A LESSON IN SPIRITUALITY, PART THREE
I am slowly turning into an old git. I annoy my students by saying things like, ‘Without order, there is anarchy’, and ‘Creativity without structure is chaos’. I tell them why Michelangelo destroyed most of his drawings. Apparently he didn’t want anyone to see how much systematic work he did to create his masterpieces. He said, ‘If only people knew, they wouldn’t call me a genius…’
Now we don’t have time to be systematic anymore. We live in times of instant everything. Instant gratification, instant food, instant love, instant pain relief, instant fame, instant happiness, the ‘X-factor phenomena… Drazen (I meant Luka), tried to explain it to me recently. ‘It’s called a ‘gig mentality’, he said. ‘You are too old to get this, so just try to tag along and don’t get in a way’. The whole idea is that you don’t have to study, practice, prepare or plan for anything. You grab a ‘gig’, you go for it, you improvise and hopefully something will come out. I said that it’s wrong, he started to argue, we ended up insulting each other, then he called me a dinosaur, and on this note we finished, happy with each other.
I thought, ‘Am I really that much different?’. There’s no structure in my stories. I start writing, and in five minutes I am so far from the original idea, I need a GPS to get back, but by the time I do, I usually forget what I wanted to say in a first place.
Well, this story is different. I have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to write. If you think I lost the plot, just bear with me as it will eventually come together.
Do you know how farmers ‘brand’ or ‘tag’ their animals? Now, there is a bit of creativity for you…. In Wales I saw sheep marked with various geometrical symbols. Triangles, circles and squares painted on their sides….they looked totally surreal but very cute at the same time.
Irish sheep often look like works of Pablo Picasso on acid.
Those characters are from Scotland, apparently.
Somewhere in Germany I saw a farm full of green chicken. At first I thought the owner was a LSD aficionado, but then my friend brought me to a nearby farm where chicken were all painted bright blue. Apparently it’s a common practice in the area.
Why? I have no idea.
Here’s the Australian creative explosion.
Andy Warhol, eat your heart out.
PIC FROM Ben Casey / Caters News
Why do I speak of green chicken and geometrical sheep?
Here’s the connection, here’s the story and here is the lesson number three.
The lesson which taught me not to assume, not to judge and not to be an arrogant ass.
Do you know anything about the Shetland Folk Festival? To get there, you have to travel to Aberdeen first, then drive to the ferry-port, leave your vehicle in the queue, find a bar and get very drunk to stop panicking about the rough crossing. Then you should take a deep breath, go back and drive inside. It’ll turn out to be quite an experience, as inside you’ll find a sizeable crowd of equally drunk and therefore overly optimistic musicians. The first half of the crossing will be a breeze, music sessions in every corner of the cabin, eating, singing, dancing, drinking etc. The second half will be a bit less lively. Everyone is going to be sick. Everywhere. You’ll wish you never set a foot inside of this rust-bucket, you’ll wish you’d never accepted the invitation to play at the festival, you’ll wish you were never born…The last segment of the trip will be the most memorable one, as you’ll be entering sheltered waters, you’ll stop feeling like you just spent two hours inside the washing machine and start hoping that you might actually live to see another day. Then there’ll be an announcement, ‘All drivers and passengers, please proceed to the car desk, don’t start your engines and refrain from smoking until further notice…’. Finally, the doors will open and everyone will try to get out of this deathtrap as soon as possible. Bikers usually are the first ones to disembark, so I was the first one to get to the dry land. I got out and there he was….a militant sheep with number ‘007’ painted on his side. He was blocking the road. He looked at me with badly concealed hate. I stopped, opened my visor and shouted, ‘Mr. Bond, how are you doing? Shaken not stirred, aye?’. It was a big mistake. ‘007’ charged at me with determination of ‘Ze Bull’ from ‘Rose Madder’. I panicked, gunned the engine and somehow managed to avoid to be crucified by this idiot. After a while I stopped and turned around. ‘007’ was looking straight at me. I heard his thoughts, ‘There’s only one way out of this island, boy….. I’ll see you around very soon…!!!’. I flipped him a finger, gunned the engine and took off. Away from the ferry, away from the killer sheep and towards the festival. I was happy. I arrived one day early to test those famous Shetlands roads, which are perfect for someone with a sports bike and a death wish. Tarmac on those roads has very strong grip on tires, there are more loops and curves than in Arabic writing and there are ten million deranged sheep who routinely maul visiting bikers. A biking paradise, in other words.
I checked into a B&B and went outside to look for someone to show me around. There were no bikes, except of the old ‘Goldwing’ parked near the pub.
Now, I have to explain something. Biking is not about how fast you are. Any idiot on a sports bike can do 300km/h on a motorway. It’s very scary but quite uneventful, (until you crash, that is) and crash you eventually will, as due to the aerodynamics of the package (you and the bike together), you’ll have no control over your bike at this speed. You open the throttle, wrap yourself around the petrol tank, hold on to your dear life while you slice through the air like a bullet, and hope no one is going to change a lane in a front of you, while doing their sedate 100km/h. It happened to me once on the autobahn to Frankfurt. I hit this car from behind, got airborne and did a good impression of Superman. I flew like Superman but I landed like Humpty Dumpty. The rest was a blur. The dude said he didn’t see me… but of course he didn’t! The difference in speed was nearly 200 km/h.
So, coming back to the proper biking. It’s all about handling, manoeuvrability, torque, acceleration, it’s about going in and out of the corners, it’s about angles, lines, hanging off the bike and about all other stuff which nobody cares about. Obviously, for this you need to have a proper bike. Something like my VFR800…
A ‘Goldwing’ is not. It’s a tractor, it’s a sofa on wheels, it’s a car which wants to be a motorbike or Trump pretending to be a businessman. It’s been designed to be driven by 175 years old has-beens who have haemorrhoids, triple bypass and own a cat called Bernard.
Now you understand what I feel when I see a ‘Goldnwing’. Pity mostly….
I came in. The owner was sitting in the corner. As expected, he didn’t look much. He looked 70-75, his helmet was old, his gloves and boots were scuffed. Also, he was drinking tea with milk.
He saw me and we exchanged customary greetings. We had a bit of a ‘bike chat’.
He asked me what I am doing here, and I idiotically admitted that I was looking for someone to show me a few good corners, so I can impress local sheep with my bike handling skills. ‘Of course’, the old dude said, ‘I like to potter around myself, some nice corners here are for sure….’. ‘Tell you what’, he said. ‘Come here at around 9am tomorrow and we’ll go for a ride’.
It was too late to back-pedal. I got angry at my stupidity. I came early to have a great biking day and now I was tied up with this old dude on his tractor and no mates to ride with. I was cursing myself for opening my mouth. I was very disappointed, and I’m afraid it was very obvious…..Then I calmed down. I said to myself, ‘Ok, not all is lost, we’ll ride together for an hour or so, then he’ll get tired, I’ll go a bit faster and lose him. I’ll say I was lost myself. I’ll make something up’.
Next morning I came to the bar and found my old dude sitting inside, wearing a thick spectacles, drinking tea and reading a ‘Guardian’. ‘Oh God’, I thought, ‘It’s a gift which just keeps giving….not only he’s old, he’s also blind..’.
‘Have a drink’, he said. ‘I’ll finish me cuppa and off we go..’.
I thought for the moment about ordering a triple vodka and calling it a day, but it was perfect for riding and I decided I still might be able to get a couple of hours for myself.
He finished his tea and we went out. He looked at my pristine VFR800, put his war helmet and garden gloves on and started the engine. He indicated, then he looked left, then he looked right. He moved out of the car park doing 5 miles an hour, turned, looked at me and took off.
Like a bat out of hell he did!!!
In about 50 or 60 miles he finally took pity on me. He stopped. It took me a while to get off the bike. My knees wouldn’t bend, my legs were trembling, my wrists hurt, I was sweating, my heart-rate was 3000 bpm and my vision was blurred. Also, I was wet in the places where big boys usually are not…I didn’t want to ride anymore. I wanted to go home. I wanted to disappear.
I never saw anyone ride with such speed and precision. He was entering corners at insane angles, while hanging off the bike, scraping his boots and kneepads on the tarmac. Sparks flew from his exhaust when he was exiting the corner and throwing the 400kg bike from left to right like it was a tiny scooter. After 30 minutes of pure insanity he indicated, slowed down, got off the road, did a ‘wheelie’, then drifted in a circle around me and finally killed the engine.
He got off and came around while I was trying to regain my dignity…‘You all right?’, he asked. ‘I forgot to mention….I used to train UK police bikers for a living’, he said, grinning like a Cheshire Cat. The old fart clearly enjoyed rubbing it in my face. And you know what?
I was humiliated, and I deserved every second of it.
I apologised for being an arrogant little prick. I said I’ve learned my lesson. I said I feel ashamed. I said I will never look down at anyone again. I said I’ll learn how to corner properly. ‘Don’t worry’, he said, ‘Your lines are all right, I’ve watched all the time. I’ve seen worse. Now, let’s change and go back … you want to ride my ‘Wing’ for a bit?’. Stupidly I said ‘yes’. And do you know what happened? I sat on his bike and dropped it on the tarmac. My punishment was complete.
I didn’t come near my ‘VFR’ for three days. When the festival was over and I went back to the ferry, the ‘007’ was waiting for me alongside the road. I expected him to attack me, but he didn’t.
He just laughed at me.
An Irish relative of the Shetlands own ‘007’
Photo by Eve Andersson
Will part four come?
Wow, that was one hell of a ride… I mean, read! What the old geezer was to biking, you are to writing!
And I feel one (no, three!) steps closer to enlightenment. My only worry, here, is that you don’t mention a ‘part four’. Don’t tell me you are trying to teach detachment…
Dear Veronique !
In fact, I get those lessons thrown at me every day and I am not even near as enlightened as I’d like to be.
Two more are in the making 😊😊😊
😂😂 love this one, and it’s true, old gits do it best 😜