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It’s Tuesday morning. I’ve been thinking about this trip for months but could never commit because of pending issues at home, and in my heart. I can’t write about the biggest thing going on in my life. Know that I am dragging around a ball and chain on my feet, and Monday I had a long standing appointment. With it over I was free as I wanted to be. I went to bed Monday not knowing what I would do. I was restless as I have ever been. It felt wrong to go. It felt wrong to stay. I needed to shake something loose no matter what. Introduce some chaos into life’s stream. If you want your situation to mutate into the unexpected then get up and go and meet life head on. I had done all I could do about the unnamed affair, all to no avail. I cried all my tears and lived for weeks as if my increasingly shriveled heart would fix itself. Ah, that organ, so sensitive, so easily ruined, so in need of renewal. Tuesday morning my waking thought was, OK, let’s get it done. Do something even if it is wrong. We are going to leave all this behind and maybe nothing good will happen. But at least I can still make something happen. If you want a new form of life you have to plant a lot of seeds in order to get one mutation. So, as I had my morning coffee I packed up the “K” bike and by seven thirty I was heading down my driveway to I didn’t quite know where. I got on I-35 near Walburg, Texas and joining the stream of humanity heading north, hiding there in my helmet, I flew along the macadam of the interstate highway as fast as I thought I could get away with. As it turns out this is the same path I took in June. I had a notion, more or less, that I would ride till four in the afternoon.

It is 515 miles to Wichita, Kansas. The cities rose up out of the plains and swallowed me up and spit me out the other side. Waco, Fort Worth, Denton, Norman, Oklahoma City, Edmund, and finally, at four P.M., Wichita, Kansas loomed on the horizon. It was hot and sunny all day. I was glad to be at a stopping place.

I stayed in the Scotchman Inn on Kellogg Avenue just west of downtown. While checking in I asked the clerk where I could find a tavern nearby and after I unpacked the bike and showered and changed into street clothes I headed out. West avenue was just over the river only a mile or so back towards town from my Inn. It was real cluttered with suburban blight but I found Yvie’s bar and grill. There were two Harley’s sitting by the front door and several cars. I backed my beemer in next to the Harleys. Some guy went in ahead of me carrying a fancy cue stick case. I went in and took a seat at the bar. There were several pool tables. Two middle aged ladies were standing at the bar. They ordered some beers and went to play pool at the nearest table. I sat down at the bar and when the bartender asked me what I wanted I ordered Dewars and soda. On my left were two empty stools. On my right a guy was drinking beer. I didn’t talk to him and thought about moving over one seat to put some space between us as I intuited he didn’t really want me there.

I sipped my scotch and minded my own business and watched the other happenings in the bar. The barkeep was a woman in her thirtys maybe and she was real busy. I don’t think they had anyone else helping except in the kitchen so she not only served drinks but also waited tables, serving food and drink. The place wasn’t full but I don’t think there were any tables completely empty either. She was busy. I just nursed my drink, bided my time, ignored the guy to my right as much as possible. He was trying clumsily to chat up the bartender and she was friendly in a businesslike fashion. So, nothing really happened. I had a drink and it slaked my thirst and cut through all the dirt and grime in my mouth, in my mind, accumulated riding the trail from near Austin, Texas to Wichita, Kansas. When my glass was empty the girl presented herself in front of me and asked if I wanted another. I looked at her, locked eyes with her, put a friendly look on my face, waited to the count of four, and said I would be leaving. She said, “OK, then that will be five dollars.” Looking into her face still I said, as I reached for my wallet,, “what is your name?” “Angie,” she said. Handing her a ten dollar bill and a one I said, “Give me back a five, keep the dollar for a tip.” She went to the cash drawer and fished a five out and came back to me. I had meantime collected a book of matches with the name of the bar printed on the cover. “Angie,”, I said, “sign your name on this for me.” She smiled, and said, “Oh, you collect matchbooks?” “Well, no,” I said. The guy on the right was intent on this exchange, I could tell, but he kept his distance. Looking at her signature, I said, “I might start a collection.” She smiled as I put the five back in my wallet and got up from the bar stool. We exchanged pleasantries, “good bye, have a nice evening.” As I turned to go I spke to the back of the guy’s head sitting there on my right and said, “and you too, man.” He still didn’t acknowledge me and almost cringed, I thought, as I walked out the door. So, the first seed successfully planted.

I went back to the Scotchman and checked the bike over for tomorrow’s run. My gear was in need of some reorganization because in my haste to get on the road I just stuffed things anywhere. After a bit of this I turned in and slept fitfully till about six thirty Wednesday morning. By seven thirty I was in the lobby where I grabbed some cream cheese and preserves to go with my bread for a snack on the road.

An elderly couple were having cereal. We exchanged greetings. I didn’t sit down. Obama was on the TV. It was a news clip about the health care debate. I addressed the couple about the AARP and how they were for this but that a lot of our seniors were beginning finally to see that this would adversely affect their lives and were strongly coming out against it. I don’t know how politically aware these folks were but they listened politely neither agreeing or no as I said my peice. That too was a seed planted.

It was a nice day, still cool, when I mounted up and headed out for Nebraska straight up I-35. But in a few hours it was in the mid 90s with a south west wind. The prairie rolled up under my spinning wheels and the vast regions of my mind likewise rolled up behind my rapidly advancing thoughts and feelings. Heart and soul, mind and body were one in purpose and intent. I only stopped for fuel and one rest area where I had a snack about mid day. I got to York, Nebraska, where Interstate 80 headed me due west across southern Nebraska. It was hot when I stopped there for fuel. I struck up a conversation with an attractive girl at the fuel island. She was headed for Chicago and had come from the direction in which I was going. I asked about road conditions and such just wanting to hear a human voice and especially hers. She was quite open and didn’t object to this chance meeting. Finishing up our fueling we parted wishing one another safe trips.

It is now Thursday, August 13. Yesterday it was in the 90s. Last night and this morning it was much cooler. I put on my heavy coat for this ride and before the day was out I was fully suited up for wet and cold weather. The dry Texas summer was far behind me and it felt real good to plunge headlong along the road north to Great Falls.

I-25 was just outside my door so it was a fast getaway out of Cheyenne. The bike screamed at the distance and it melted in submission to the dauntless intrepidity of this bike and rider. I was the can-do kid this morning, ready for whatever this day had to offer up.

rough roads, rain, wind, heavy traffic

What is the end within? The end within a rose bud is a rose. An acorn becomes an Oak tree. The end within. Blow this up. All things have an end within. A purpose. How can you say that there is no purpose to creation as a whole when you must realise that the rose bud is a manifestation of what is going on on the grand scale? If a rose bud’s purpose is to display the rose within, then the purpose of the cosmos is presumed to be a very real, a very live, thing. You, your life, is that end within. You are the rose. Get over it!

This is Aristotle via me.

Existentialism: Ex nihil, nihil fit. Out of nothing comes nothing. That is what I reject, and, well, the real purpose of this sentiment is to provide an indulgence for the subject. It makes no more sense than saying out of everything comes everything. It is a mere tautology, its only possible reference is back on itself. Therefore it conveys no meaning. It is like living in the sentiment that existence, that life, is nothing but a flight from the alone TO the alone. I reject that, too.

In a closed system, such as the Cosmos, the Universe,
If there is light and dark, eventually that which is dark merges with that which is light and you have neither dark nor light. If there is hot and cold, the same formula applies. If there is organised and chaotic, the same. That is the second law of thermodynamics. That is immutable. Dead stop!

Strange jump! The equality tards seek to accelerate this process. Don’t they know it means death?
So, the struggle between liberty and statism is the struggle against entropy on the political level.

Nuff said!

I went for a bicycle ride early this morning. You have to get out early to beat the heat this July. On my way back I could see coming down a hill that two Labrador Retrievers were nosing around in the corner of a maize field ahead. I knew these dogs to be aggressive. Across the road, with his back to me, was a Great Dane. I’d tangled with all of them before. I hoped to sneak by them but just as I got within twenty feet or so of one of the Labs, my movement, noise, caught her attention, and she turned on me. I went straight for her, she ran off across the road and I made my turn left. The second my back was to her she charged. The other Lab was close too and the Dane, old as he was, was gallomping his self hard to get in on the action. The first, then the second, Lab, got a taste of my right foot. I popped both of them in the nose real hard. My knee was fully cocked when I let fly. They peeled off and fell back and I jumped on the pedals, outdistancing them. I could hear and see the Dane out of the corner of my left eye. His huge nails scraping on the asphalt added a funny kind of staccato background to the deep throated rumbling that he issued for a bark.

Meanwhile, up ahead, a pickup swerved in order to run over a large snake. I pulled up and these two guys, young construction workers, watched this corn snake in its death throes. I asked one guy who got out to take a picture, to stomp his head. Put the creature out of its misery, you know. He ignored me, concentrating on his cell phone camera. The driver said there was a board in the back. It was a two by four about four feet long. I stradddled the thing and bludgeoned its head to a pulp and wished all a good day as we parted company. It was friendly. Just three guys having a chance encounter over the death of a feared reptile.

Its not easy losing the love of your life and then getting attacked by a pack of dogs and then having to put a snake out of its misery.

After what I have gone through in the past two weeks I thought this was somehow a double bad omen. And, last night, I dreamed of rats.

Isn’t oblivion where I came from? Isn’t oblivion our greatest fear? So. We fear our origin? Passing into that great unknown the idea of not being remembered haunts us. We fear not having anything to cling to. We want order to reign, not chaos. The whole thrust of our being seems to be to stave off entropy. Abhorrent dissolution! This is the fiendish chain that binds us and this in a way is liberties opposite.

Liberty is a universal, a principle. That something is a principle means it is a force. Love, as principle, posits love as force…of nature, on a par with gravity. The same holds for all concomitants of sentient life. Always there are forbears who have struggled with these eternal verities, trying to see a clear path through an absolutely impossible maze.

Reading of Soren Kieerkegaard for instance: The soul is like a channel that opens into the sea. The closer to the sea the wider the channel. The boundaries of the individual soul increasingly dissolve as the “channel” merges with the sea. On meditation the personal soul resolves into the spirit of God, the cosmic soul. This is true transcendence and is not available to those trapped in subject/object modes of being. Those that have consigned their spirits to a “having” existence as opposed to “being”. Freedom is in being in the world. Slavery is in having objects in the world, in mere materialism.

The tone of this is that the sea is the repository of great joy, which I think is true, but for most of the lives of most people this great all encompassing sea is the abyss, the void that swallows up all purpose and meaning. It is oblivion, chaos, entropy. We have vehicles for coping with this and to follow that path the abyss becomes full not empty.

Faith is a vehicle for coping with our seeming estrangement from the real itself. Guilt is this same estrangement from reality. The Christ teaches us that there is a way out. Jesus said I am the way, the light, and no man cometh to the Father except by me. Here he is disembodying himself. He identifies with the “Way” to God and with the “Light” itself which illuminates this path. So, the way to God and the light shining thereon are principles too, and Jesus Christ was a living embodiment of those. In other times and other places, across the entire Cosmos, other beings live that also give a living body to these same universals. Isn’t it a necessary truth that there are many “Christs”?

Just wanted to get that off my mind.

I live in an emerald, this spring at least.

And, this is nice.

I wanted to do this yesterday. We are having very mild weather for this time of year with plenty of moisture. So it is especially pleasant and even more so in the evening light.

And then, there is this mess waiting for me.

Another dead soldier, Sgt. Major!

And she was such a pretty thing.

The voice of the void: “Alive, I can’t die; Dead, I can’t be born.”