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...

 

 

Orgasm on Bells Bridge

For the the double Rs to have a clean car back then like that we just had an orgasm.

Style Wars

Last week it looked as if there was an outbreak of Covid On Bells Bridge in Glasgow's city centre. It was locked at both ends and two men in what looked like hazmat suits could be seen hosing down the fifteen pillars that hold up its canopy. 

 

 

Yet, it wasn't Covid they were cleaning from its surfaces but my stencils (over three hundred of them) that I had put up earlier this year over the course of April, May, and June. I can't complain, I got a better run than most exhibitions and to be honest I was waiting for the cleaners to come. Why? Because I couldn't be bothered cleaning it myself, since I have, over the past few months, been 'too busy' preparing the next 'exhibit'. This is the orgasm: a completely clean bridge, and me with over 200 new stencils in my rucksack. I didn't want to paint over my own stuff, and since the public here seem to have taken quite a liking to it, they haven't painted over it either, so I had to wait not knowing if or when it would be cleaned. But now that it has, there are few feelings quite like it.

The Light Fantastic

October is a special month not just for the mushrooms that spring up all over the strath but for the light too. It's a raking light that lowlights everything in a wonderful aura. You get this light up until February and each winter month is special for this quality. I like to think of this light as gold and every time I see it I go out to 'collect' it. It's almost as 'valuable' (as natural aboriginal medicine) as magic mushrooms themselves. Indeed, if you can manage to get your hands on both...

At any rate, here are some photos of the light fantastic during October:

Song of the Source

What soul has not been strengthened by the sound of a babbling brook?

This impeccable October afternoon atop the braes, I find myself in a desert of heather and strange greywacke rocks. The view across the valley is sweeping: I can see Tinto thirty miles away to the south-east and the shadowy adumbration of Ailsa Craig some fifty miles to the south-west. I can also see the ocean to the west  and the tops of the highland range to the north. But none of these primal giants embrace me as warmly as the trickling stream I have just plonked myself down beside. This is the source of some of the burns and streams you will see down there in Dalmuir and Kilpatrick before they run into the great Ganges that is Glasgow's River Clyde. And it is this source that trickles so gently but so evocatively that has now got my undivided attention. It is the complete opposite of a tap running. What is this sound then that holds me in such admiration? It is the absence of the man-made and the artificial. The absence too of the industrial and the enclosed. Here, we have water flowing not falling, and trickling across and through mineral and vegetable in the open. This water is thus 'convivial' as in accommodating other life within it. It is not industrial as in banishing life from it. This is why this stream sounds the way it does - because of its 'aboriginal conviviality' - and does not sound like a tap that has been turned on. What's more, because of its unenclosed nature, the mountains, the ocean, the clouds and the river, are all present here within this source and thus lend their 'flourishes' to this overall trickle. Which is why, if you listen to the stream carefully, your soul will be strengthened, for you too, along with the mountains, the ocean, the clouds and the river, will be accommodated within its song.