I had a marvellous, long day ride on the bike a few days ago. One of those unplanned ones, just 10 bucks in my back bike shirt pocket, enough to enjoy it and discover what’s over this, that, these, those hills.
I road across the bay from where I live and went up the peninsula less traveled. Gorgeous. Drop dead, mile upon mile of just beautiful tarmac and coastline as I headed north, around the bend then south toward Jindo Island.
It was a day of reflection. I looked at the computer on my bike and said it was time to say good-bye. Or at least, only do an occassional visit. I was too much looking at its numbers, listening to it tell me my avg. speed was too slow or last week I’d done better.
We all need to get off the train to nowhere that we so often ride upon. And I really mean the “going nowhere” part. Life is not a race. It’s not a pissing contest. Buy into it, like most of us do at some point in our lives and you’ll see no end to it. There is no finish line, it will drive you to your grave - keeping up with the phantom. Tom Waits - We are all gonna be just dirt in the ground.
I sat and had a nice coffee at the 4 hour mark, at a bigger village. Outside the convenience store, the town square, all the locals gathered, talking, gossiping - living, not keeping up. Except that loner on his phone. But Jesus loves him too.
For me, death, that great leveler, has always kept me rejecting the “keeping up” train. We are all gonna die, so why do we insist upon being numero uno, being the best, getting accolades and rounds of applause? Why not just have a coffee and stay in bed? It’s all equal in the end, n’est pas?
Much of the travail and evil too, of this whirling world we live in - is a symptom of this wish to get more, be more, do more, be admired more … It’s problematic I think. It divorces us from each other, it leads us to hate those that have what we don’t or are what we want to become. Envy, Pride, Gluttony and all those other sins.
And the problem of “keeping up” grabs us, keeps us going by allowing us “breaks”. We step off for a weekend or a holiday and think we are free of its grip. NO. It’s just allowing us time to catch our breath before another go around, the “keeping up” merry-go-round.
O’Leary said so masterfully - “Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.” A phrase McCluhan had come up with and which he clung to. It’s a call to be authentic, there, here, now - without the pushing winds of tomorrow or the backpackage of the past.
My father the other day (but so many others the last few years) asked me what I’m going to do. Start a business. Get a job. X, Y or Z? I replied in total seriousness, “Get up tomorrow.” I’ve completely dropped out. I’m fine writing, doing my shadow work and tapping out my thoughts, thinking, even just picking my nose all morning or riding my bike all day - it’s my life after all. But I’m free - freedom is getting up each morning and doing damn well what you want. Word.
I turn often to the Chinese poets when I want to just “be there” and get off the “in search of gravy train.”
I open my Rexroth, on my desk (after another half bottle of wine, as I write this) and read Li Po.
Mountain flowers open in our faces.
You and I are triply lost in wine.
I’m drunk, my friend, sleepy. Rise and go.
With your dawn lute, return, if you wish, and stay.
In essence, abandoning what culture and upbringing have drilled into you - to be somebody, to “fake it until you make it”, to get rich and be admired … this is the only destination a road of wisdom will take to. I felt it writing this poem - ten or so years ago, when returning home to Canada. I feel it now. I’d of been better off staying home and chopping wood.
Dropping out is about loving yourself and being and living by your own dictates, not the blowhorn of others, a blowhorn that too often leads to suicide, stress, early death, soldiering and killing and fanatical friviolity.
So stop counting and start counting.
Get naked. Stand up. Be alive.
Or maybe as my father’s t-shirt from years ago and his hippie days read;
“Put some fun between your legs. Ride a bike.”
David
Keeping Up