In the last month I have found myself not enjoying life.
If you knew me, you'd be worried.
I always enjoy what I am doing while I am doing it. And I'll do almost anything.
This is why you will find no details of who I am on this Blog. You don't need to know.
The only thing you need to know is what is written here.

On Sunday I took a ride on my bike. Not a bicycle, those are for people who want to get tired.
My bike is a 1984 Honda Interceptor. I'll post a picture if I remember.
I went for a short ride.
But somehow I arrived back home two hours and forty minutes after I left.
I had done well over 200 kilometers.
Where had the time gone and where did I go?
It was like being stuck in an episode (bad one) of Star Trek.
I have a GPS, I downloaded the data. I went through several counties, mostly dirt roads.
But I do not remember a damned thing.
It was cold, windy and bright. The scenery was no doubt pretty.
So where was my mind?
And why did my memory not record?

Three weeks ago, the last time I was on the bike, I had a much different experience.
The smells, sounds and sights sent me jolting back to other times and places in my life.
Yes, like yet another bad episode of Star Trek.
But it wasn't "like" I was there. I was there. Physically. Mentally.
It was disturbing.
Disturbing because while I was back in BC, riding my old bike, through the Frasure Valley.
I could look forward and see where I am now.
I existed in two places at once.
And I did not like what I said to my future self.
Have I changed so much?

When I ride, it always brings me closer to God.
It is just me and Him, the bike and the land.
I could talk to Him, and I would listen to Him speak to me with the road.
I have not spoken to Him in quite a while.
I am sure He is trying to talk to me. But I have seemed to have lost the ability to listen.
Perhaps I will not like what He has to say.
Perhaps I know what He is going to say.
Perhaps I do not want to hear.
At this point I am only just keeping it together, though sheer force of will.
His will, for I really think he is carrying me.
I know this, because I do not have this much strength in me.

It is getting cold out now.
Perhaps one more weekend to ride.
In a few weeks there will be leaves and rain and wind.
Riding in that is asking for a trip to the hospital, if they find me.
Riding in that used to be a challenge, or a cue to head south.
Now I shall have to make a decision.
Do I go out, and if I do, will I listen?
Or fade into the scenery.

There is something cohesive about it all.
I have stripped that bike down to its bare skeleton, and built it back up.
I know where each bolt goes, what each sound is.
When it vibrates at a certain RPM I know it is the natural harmonics of the V4.
I know how fast I can take the corner, how quickly I can brake.
I know all these things as you can only know a bike you have spent great amounts of time on.
I love the sound when I open it wide open and accelerate full throttle.
As much as I love the sound of cruising at 80 in 5th at four thousand RPM.

One last ride then.
To ask the question I don't want to ask.
To hear the answer I already know.
This is going to be hard.
I am going to have to become what I need to be.
Not what I want to be.
In those days I was Lupus Solitarum.
The Lone Wolf.
I no longer walk alone.

Maybe yesterday was my last great walk.
The last great ride.
Perhaps, after all that, I have become a pack animal after all.
And is that so bad?

I'm not sure when but at some point someone set the dial to fast forward.

Yesterday Adele turned three. WHAT! Last week she was born and the week before that I got married.

I shake my head to think that I have been working at my current job for over four years. My previous record was eight months.

Now I intuitively understand that having a familiy changes your priorities but I never though it would happen to me. Not that regret a single moment of anything, not that I would change a single decision. I just wish it would slow down a bit so I could enjoy it more.

I seem to be play with Eden and Adele in little 10 minute chunks. Stuffed between getting up, dressed, fed and to daycare and getting from daycare, fed and to bed. I impose my world order on them. Why do we have to rush off, why can't we go to the park. I would love nothing better than go to the park, than work, clean, fix, visit and sleep. But that is life. I don't even mind the extra burden of my wife going back to work. We have to sacrifice if the girls are to get any kind of financial help from us when they need it. Perhaps they will make a better go of it than I have, professionally speaking.

Last week when I took the bike out for a test ride after adjusting the valves I had a Twilight Zone moment. For a minute I was back in the Frasure Valley, no job, no money no responibilities. Throwing the bike into corners and sorting it out on the way out, Jaques Villeneuve style. Was a nostalgic? Hell yes. Did I want wish to go back to those days? Absolutely. It was only in the quite of the night lying awake did I remember the crushing lonliness, the fear of an uncertain future and quiet creeping of death as I continued to say yes to ever more dangerous activities.

So was I ready for my African Experience? You are never sure until you are in the moment and I was only very sure when I stood on the shore in Port Elizabeth at sunset, standing on ground that a glacier has never touched! This land was so foreign, yet so familiar. I was a white, first world male visiting a black, 3rd world nation. I could not have been more out of place. But there was the feeling, that aching feeling of belonging. Here was the family I never knew, yet understood completely. And more importantly, understood me completely. So was I ready? Yes and no but one thing is for certain. When I got home I realized I was forever changed.

It was from that certainty that my confidence and direction stemmed from. Its amazing that you will know where you are going, if you know who you are. In fact its quite easy. I went from believing that I would not make it to 30 let alone have a family. Now here I am....

So where am I? I am devoting my whole self to three tasks. Raising two girls, being a husband and working hard at my job. I try to balance these three but fail miserably constantly. At least one and usually two of those suffer as I focus too much on one aspect. And what of friends and other family? They usually get the scaps of time in between everything else which is not enough and not fair.

And I go back to Africa. And I see my life through their eyes and they are laughing at me! I know they are because they work on africa time, there will always be time. And they are right. But I am plunging down a river of rapids with no boat let alone a paddle. How am I supposed to work in african time? And I am not alone, and that is sad. Where are we all going? And why? In the end we look at africa and say what a poor backwards unevolved place it is. But what if they are right and we are wrong? I think we might be, I really do.

Elephants

I wrote this shortly after returning from Africa in 1999.

It was hot and dusty. The wave of heat blasted me as I stepped from the car. The air conditioning was deceptive. It made the African plains seems almost hospitable. But as I walked from the car to the edge of the small hill the sun beat down on me sapping my strength. I peered into the heat haze that blanketed the entire area. My uncle was positive we would see the elephants here. He was a man on a mission. He would find the bachelor group and I would see them. I felt the sweat break out on my forehead. As I raised my small pair of binoculars to my face my uncle grabbed my arm and turned me to the west. “There”, he said, “right by the water hole.”
The four elephants were indeed by the water hole, three good sized males and a huge male with a straight tusk. I was dumbfounded. We were miles away from them and they looked huge. As they wandered around the vicinity of the water stopping to drink or to blow dust on themselves I was struck by how graceful they were. These were massive six ton animals, the largest land animal. Yet with the grace that most ballerinas lack they eased their massive bodies around. They looked so serene I didn’t want to go closer to see them. I wanted to let them be. But my uncle piled us into the car and we drove with breakneck speed down the hill. We passed all kinds of wildlife on either side of us, monkeys, buck, and birds. But we wanted to see the elephants.
We came upon the watering hole and the bachelors eyed us with weary acceptance and then proceeded to ignore us. The largest male was just standing there, his trunk draped over his one long straight tusk. He eyed the other males. The other males moved about aimlessly. The smallest went for a drink. He eased himself onto his knees and extended his trunk to the water. I swear I could see the water level go down as he drank. He then removed his trunk for the water and placed it in his mouth. Most of it ended up on the ground at his feet in puddles that quickly seeped back into the parched soil. He small male then tried to get back on his feet again. A bit of the magic of the beast was destroyed then. He was so clumsy. He looked in our direction embarrassingly as if to say sorry for spoiling our image of elephants. As he hobbled up the other elephants came towards him. They sidled alongside and began to rub against him. The largest male stood in front of him and they began a pushing match. The match was over very quickly as the small male capitulated. The big males then stood in a circle in front of the watering hole as if guarding it.

It was then that the warthog family came by. My Uncle had turned the car off and was snapping pictures furiously. The grunting and snorting caught our attention. We turned our gaze and a mother with her three piglets passed ten feet in front of the car. They made their way to watering hole and passed right between the male elephants to gain access to the water. The males did their best to ignore them.

Then another car pulled up behind us, and the magic was broken. Before it was a private show, just the elephants and us, sharing an African afternoon. Now it was a zoo. People were staring and the fences that were a mile to the north revealed themselves for what they were, a really large cage. I loved seeing those elephants but a sharp tinge of guilt went through me when I realize that we nearly killed them off and to save them we have to put them in jail. Maybe their graceful movements were not borne out of peace but out of resignation over their life sentence for crimes they did not commit.

Suffering in Self Imposed Exile

Wrote this one while camping in White Lake Ontario in September...

The one thing that has always annoyed me about the mornings is that it is light; lighter than dark I mean. At least the dark hides most of the things I don’t want to see. The other thing is that it is always colder than when I went to bed. Not quite sure what the deal is there. Mostly the thing about mornings that I hate is that I am not sleeping. Sleeping has become a commodity to be traded like gold and wheat. Maybe I should set up a sleep trading board. You know, take sleep from people who don’t need it, people who are unemployed or retired and sell it to people who need it, high powered CEO’s and people like myself who insist on going to be hours after the sun has gone down but insist on waking up with it. Now I say insist but really it is my body that is insisting. My brain would much rather be sleeping ‘til noon but the old bod says with a blink of the eyes, you’re up, might as well get going.

Today I think I’ll start by shivering uncontrollably. Even though it is the same temperature as it was five minutes ago when I was sleeping comfortably, I am now freezing. Haven’t quite figured that one out either. I think it must be that my brain is occupied with dreams and not actually processing my temperature sensors. My new thought is to occupy my brain so I won’t feel the cold. I figure making breakfast is a good way to occupy my mind but I am distracted by the fact that I CAN’T MOVE MY HANDS

Mornings like this make you want to fill your lungs with air. Back when I was "Lupus Solitarum" (Lone Wolf for all you non-Latin types) I would crave days like these. It rained all day yesterday; hard rain, big rain, cold rain. It washed the earth clean. The roads are clean, the trees are green even the road signs are glowing.

When I was riding the rain never really bugged me. It did make me tired though. I had to be careful with a fully (read over) laden motorcycle. I had been caught out a few times when the heavy back end wanted to swap places with the front. So you really have to look ahead, plan the route, watch for cars, deer, potholes.
But I always knew that when the rain stopped and the sun came out it would be a great day.

I would get up early, five am and be out of the campsite an hour later. The next few hours, until the sun made the earth a sauna, were golden. I loved the mist that hung in the forests and the dripping of the rain from the leaves. I especially loved it when the wind stirred the leaves and a little rain shower would descend to the earth. Like my own private rain storm.

The trees and grass would be washed clean and stretching their limbs and blades to the sky. They would be so green it would hurt your eyes. The road was still damp with two dry lines running in each lane. The birds would be out singing their hearts out. These were the mornings to live for.

I would not even hear the bike or the tires on the asphalt. It would be like floating four feet from the ground the world rushing by in a mad green blur. There was always so much oxygen in the air you felt drugged by it. Every flower was infusing the air with it’s sent, a wild cacophony of perfume.

Today was like that, driving into work in my little, old car. But it was not the same. It was like belong reminded of a really great dream that you woke up from. I could remember every detail so clearly but knowing that it was not here, was not now. Boxed in my vehicle, bound by the clock, I knew the moment would not last the morning, just the 12.3 kilometers to the parking lot.

Am I glad I took those journeys, had those adventures? Yes. Am I resentful of my life and what it has become? No. But I do miss the morning when you want to fill your lungs with air and float along a ribbon of asphalt till the sun turned the Earth into a sauna, that’s all.

I wrote this in 1998 while stranded in New Mexico.....

Cigarette Paper

As it moves across the horizon it spews a beige cloud behind it. Unlike a passing storm, this cloud hangs in the air, lying still on the separation of earth and sky. It’s like a wedge trying to force them apart. In the heat haze it shimmers, trying to wriggle them apart. It’s a mile away but I can taste the fine silt on my tongue. It sticks, clings and makes mud in my mouth. The truck continues on the road creating and spewing out its wedge of dirt. The road travels on for miles, if it goes on long enough will it split the heavens from the earth? I hope so. Any relief from this place would make me a happy man.

The cloud on the horizon is the only cloud in sight. No rain, water or even mist can penetrate this ceaselessly arid place. It hangs, that cloud, the dirt, so pounded smashed, tilled, shoveled, graded so small it’s lighter than the air, it floats. No puff of breeze to wash that cloud away. Even the horizon is a victim of this place.

If you separate the foil from the paper backing from a pack of cigarettes and fold it just so, then light it, it flies away burning itself as it goes. It rises ever higher eating, consuming its own body to do so until there is just black flakes rising, separating, disintegrating. I wish this place would rise, separate and disintegrate. Heaven knows it’s thin enough. There is all kinds of heat to make it rise. I just need to separate the paper from the foil. Wishing for that cloud of dust to separate the earth from the sky so I can fold it up, light it up, and burn it into oblivion, just so I don’t have to be here anymore.

Y'know, of all the things I have done in my life (supid and otherwise). I would rather be a dad than anything else.
I find this strange as its very hard work and at times disgusting and menial. But it is also the most rewarding. I'd rather have a hug from my daughter than race a car.
That's it. I'll post more later.