twilight

Twilight is the in-between time when anything is possible. Mountains are silhouetted and their mysteries are shrouded in shadow. The sky is subtle in its muted and multi-hued beauty.

I am on a road bordered by Joshua trees, saguaro, brush, acacia trees, and desert wildlife. It unfolds in front of me into the yellows and pinks and blues. There is no bright sun glaring in my eyes, and night hasn’t yet enveloped me with only a bubble of highway lights and headlamp to ride into.

This time of night has a magical quality to it – an rift in the sky in which other paths, other possibilities are visible for those few moments before the color fades and darkness falls.

“… the moment of twilight … the crack in the universe between daylight and dark into a world not merely other than our own, but of an entirely different order of reality.” *

I ride through this moment of twilight and sometimes wonder if I’ve entered a different order of reality.

 

 

 

* Walter Goldschmidt, from the Foreword of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda

restless

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.