I'm (Sleep) Walking Here!

It's one of my favourite moments in cinema, Dustin Hoffman's wiry little Ratso Rizzo slamming the hood of an oncoming car and giving a car driver what for for almost knocking him down as he crosses the road at a busy New York crosswalk. I like it so much that I almost considered Rizzo's retort as the title for this book. After all, I am walking here, and I do not prioritize pollutants over natural aboriginal self-cleansing technology. At any rate, I actually used the phrase today, not at some errant cab driver in the busy city, but at two middle-aged mountain bikers in the empty hills who were piling down a narrow path that I was walking in the Kilpatrick Hills. I heard them behind me and turned around to acknowledge them but did not give way to them. This didn't stop both of them piling down the steep and dangerous rocky slip that I was currently negotiating. As I dodged to one side almost straight into a gorse bush, I shouted Rizzo's refrain. I also added that they, along with their mountain biking brethren who enjoy tearing up hills with their overpriced tricycles and flashy clownsuits, should show some respect not just to walkers but to the hills themselves. They both looked perplexed as if I had just spoken to them in Greek. 'But we're allowed to cycle here', the fat bearded one replied. And that meant they got the standard riposte: 'Just because some moron says you can rape the Earth with impunity doesn't mean you should'. Before shooing them away like the sleepwalking (sleepcycling) violators that they are.

 

 

 

A Bottle Of Vodka A Day

Every morning, well, let's say every other morning in winter and more or less every morning for the rest of the year, I drink a bottle of vodka (500ml). This isn't any ordinary vodka but perhaps the finest vodka the Earth has to offer (and that's saying something coming from someone who spent three years in Poland, a year in Kazakhstan, and six months in Belarus). This vodka compared to the industrial and even home-brewed kind is 100% natural with no artificial ingredients. It is also distilled through volcanic rock and the Earth herself to give this vodka a purity of punch that no other vodka can match. This Earth vodka, compared to the supermarket kind which gets you 'pissed', will emphatically get you 'unpissed' as in awake. Of course my vodka is, as the name (voda being Polish for water, and the suffix -ka expressing a diminutive) suggests, the 'little water' that tumbles down from the braes and from the heavens. I collect it at various falls, burns and pools, along my routes through the hills - always know your pure watering holes especially in drookit climates - and fill my bottle with it. To be sure, on occasion it has a slightly greenish tint to it as in today but this only means goodness and the fact that it has been distilled multiple times through the ancient bedrock of this fine land. What with this 'elixir', the purity of the air, and the primal space, solitude, and silence, these braes and hills have to offer, you come down from the hills not just Awake (with a capital A) but Alive too. And it's all due to (going and gathering) a bottle of vodka a day, (or every other day in winter).

 

 

 

Another World

It's on days like today that you see almost too clearly the two worlds that exist on this planet. Why a day like today you may ask. Because it was freezing overnight and now the sun has come out creating what meteorologists and amateur sky watchers call an 'inversion'. This inversion just like the blockbuster cinematic one we had earlier this year is fascinating, except this one is completely natural and did not cost upwards of $200m. Moreover, this one can only be seen when you're outdoors (as Nature intended) and not sealed up in some darkened auditorium breathing in other people's body odour. And this inversion is free too. These are in fact the two worlds: the world beneath the cloud which is dark, artificial, pretend, filthy, and costly; and the world above the cloud which is light, airy, spacious, pure, and free. The inversion down there in the man-world is really a per-version, having forced Nature through the meat-grinder of capitalism and progressive ideologies And up here, it is the real version, the only version... the onely version... the uni-version... 

 

God

For the creature who has had his natural development arrested through the imposition of the mechanic, the scientific, and the anti-natural, who has been rendered ecologically and existentially 'infantile' through a process of removal, outsorcery, possessing, and fakery, God, surely, is simply the parent in absentia.

 

 

 

The Peyote Hunt

At the beginning of her book, The Peyote Hunt, Barbara Meyerhoff writes of the Huichol (the aboriginal people of the Sierra Madre range in north-west Mexico):

There is no distinction between sacred and profane... the good life is the religious life, the good day's work is sacred. That what is beautiful is beautiful because it is moral. An evil man is not truly Huichol, for to be Huichol is to live in the proper manner. In other words, to be Huichol is to be sacred, and this applies to all objects, behaviour, and ideas, that make up the culture. That which is non-indigenous, not correct or unacceptable, is not merely secular or even profane. It is outside the state of being Huichol.

Is there any difference here between Huichol and Human? Are not aborigines aborigines wherever they are irrespective of the names they confer upon themselves? 

If you replace Huichol with Human you will notice that 'man' (his behaviour, objects, and ideas) are increasingly outside the state of being human. Man, rather, is a perversion of the human (or if you will, the Huichol), a version that has been twisted (per + vertere, to turn through) and mediated through a system of economy predicated upon lies, falsehood, and a technology that is not Nature but that which exploits and contaminates Nature. Man, in other words, just like the evil man above, is not Human, for his behaviour does not coincide with that which is human and 'of the Earth'. If a cat behaves like a dog it's more that likely that it's actually a dog and not a cat. In short, the human has not evolved into man but rather, through the arduous process of overlaying his self with nature-hating technologies, has been made into man. 

The hunt then becomes not for peyote per se but for the human hidden beneath all that nature-hating tech.

 

 Homegrown peyote (six months old)...

 

The Buzz of Aboriginality

The Huichol would be proud of my foraging techniques, the crows too. In fact, I often feel like a large crow when I'm foraging in the 'golden field' for mushrooms. The secret to successful foraging like this and spotting the elusive liberty cap (magic mushroom) especially after a dew laden night is to get down on one knee. It is a religious event (insofar as you are at one with Nature and your animal body) and this is perhaps where the idea of genuflecting came from: foraging for wild mushrooms. Once you are closer to the grass your eyes can scan the grassline with ease, and it is here where those very eyes will 'lock on' to a cluster. Whilst picking that cluster the eyes are still roving. Soon, you find yourself in that joyful situation of continually picking mushroom after mushroom once the eyes have become accustomed to their new way of looking. These are your crow eyes, eyes that see subtlety within subtlety, eyes that can pick out a two centimetre tall camouflaged liberty cap at fifty feet. These crow eyes can now be added to your jaguar legs and your owl ears, so that soon you will have earned the respect of all the wild. And you feel that buzz of aboriginality.

 

The Yellow Brick Road

 

The yellow brick road is not so much 'road' as path and track. And there is not just one of them here around the cities of Glasgow and Paisley but several. I am of course talking of the Sustrans paths (the old dismantled railways that have been converted into green animal-friendly cycling and walking corridors) that lead us gently past these cities and into the great wide open. Today, the path is yellow because it's late October and it's covered with leaves, but most of the year round it's just plain old grey. But that doesn't mean it does not lead to Oz. Whether grey, yellow, or blue, all sustrans paths, by virtue of the mere fact that you are sustaining yourself as Nature and God intended (and not being prammed by a pollutant whilst filthying the Earth), lead to Oz, Oz being the byword for the heavenly release that is attained when one becomes enchanted by one's own universal powerhouse in the equally universal powerhouse of Nature.

 

Half an Hour to Heaven

Heaven is up last time I looked, not down. This means that you need to go up to get to heaven. Cars and other forms of transportation though they may go along and round and in and out do not go 'up'. Only the organic body can do such things. So, in order to get to heaven, one must go up. And not for long. Heaven is not that far away from where you are. From the bottom of the braes, it takes half an hour to get there. That means in Glasgow and Paisley, cities surrounded by braes and gentle hills, you're never more than half an hour from heaven. I keep telling people this whenever I see their heads in their hands: Why don't you go to heaven - Look! it's just up there...

 

Bell-Henge

Today, upon completing my stencil project (The Aboriginal Bicycle) on Bell's Bridge, it occurred to me, as the raking sunlight flooded through the bridge spotlighting my stencils, that this is 'It': the essence of the project (Bell-henge) realised without me having imposed it consciously. It may actually be another month or so before the sun becomes so low as to fire through the whole bridge horizontally like a laser beam, but the hope is that it will, and when it does, it will fall upon the central column and the 'solar-life-belt' that acts as the project's centrepiece. At that precise moment, the exact location of the holy of holies will be revealed. And your soul will be saved.

 

 

Sharing is Caring...

 

This time, I've only taken a third of the bridge, leaving the rest for other aspiring bums. It also helps me whittle down some of my stencils and edit the project. I also prefer that southern end since I myself have lived in Cessnock for the past decade, and with its five pillars as opposed to the ten northern ones, it's much more manageable. It's also much easier for me to 'claim' this part of the bridge as opposed to taking all of it. I kind of got carried away last time stencilling the whole bridge, but you live and learn!

 

 

Cycles Perfecta

I've said it before and I'll say it again, courtesy of Ivan Illich's words: Equipped with a bicycle man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. 

In terms of home range and homing the bike can then catapult you out that little bit further.

Compare this if you will to the inefficiency of the motor car, the violation not just of the earth in order to make and fuel it but the violation of the body that sits inside it. It's a no brainer, quite literally, but most of us feel forced into cars by the structure of our society, through our being dislocated from the local and from being pushed into the meat grinder of capitalism + globalization. Cars then become necessary to save time, to ease our entrance into the grinder and perhaps most importantly to ease our escape from it at the end of each day. But cars should never be necessary. Only a society that is in a state of cannabilization would see such a device as necessary. What we need is a healthy society that promotes essentialness and essence and not necessity. That means bicycles and your own two feet, and not cars and sitting on your fat ass whilst farting all over the great outdoors. 

Cycles perfecta... !

 

 

The Spice

The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel.

 
Frank Herbert, Dune

 

 

 

The spice is not out there. It's certainly not on another planet. The spice, rather, is inside you, deep inside you. Meditation, consideration, contemplation - space - is required to get at it. Solitude and silence too. The tale of Dune (and of the spice planet Arrakis) is the tale of the desert and the wilderness. It is also the tale of the qualities - space, solitude, silence - required to engage that wilderness and 'mine the spice'. And the time required to mine it, be it a decade or a lifetime, is nothing compared to the eternity conferred - the expanded consciousness - when the spice is duly found.

 

 

The Aboriginal Bicycle

Origin is the goal.

Karl Kraus

 

The aboriginal bicycle is that bicycle that allows the origin to seep through into you. It allows you to touch the source by taking you to it. The bicycle is not just a great way to travel economically, ecologically and efficiently, but also aboriginally, especially, if, like me, you live in a city surrounded by primal hills.

The bicycle like the body locates, locomotes, and localizes. The story of man's demise is the story of dislocation, is the story of the anti-bicycle, the motor-car. The motor car doesn't just dislocate and disembody the driver from space (and the origin), it destroys the earth piece by piece by paving it over and treating it like a grand car park. Car drivers are thus destroyers hidden in plain sight, destroyers who shrug their shoulders at being called destroyers because someone has said that it's ok to destroy. 

The aboriginal bicycle on the other hand is a conjoiner and seeks to right the destruction the car has done. The bicycle locates the cyclist in space and time thus universalizing her. One becomes not just the earth when one moves under one's own steam but the whole cosmos. This is the difference between moving yourself and allowing a pollutant to carry you.

Only dead and injured animals, farm animals, circus animals, animals on their way to the slaughter, allow themselves to be carried...