Category Archives: musings

SouthWest and the Social Contract

Posted on by

I know that I begin an awful lot of my writings with the phrase, “I still can’t believe that I live in such a beautiful place,” but every time I go for a ride I am amazed by the fantastic landscape that makes up the southwest, specifically, central and northern Arizona.

Today I went on a usual little jaunt out to Bartlett Lake. It’s a fairly quick ride, usually started with a visit to the Cave Creek Coffee Company. Then off on the nicely curvy 20 miles of road out to Bartlett Lake. It’s close enough to town that you can just pop over for a quick morning ride, but it’s isolated enough that you feel refreshed and out of the city.
I couldn’t do that in Chicago!

It’s fun riding with people who I ride with frequently; you learn each others patterns and rhythms and riding styles. There is a synchronicity that happens while riding with a known group. There is a certain communication among bikers and it gets tighter once you have ridden so many miles together. An outside observer might think we read each others minds, but it’s more that we know our friends’ body language so well our response to a gesture or movement is almost instantaneous. In order to have a pleasant, not knocking into each other ride, we have to adhere to some agreed upon standards that you theoretically don’t have to discuss; it’s part of the motorcycle way. (“Motorcyclist’s Mind, Beginner’s Mind”?) But sometimes you find a rider who doesn’t ride in formation, who squiggles wherever on the road they want with an uneven rhythm. We don’t like riding with those guys and they don’t get invited back. This is all part of the Social contract, which as laid out by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, is both a philosophy on governance and community harmony.

Last night my boyfriend and I went out to eat with his nine year old daughter. He told her not to eat with her elbows on the table, then consulted her to not bounce around in her seat. When she asked the inevitable “Why not?” he talked to her about how when in public one needs to behave politely. This answer was not satisfactory, although she did settle down.

This started me thinking, “How does one explain the concept of the Social contract” to a nine year old?

add new

Posted on by
Reply

I really need to update this thing more often.

Since my last writing, I’ve acquired a new wallet, replaced all my various identifications, gone on a few rides, seen some cool vintage bikes (check out my flickr stream for photos) and eaten quite a bit of yummy Thai food.

The 4th anniversary of my dad’s death is right around the corner. I find that I miss him most on days where I’ve accomplished something. I so want to call him and say, “Hey pop! Guess what?!” and he’d say, “Hiya bachagaloop!” and then he’d go on to actually try to guess which would frustrate me to no end.

Feh.

I’m too hungry to write more now.

Hey pop, guess what?

no identity

Posted on by
Reply

My wallet disappeared yesterday. Somewhere between the cell phone store, my car in the parking lot, driving home, and home, it disappeared.

I didn’t have anything particularly important in it; nothing sentimental or extra valuable. But I did have my driver’s license, credit cards, my shiny new EMT cards, my CPR/AED and First Aid cards, about $20, a couplea receipts, my student ID, a couplea business cards, my CCW ID, and I’m not sure what else.

My dad used to call the feeling I had last night the “existential heebie jeebies.” I felt groundless, like I had no control over anything, displaced. This feeling wasn’t huge, mind you. I only lost my wallet, not my home. But having the feeling at all was surprising. I expected annoyance, frustration, and finally resignation once I started to go about the process of calling the banks and replacing all my various ID’s and cards. But I also felt this odd feelng of having lost a crucial connection with day to day doings.

You interact with your wallet in a myriad of ways. It’s your connetion to so many things; it’s how you get money from the bank  so you can then go get food. You buy gas for the car to get home, to meet with friends. Your identification – driver’s license, school ID, CCW, EMT cards – all tell a little about who you are and what you’ve accomplished. You might have to pull out one of these items any day of the week to show off to friends or  prove that you are who you claim. These identification cards have the effect of proving you are who you claim you are. Without my papers, I have no official identity.

What an odd feeling.

It’d be amazing if someone was enough of a decent human being to have put my wallet into a mail box – heck, they could have walked it into the UPS store where I’d just been and handed it over to them; they send things for a living. But I doubt they did.  Why couldn’t whomever found my wallet lying in the parking lot (because that’s the most logical place I could have lost it) taken it into one of the two stores that were directly adjacent to the lot? Maybe they put it in the mail – sent to the address on my driver’s license – and I will see it in my mailbox next week. But my faith in people’s willingness to do the right thing, to be kind for no reason, to help a stranger, is low. Very, very low. More likely, someone rifled through it, found my ’emergency’ twenty tucked away, and threw the rest of it in the garbage.

I woke up this morning feeling better about the whole thing. The existential heebie jeebies have passed, possibly because I know my newly ordered cards are on the way.It’s a hassle but not insurmountable. Soon, I’ll have a new wallet to hold on to like a weird plastic and paper and leather security blanket.