe 80, maybe 90, but I shall be very young.'

Solar Halo

I had just written a short piece from this very platform a couple of weeks ago on the 'Halo' that suddenly appeared above my head (the shadow of the bicycle wheel), and now we have this, a solar halo, a pretty rare celestial phenomenon which is formed by hexagonal ice crystals refracting light in the sky — 22 degrees from the sun. It was quite amazing actually, seeing as it is the first time I have ever seen one this clearly. Everyone else missed it staring as they were into their hands - this is what happens when you decant your being into a smartphone and allow it to dominate your awareness and life. I however never miss anything since I do not possess a smartphone or a smart anything for that matter. My being is not part of the machinery of progress that weakens and destroys the animal and the animate, but part of the universe. And so that is what I see.

The Crosshairs of Being Alive.... from Paisley Canal