The View From My Bicycle (COLUMN)

So you reckon I'm not a believer eh?

September has been a tough month, #1 due to being sick not once but twice. The second sickness was especially horrific, and would not wish that sort of experience on anyone. Hang on, there is one person - just one - that I do wish that on. That would be just desserts. Part of the reason September was so tough was because I fingered September as the month for solid training to recommence. This included some frightening exercises - like cycling to Sun City (getting up at 3am), and following up that 170km ride with a 103km ride first thing in the morning. This really put a lot of strain on the system.

At the same time, it was also an awesome month for a few reasons.

On my Heart Rate monitor chart I have a few very solid bars over the past few weeks. More than I have managed to assemble, actually, for several months. So my motivation levels are at any all time high. Just this week I was on the bike so often that by Sunday I really didn't want any more views from a bike - I'd had enough (so I went running at the gym instead today).

The view from my bike has been - again - the importance of keeping the engine in tip-top shape. Staying physically in good shape takes care of almost everything else - health, moods, self esteem, motivation, stress, the works.

The view from my bike today was that I eventually had to sit down at Pick n Pay (the person took so long to pay her bill at the till) and after a really long wait I finally packed all my things back into my trolley. As I was doing so the missing item finally arrived. A large carton of cigarettes. A smoker naturally won't understand, but a non-smoker certainly can. To hold up an aisle for a carton of cigarettes - to make sure the stuff that tars your lungs and eventually kills you gets to you, while others buying fruits and life-giving sustenance are held up - crazy. As I say, a smoker won't see anything wrong with it.

We do live in different worlds - people - because we see different truths. One person can look at a cactus and see a painful prickly plant, another sees it for what it is. A member of the floral kingdom. Something that adds diversity to a garden or a desert. The bias you introduce is entirely your own. Others will see a brand new day, sunny and beautiful as something to hide away from. They may stay in bed, or stay indoors playing computer games, or find some other excuse not to participate or acknowledge the opportunities and potentials presented by a simple day. Being biased against a beautiful day comes from years of cynicism and bitterness. Those are people we are better served to avoid, unless we can learn from their bad example.

I asked a number of people to think of me and pray for me on one particular day this week. I haven't suddenly found God, or backslidden back into Christianity. I do believe in the power of thought, and prayer and meditation. I believe in the power of positive thinking. I believe karma manifests. I believe our bad moods attract bad luck. Be careful. Those thoughts we entertain draw all sorts of things into our lives. The discipline we apply to our bodies we also need to apply to our minds. If you start to veer off the yellow brick road of sunny happy thinking, remember to stop yourself thinking any further down the road you're headed. Because you know exactly where it goes. Not to the world of sun and rainbows, but through cold, dripping alleys of the dark night.

The view from my bicycle is that by moving our bodies, we purify them. The tissues press out all the accumulated gunk. We sweat it out. Moving our bodies is a precursor to moving our minds towards better and brighter roads. That's where I'm headed. Coming?

Quote from WORLD MADE BY HAND

In the wee hours of this morning I finished James Kunstler's post-oil book.
Here's a quote:

"...it was more possible that the human race possessed a spark of divinity that was worth cultivating that that a mysterious being was up there in the ether somewhere with anthropomorphic qualities of goodness and mercy running the whole show, and maybe it was the job of clergy to nurture that divine spark in us and make something of it."

I found it interesting that both Jim and I sold out...maybe that's too harsh a term...but in my austere novel THE HALF FULL MOON which is about the desert of the real, and the true nature of the original human being, about the threat of extinction to the human race (set in the Kalahari), I also flirted with divine inspiration and interference. Is it not (only) through the divine that we authorise radical change to ourselves and society? This is a peculiar subscription for us though, if you think about it, that we effectively endorse this view even in our fictions, while in our lives are chagrined by the washes of diffused 'religion'.

If you think about it, both Kunstler and myself have resisted the easy way out, which is escaping our worldly troubles through 'salvation and living forever' by simply declaring and committing to faith in a saviour. Yet in both our stories we certainly flirt with the idea of a divine presence, but one that is human in its divinity (and its source), not a sort of disparate alien power originating from elsewhere in the universe. I called my 'Jesus' Alcala, 'the desert dragon', and she was a supremely wise but feminine force, and appeared both fragile and able to circumvent some of the limits we take for granted. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I specified whether her origin was an Earth origin, or a product of the universe forming. I have an idea it is probably both, as divine consciousness is based on a omniscient consciousness and connection to everything. Interesting.