You wish to see, listen then. The ears are a step in the direction of vision.
Bernard de Clairvaux
Enlightenment is not just enlightenment, it's the hearing of Nature in its estrangement.
Horkheimer & Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment
Cycling is the path to enlightenment. Cycling is not just a form of flying and a revealing of the undrelying fabric of the cosmos (that of universal inertia and travelling without moving as in freewheeling) but a way of listening to, of tuning in to, and of hearing (Nature).
And it's not just the ears that hear. When you're on a bicycle, and have been for some time, you realize that the whole body hears. And it doesn't just hear but see. This is the real discovery of the cyclist: the ears see (and the body is just a large ear)! Anyone who has cycled as a way of life (and not just to lose a few pounds at the weekend) will know this: that the ears are the main sensory organ, not the eyes. That's why it pains me whenever I see cyclists with the rattle plugged in, or helmets on. Because it's the ears that tell the eyes where to look. Only a moron would seal them up behind distractors and dampeners. The ears are the director for the actors that are the eyes. When you seal the ears up, those actors become distractors if not detractors from your enlightenment. They no longer act for you, since there is nothing now to direct them, but distract and detract from you.
Thus, the cyclist animal (like all wild animals), as opposed to the domesticated and distracted human, doesn't just see, but envisages, envisions, (pro)vides and (ad)vises...
It is this immediate and unmediated 'vising' that renders all animals (and cyclists) 'wise'.
Black Ice Ahoy!
No sooner had I cursed the council for not gritting the icy paths than ambulances and paramedics started appearing for the elderly who had slipped. Even I, a wild beast with surer footing than a mountain goat, slipped twice (I blame it on my tyres not my feet since I was cycling). As I cycled around the shires this mid-January morning, I had to pay extra attention to the way, and move at a much slower pace.
As I started employing this sharper sense of seeing and navigation I never slipped again. The black ice was still there but now, thanks to my moving a little more slowly and my taking that little extra care, I could see it and thus avoid it.
By 'screening and scanning the horizon' and further down the line, I could see what was coming and prepare for it. Unlike the old man I saw at Elderslie being lifted onto a stretcher about to be carted away to hospital.
A Rare Breed Indeed
This morning, coming down from the hills and onto the train, the train conductor called me 'a rare breed' for having put my bicycle in the allotted space for bikes and sitting next to it.
Talk about an insightful conductor!
The Bothy Hunter & The Mirrorless Bike
In the hills this morning, an encounter with the seventy year old bothy hunter, John. He sees me untying the bike having just emerged from a walk through the hanging wood and we get chatting. He tells me of his hill-walking and his bothy hunting. Apparently, he's hunted all 106 of them in Scotland but not found all of them. Some of them managed to escape his compass. That's the beauty of the hills, I tell him, even compasses lose their bearings on occasion. Anyway, he suggests a mirror for my bicycle, telling me all the benefits of being able to see what four wheeled beast is creeping up behind you. He is an avid cyclist and walker and has been since his boyhood days, so he knows a thing or two about bikes and cycling (and car drivers). I mull it over and then say that I can already see behind me without the need for a mirror, that over the past half century of cycling (and I'm only 49) I have developed 'eyes on the back of ma heid' and can echo-locate a bit like bats (or Cairo taxi drivers), and that by putting a mirror on my bike it would necessarily detract from that natural technology that has grown within me. 'Replacing your natural technology with an artificial one is no good,' I say. 'You just become weaker as an animal able to navigate the land'. The ears are the first point of call for the animal, not the eyes, and so a mirror would re-route that primacy into the eyes, thus enfeebling the ears. It would also, in making the eyes the first point of call, take the animal out of me.' He doesn't know what to say, but I can see he agrees. I wish him well on his hike, tell him to watch out for that icy wind up there, and jump on to my mirrorless bike.
Rain Bow, Wind Bow, Earth Bow
This morning, the first of February, the skies are breathing heavily. We almost get a rainbow as I cycle past Elderslie, but it's too faint to be noticeable.
And then I think, is not the original rainbow the shamanic cyclist plying his way through the shires, gazing over the valley, bowing to the rain?
Is not the cyclist's head in a permanent bow towards the earth anyway? And since the Glasgow strath is almost always veiled in cloud, is the wild strath cyclist then not performing a rainbow? If not a windbow, a sunbow, and an overall earthbow?
The Cyclist as Superhero & Heretic
All cyclists are superheroes, (whether they dress up in lycra or not). The super part comes from the fact that they use their own steam to get from A to B. By 'cyclist', I don't mean a cyclist who commutes to work and then reverts to the car when it suits him, or some such nonsense. By 'cyclist' I mean someone who eschews being carried and transported (like an injured animal) and who moves everywhere under their own steam.
The cyclist's superness comes mostly from this action, but not all. What the cyclist does not do is just as important. He does not pollute his environment and the people, animals and land; he does not abandon his own technological body in favor of a deleterious technology that has been imposed upon him; he does not ignore (the land and the animals) by sealing his self up in a mobile gas chamber (but navigates and acknowledges the land by moving through it originally). This is why the cyclist (like the walker or the rower) is a hero (and a heretic): because he chooses not to kowtow to the quagmire that he has been born into; because he chooses not to believe and have faith in a situation that is clearly untenable; because, in spite of the great difficulties facing him, he makes sacrifices through his doing and undoing, thus rendering the world sacred again.
This is the nature of the hero and heretic (from Greek hairetikos 'able to choose'): one who holds a doctrine at variance with established or dominant standards. One who when faced with the death of his greater self simply to please his small one, chooses not to...
Flying the Kite: Up to the Edge and Back
I wouldn't be much of a Zen master if I didn't head up to the edges on the first day of the year of vision. In the Chinese New year (later in the year) it's the year of the rat which suits me fine since wild rats (not lab rats) are amongst Nature's most curious and intelligent animals. They are also very playful explorers who leave a mark of where they've been by peeing. I do the same, so really, I'm just a large rat, which is good enough, since rats do not destroy their environment, do not pollute it, do not hide their selves away from it.
The black outline that looks like a kite, starting and finishing
top right (Cessnock/Ibrox/Govan)
So, today, rat-like, I flew the kite and headed up to the Gleniffer Braes, to the great waterfall in the woods just behind Glenburn estate. From my gaff in Cessnock. the route is not too bad following the sustrans path through Bellahouston Park, onto Corkerhill and generally shadowing the train line to Paisley canal. I like to avoid the main roads, rats generally do, and so just before Paisley Canal I head straight up and over Ardgowan Street turning right at the bottom onto Barterholm Rd. From there, follow your nose and weave your way rat-like in between the high-rises and hills up to Brodie Park and then down and up tyhrough Glenburn housing estate. This is a much quieter road than Calside and Park Roads which to be quite honest are death traps for cyclists with the way they have installed the traffic calming measures. Too many idiots in cars on these roads. Avoid them at all costs!
Once through Glenburn, the quiet road getting steeper and steeper as the houses fade, the braes and woods are right in front of you. Here, you have many choices, to continue further up, to Glenburn Reservoir and Ferenese, or to head along up to Paisley Golf Course to the right. I headed left through the woods, by the big waterfall, and down again towards Barrhead, but cutting down the B771 Grahamston road to Dykebar Hospital. From there, pass the first roundabout (pay attention now) and about two hundred metres or so on your right is Ben Nevis Road. Use the pedestrian crossing there to cross as you can't turn right here. Ben Nevis Road will take you back onto the route that you left not a half hour ago winding your way alongside the White Cart Water and past Leverndale tower.
Naturally, you can dawdle at certain spots. Along the way you have Bellahouton Park and its House for an Art Lover and Walled Garden, Crookston Castle, Bull Wood, Saucelhill (with the best view in town), and the serenity of the river and fields of gold at Bathgo Hill and Ralston. It really is a route to take your time along, bring a packed lunch, maybe a sketch pad...
But today, it was just up to the edge and back. Good enough for an old (but wise) rat...
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