It’s not often that I “work” on writing something, but I must admit that the lack of posts on the Mooseknuckler is due entirely to me trying to “work.”
I sat down soon after the New Year to fill the blank space in time that has been lingering over the front page and began jotting down my thoughts on the past year and what I hoped for in the year to come. At some point, I assume I will finally finish “working” and you will all be privileged to read my thoughts. Until then, you are stuck with this.
Which really isn’t funny, unless you consider that I caught KB watching it the other night, followed by a bunch of cycling videos and the repeated phrase, “I wanna do some road riding, but it’s too cold.”
Sometimes she fixates on things.
And I do as well, they hover around in my mind waiting to find a release hatch that has often been words typed out on a screen or scrawled out on a pad of paper. But often those words are a release mostly because the hatch is opened by my snatching my muse by the throat and forcing it to vomit out what is cursing my sleep and making my eyes red with thoughts.
The thoughts that I tried to articulate in written form have been troubling me for about four weeks. And realistically have been hiding behind the blankness of my angst that accompanies my drinking habit. Which when looked at from a wider angle perspective is only a Band-Aid for my fear.
I wanted to write about fear, but I was too afraid to do so.
Or more accurately, I am afraid that what I write won’t do the thoughts in my head justice and they would get lost in the slippery slope of grey found in our spectrum of communication. Usually, that grey area is where I like my writing to hang out, but this time I felt that what I wanted to say was actually important. I wanted someone to understand, at least one person. So I labored to the point that I couldn’t write.
A few weeks back, Fixie posted an article from Semi-rad. This is a website I had never happened upon and I quickly found the writing to be to my liking and the thoughts came from some place that I hadn’t considered before. As I was kneading the dough of my last post, I flipped over that way for some thought relief and came upon this article.
It’s definitely worth a read, but I’ll paraphrase it for you for the purposes of continuing this conversation.
The title more or less says it all. Resolutions are half hatched plans that most of us, with good intentions, mean to complete but seldom do. Plans are things that are going to happen because we have made some sort of concrete commitment to them.
It’s kind of like saying, I’d like to go for a ride compared to making a phone call and saying, “Hey, we’re gonna meet at the trailhead at 9 and will be pedaling out 25 miles, be there.” The second is obviously much more likely to happen. In the framing of my recent thoughts, I would put resolutions as goals that we are afraid won’t happen but by making them resolutions, we have that escape hatch of them just being there for the first few months of the year. Plans remove that hatch and down you go…
“Generally nothing happens inside my mind until something happens outside of it.” – U. Utah Philips in describing his form of “working” on songs.
The trigger for the wallowing in the muddiness of my own thoughts was the Sandy Hook massacre and then the outpouring of commentary, ideas and “solutions” that followed. I can honestly say that there have been few things in my life that have made me question the value of humanity, but the comments on Facebook after this tragic event were enough for me to convert wholly to nihilism. (It also happens to be the reason, you won’t see me on that bull shit factory much anymore.)
As I grappled with the thoughts of a new year, self-analyzation and the backlash of that event, the only thing that I could find within all of it was fear. Every comment, every news article, opinion and post wreaked of fear by both sides. One side afraid the big, bad government was going to come and take away their toys, toys they claim were there to protect them from the big, bad neighbor that was poised to break into their houses, steal their belongings and rape their wives. And the other side, afraid that all these gun toting fools wood continue to wreak havoc and be the cause of many more tragic events, essentially being afraid of the future.
Of course, both sides are horrified to ask the important question, the one that takes us back to ourselves and what it is we want. And more importantly what we are willing to give up to obtain that goal. No one is willing to address the elephant in the room that is the fundamental flaws of our society and our way of life, because that is one scary-ass question that has no easy answer for anyone.
So in response, I sat down and began to write about fear.
This is what came out.
I stood at the top of the biggest road gap I had ever attempted.
At the bottom of this road gap there was a trail that would lead me to the biggest double I had ever seen outside of a motocross track. On any other day, I would have simply walked away with a simple “What the hell is wrong with people?” and not thought twice about it.
Instead I muttered what was quickly becoming my personal mantra, “It’s a great day to die,” and then I eased off the brakes and floated down the ramp toward the gap.
Being airborne is an incredible sensation. Euphoric in its intensity yet short lived and almost impossible to prolong. It can become addicting, the desire to be in the air longer and longer, to feel the sensation of flight, to be in the air long enough to realize you are in deed lost to your trajectory and then, abandoning to it.
The problem isn’t the take off, or the time in the air, it’s the landing. At least that is how the cliché goes. But any time I’ve ever been at the top of something big, it was not the landing that I feared but rather the time that I knew I would be in the air unable to change my trajectory, hit the brakes or otherwise affect the end result. That time floating can be one of the most exhilarating feelings, or if you happen to have taken off a little wrong, be some of the longest, most dreadful moments you can experience.
Either way, it’s a good day to die.
2006, in a culvert on the side of a road in Northern Mexico, the heat has forced me to pitch my tent and lay naked while the gnats and mosquitoes and other nasties fly around outside. Technically I’m on my way to riding my bike to Chile, but really these are the first moments of me giving up and turning around. The end result was probably already decided but it would take me another 24 hours to finally be able to mutter the words of defeat.
Looking back on that one decision, it signified a deeper and more stressful defeat that I wouldn’t be able to admit for at least another six months. Sometimes giving up is the hardest part.
Those moments in Mexico made me feel fear.
The flow, seeing that it never finished where it was going, probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. But there was a time when my personal mantra literally was, “It’s a good day to day.” This worked well until every time I thought about riding my bike, my hands would get sweaty and I would have a mild anxiety attack. So I moved to Chile.
Once I gave into the fear, it became worse and worse until that moment in Mexico when I gave up on a dream. A fear that I have not come to grips with still to this day.
I can distinctly remember as a child the need for a Band-Aid. Everyone knows the child that regardless of what happens they have to have a Band-Aid to stop crying and to make it better. As adults we can all see that the reaction is entirely psychosomatic, but as children the effect is magical. I was one of these children that loved the quick, magical fix.
I don’t recall the trigger, it was probably my father telling me that Band-Aids were for babies or something similar, but I developed an absolute hatred for these slap-on fixes. Even to this day, despite the understanding of the true benefits of Band-Aids, I refuse to use them unless the bleeding hasn’t stopped for quite some time or it’s keeping me from performing basic tasks.
My thoughts of fear have forced me to address certain bandages that I use as an adult to overcome, magically, my fears. They don’t remedy anything, but they make me feel better and help me forget, for a moment, what it is that I fear most. If I may make a fear laced resolution for 2013, it is to remove my bandages and face the demons that have kept me from doing what I truly hope to achieve.
And that is what I was afraid of not being able to say.
I hope that 2013 can be a year that we can all do what we truly desire. That we can toss aside our fears and slowly began to analyze what it is that makes us afraid and then confront those things without any Band-Aids. I’ve already began to plan my next attack on that continent that turned me around seven years ago. It may not happen this year, but it will before I die.
Editor’s Note: Many of the thoughts and ideas that came vomiting out of my head this morning are due greatly to a drunken conversation that I had with Lisa Scarafiotti, whose insight, ability to listen and hospitality are second to none. Thanks Lisa.