Sometimes the camera sees you in a different light than you see yourself, and this different light is closer to the Reality of things...
All flesh is grass..
And a blade of grass the journeywork of stars...
Wise and hard are those who align their selves with the land and its elements...
Unwise and malleable are those who do not.
Are you a wizard then, or just soft in the head?
Ok, so I decided to avoid the train today and simply cycle all the way up to the wind turbine in the Cathkin Braes and back. I took a new route after Pollok Country Park thru Newlands and Muirend and into Netherlee park. Here I crossed the White Cart Water at the snuff mill bridge and headed on thru to Castlemilk. From here, I rejoined my usual path up to the turbine. Then, it was simply straight back down thru Simshill, Cathcart, Langside, and finally stopping at Queens Park to meet my father and brother for a coffee.
Just watching David Goggins, endurance runner, talk about how his knees, after thousands of miles of running on hard surfaces, are now fucked. His book title, 'Can't Hurt Me' sounds as if it may be a parody. It's then he mentions swimming... that if he can't run, he'll swim. I tell him he should have started cycling and avoided that impact that has reduced his knees to mush. But even to cycle, or swim, you need your knees, perhaps the most important joint in the whole body since this is what you are, a walking entity. So, cycle, don't run. Running is for morons who don't know how to cycle.
Ok, so it took me an age to finally get it up on the wall, but I did it and now it is at home. It's a wonderful piece of craftsmanship the frame, and one day I may just put it back together again. But for the moment it is a flying bike that is caught in a state of suspended animation.
Remember bicycle stands? I think some bikes still do them, and I guess they're pretty good. But my bike doesn't have one, and so I improvise. This is what the hills do to you: they help you see and 'vise'. This 'vise' comes in the form of improvising, supervising, and ad-vising (yourself)... and standing up for that Self. Hence the stand...
To smile is to wonder. This is what smile means coming from the Latin mirari, to wonder. Animals perhaps do not wonder as people do (not a bad thing because it does not carry them away), and so do not smile. But maybe the smile is not a good thing. Maybe the animals do not smile because they are still in touch with their animal and healthy selves. Maybe man smiles because he thinks he knows something (or doesn't know something). Either way, the thinking is the problem. So, maybe the smile is not a good thing. Maybe, like the green light, it gives the go ahead for more 'pollution', wonder itself being a sort of polluting of the aboriginal mind. Or maybe, I'm just glad to get away from the pollution. Which is why I smile every time I'm in the hills.
The halo confers wholeness upon the animal, or is it the other way around? At any rate, all animals have halos for they are already whole and unsplit by artifice. Animals still breathe as Nature intended, they locomote and move under their own steam. They do not emote like man does for their moving blood dispels such pathological acts as emotionality. Nor do animals ego for they already go. By contrast, Man has thrown his halo in the wheelie bin and bought a car, or a gas chamber if you prefer that has now replaced his heart, and by extension his brain. Man's spirit is thus nowhere to be found for it is buried beneath so much nonsense. The halo which is there to crown the spirit is also nowhere to be found. But for those who still breathe, like an eagle breathes, like a leopard breathes, the halo is never far away.
