Category Archives: musings

restless

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There is a melody in the exhaust note of a late night solitary motorcycle. It is joyous, melancholy and restless.

Lying awake in my bed after an evening ramble around town, I hear bikes zipping around in the night. Their song isn’t as sad as the lonely freight train, and it’s got a note of rebel in there, but there is a nomadic agitation the lingers.

Maybe it’s just me.

I’ve always had a desire to be on the road, satisfying an almost ever-present disquiet. In some ways it’s easier to be out there. It’s cut and dry. Drive, find a place to crash, shower, eat. No two days are the same. Even on an uneventful day, the terrain changes. The weather, the local’s accents, the food changes. There are adventures, there are calm days. But any problems tend to be very function related: car breaks down, money is short, took wrong exit. Uncomplicated.

I have a nomadic agitation that lingers.

happy bubble

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There are days when I go on a ride and it feels like a solitary event. Those rides are fulfilling for their isolation and alone time.

I also love riding on days like today. Not because it is probably the hottest day of the year so far, not because we got a late start and not because I didn’t get any photos but because all the riders on the road today seemed to share a bubble of unmitigated enjoyment.

It is as if every biker on the road is savoring the day in the same way. I feel connected to other riders. We wave at each other, even across a brush filled highway divide, unusually enthusiastically as if we know that the other is thinking, “How awesome is this?!”

Today is one of those days.

the unbearable lightness of being

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The lightness of being means accepting that life is meaningless.

Life becomes unbearable when accepting that life is meaningless becomes impossible. We tend to want our actions to have meaning. This lightness of being is instead a painfully heavy weight carried around day in and day out.

Milan Kundera would have us believe that we have one life to live and that in the end it means nothing. Does this give us carte blanche to do whatever we want, or does it create an unbearable encumbrance to all our decisions and choices?

Some acts have more consequence than others, and some track throughout our short history. Not only will we cease to exist at some point, but the passing of time will render our past actions meaningless.

But what of the ancient idea that time is circular? Perhaps our destiny is to repeat this life over and over for infinity. Eternal return is not a new idea.

Which is worse?  This current life being the only chance you have and that once it’s over none of it mattered, or that each choice you make in this life repeats over and over?