Into the ether

Computers are evil. They stop you doing all the things you really love by convincing you that you have to use all of their potential, during all of your waking hours.

I realise this every so often, and force myself to change the patterns of my life. It always leaves me feeling better.

I know I shouldn’t be so gullible, or easily led, or whatever it is, but sometimes I just want to do too much. I want to write, I want to read, I want to watch movies, I want to make movies, I want to listen to records (and not just have them on as background noise), I want to look at paintings, I want to paint my own, I want to take photographs, I want to ride my bicycle and get out and see the countryside change around me, I want to build websites, I want … well, you know sometimes I even want to play dumb computer games. I want too much, I guess. And naturally I have to work too, and oddly enough (okay, hopefully not odd at all) I want to be good at my job too.

Maybe I’m commitment-phobic. There are so many things I want to do, so many possibilities, that I fear I only ever end up doing a half-assed job of any of them. I guess this is a Modern Condition and I’m not alone, but sometimes it feels like a lonely and infuriating existence. Which again I guess is a not uncommon feeling.

Sometimes I wish I was living in another age, an age where there were less possibilities, where you could really focus on one ‘art’ and master it. But then I think if that were the case I’d probably just get bored. Or… do we only get bored because there’s too much to do?

I sure don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m glad I dusted down my bicycle last week and ventured out into the country. I don’t think I’ve ridden in the winter for over five years. Not since we lived in that grotty flat in Alphington Street, and I used to go out for quick rides round Kenn and Clapham, which is, now I think about it, more like seven years ago. Where does time go? Into the ether.

It’s been cold recently here. The little back lanes and farm tracks I like to ride have been covered in frost and great clumps of ice late into the afternoon, as the sun fails to reach them past the high banks and skeletal trees closely gathered like sheep on the moors. Up Sanctuary Lane last week, riding to the top of the common, my back wheel was slipping and sliding regularly, and in the lanes above and around Thorverton there were great ice-flows sweeping across the tarmac, ready to catch passing travellers unawares as they rounded bends. I crept as carefully as I could, and slid just the once. It felt fantastic.

And then yesterday, a two hour ride out to the top of Great Haldon and down to Starcross, then home via Kenton and Exminster; a ride shrouded in low clouds and grey-green all around, scattered hippy traveller encampments in the parking lots peopled in summer by picnicking families and resting salesmen. Burnt out buses and trucks with ply board taped across broken windows; the leavings of those communing with nature and leaving behind a trail of destruction. Well, don’t we all? I try not to.

Riding along the top of Great Haldon, strangely remembering occasional rides of my youth in Scottish cold and damp, by Dalmelington, Drongan and Patna; surely a landscape of misery unsurpassed. Now just the creeping chill in my fingers and the light reminding me, as such things will naturally do, and in fact instead of misery all I feel is delight and wonder. Falling down then from the top of Haldon to the coast, along a road that in summer is a dense tunnel of foliage, startled by the sudden new vistas opened up, suddenly aware of how high up I am, houses magically appearing almost right by the road, hidden to me until now by the trees and my laziness. Determined never to miss this again, but knowing that my determination is quite simply nothing to place trust in. What in ourselves is?

To now, resting, typing this, and knowing deep down that starting Monday it’ll all go to hell, with school re-started and all of my time wrenched away from me and given to those who couldn’t care less, and me not caring very much either aside from let’s get through this and do it as best we can, and let’s survive.



posted by duke harringay at 11:36 AM