This is going to be an interesting experiment, at least for me. If anything, I labor over concocting a story I want to share with you and I am always thrilled to find something to anchor it. You don’t leave loose ends, nor do you try and keep the ideas corralled in a paint-by- numbers box either.
Now, I have a couple of different ideas percolating somewhere between my mind, my heart and my fingers. Earlier in the week, I started thinking about the whole idea of numbers and the myth they are somehow these precise measures, because they are not. We measure time numerically, with a myth of preciseness. I gotta tell you, I have sat on my ass on my Zen cushion for hours and have been shocked to see I still had 1:48 seconds left before my 25 minutes were up, stamped by a very benign sounding chime.
You know, I spend so much time writing on my age. I’m not sure how you segregate your age from the world of numbers, which is what got me going on the whole idea of numbers and how we use them. I think it is how we individually experience numbers that matters. I have no intention of going off on some dumb ass rant about all this either, because it is an infinite loop.
I think the whole idea of numbers is so fascinating, so subjective and so much more deceptive than assuring. At the same time, I was feeling it was not a story in itself. It felt incomplete to me. You know, when I write, I try and keep no secrets, or what the hell’s the point of bothering you in the first place?
It is Friday and beyond beautiful on Kauai. Having a day like today, makes you believe in God. In the middle of the day, I decided to come home and get on my motorcycle, which I did. Probably around five years ago, I had my very dear friend, Steve, install a killer sound system on Flaming Lips. As soon as I got on the bike, I started thinking that writing about numbers is just not going to do it and it was time for me to re-introduce the motorcycle into my story vocabulary, with a side of music.
I am on my way home on the bike and thinking maybe I should just write about my incredible love affair with riding on Kauai and pay some kind of homage to the title of my blog. Well, I am not going to write much about riding on a motorcycle here and I want you to know why. There simply aren’t words to paint a picture of an illusory experience. Every second you’re on a bike is a lifetime. Well, that ain’t much of a story either, but it can be another piece of the whole.
I am sitting on the bike, thinking about the numbers thing and also thinking about the whole motorcycle experience and how to find words that corral the spirit of busting down the invisible. I don’t know why I started thinking about thirds and that this story needed to have three parts.
You could easily say that riding a motorcycle is a tranquilizer, a legalized, two-wheeled morphine and that’s my number two in this three part concerto, my personal cacophony of the moment, opening with numbers. During every ride, there are these moments when you disappear into the special sensation of being on a bike. I could write endlessly about how incredible it is to feel like a motorized Viking, exploring the beautiful land of Kauai, each time feeling like the first time.
I swear, I was thinking about this story and I don’t know why I thought I would write about three completely unrelated topics: Numbers+MotorCycles+Music. I can get bored, too, staying in some restrictive format, telling one story at a time. It’s been on my mind. I had the motorcycle and rode home with my speakers blasting the sounds of Pavarotti. It’s funny, I could write about anything in my life and music would be very close by. I know I have written this before, but if you have never ridden your bike to the sounds of Pavarotti, you are still a prisoner of almost.
How about a story that talks about numbers and motorcycles and music? It feels like sharing several pieces of the pie of my life, served up all at once.
If I had to think about the recipe for the ingredients that seasoned my life’s breath, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I swear, at this very moment, now Saturday afternoon, I am listening to Santana doing Maria Maria. I crank up the volume and become a timeless. musical inhabitant of perfection.
I can’t even try to quantify the numbers of times in my life that music has taken me somewhere, where there was no precedent. I feel so blessed to have grown up ingesting the greatest assemblage of music ever imagined. Today, it is effortless to think music will continue to soundtrack my life.
I am now on my third sit down with this story. It is Sunday afternoon. The idea of numbers and their subjectivity got me going on Friday. I had already decided to write about three subjects and figured giving each one its own day was only fair. Most every Saturday, I ride my bike to work, often making time to clean it, like grooming a machine. I drift off on motorcycle dreams.
Sunday’s weather was perfect, and it still is, late this afternoon. Gliding and leaning into a day like today on a motorcycle is like music to me. Completely at ease on the bike and listening to my music is what dreams are made of.
When I started out, numbers were on my mind. They are the language of time, quantity and distance, to name just a few. You could say they help to make sense of things and at the same time affect everyone differently. They help to bring order to the world, at least they’re supposed to. When everything is right on a bike, like today, you are immortal, everything is perfect, beyond quantification. When I want to think about my day, music fuels my soul, cushioning my thoughts.
I guess it’s all a ride. Numbers can only take you so far. There is no better ride than a motorcycle on a Kauai postcard day. Being serenaded by music you love, punctuates the perfection of this life.