Don't play no game I can't win.....

I've flown a tight flight path these past two years based on sanity rules......and now..I'm doing what I want to do........

As I review this past year......it's a rebirth of sorts....a re-sorting of what I wanted vs. what I did to myself because I felt I had to......I ran long and solo because of the past....but I've found...I still want to run.....I want to run far and long.....but for different reasons.  Have I always wanted to run....will I always want to run??????

During this time of questioning.....I slowed down....I stopped driving at multi-day excursions in solitude....I was tired of talking to myself, in the midst of cholla and antelope squirrels ....I was tired of the ruse....I sought something tangible......

....I found a reflection that repeated back the same thing I asked....and thus I realized I had found the end of what I had sought.....the culmination of all the questions I had asked.....found, in the spot where I began questioning it all......a perfect mirror of the strife I fought to counter.  All this time....I was looking in the mirror trying to counter what I saw as my life....when all I had to do was look within at my own image to find the truth.

A truth that was too ugly to view or comprehend, I sought out a reflection of the truth.....an optical illusion....but the truth, none the same.  And yet, I became detached from it.....living now in a parallel universe.....a universe that came crashing down.....when my heart was confronted with the dichotomy of life.....one that is seen here......the soft focus of the grass on the horizon is countered by the near focus and sharpness of the grasses......and in the motion of the rider, a smooth violence floats above it....a narrow track of bare earth pierces it all...

Once I accepted this realization....that I was the same.....that my horror was temporary and my reality the same, I opened my eyes to what was invisible before.....beauty in love.....

It's a possibility that I had ruled out, completely......I did not, was not, willing to face it....and yet it came....

In spite of this.....I kept on riding off into solitude.....I laid down in the desert, looking up at the sky for the same epiphany that had met me every ride in the past year......and I heard nothing.....the sky held the same beauty....but no message....I begged the monsoon to roll over me as it had done before....and it obliged but this time; only with a cold and wet drenching......

Every canyon I turned up into and sat down and pondered....I found beauty.....but the wisdom I once found flowing was now dry......it was frustrating to find the roaring spring now dry.......

For a time I became angry......after 2 years, the insight that flowed seamlessly everytime I ventured into the wilderness now was absent......I grew furious at the fact that wherever I looked....I found nothingness......where I focused my attention.....I only found what I already knew......

So I threw this thought out of my mind and embraced the new spirit that surrounded me....

I hunkered down with old friends and ventured outside of riding to experience the music that encircles all of us.....

.....but I still fought the stillness.....I kept throwing myself at the silence....even harder......and the harder I threw myself at it, the more silent the void became....here I find myself, completely shelled after riding 40 miles where I, in the past, should have felt fine......I had another 30 miles to go.....my reasons for being here started to crack.......this was the omega of the past and the alpha of the new.....

Moving on......I embraced the alpha......and followed my heart.....and it's taken me away from the bike and back into the kitchen......

....surrounded by folks that want to eat, eat and talk about wonderfull things......why should this not be part of the wholistic experience?

I long ago learned to stop questioning why.  Why things happened....why life sucked....why someone had to die....why others lived.....why is the question you ask when you're unable to find a reason to live.....and live, I did.  I don't know why I don't feel the muse as I once did.....why I don't feel the need to drive towards the horizon as I once did.....but I know that I smile, and find smiles along my path....just the same.....

......and yet as I sit in Terminal B at Dulles Airport......my mind boils over with the thought that I should be out there on a bike....or ski...........peeling back the fog of a snowy day and embracing the first rays of sun to angle down from the eastern ridge above me........

I don't play no game I can't win.....this is just a tactical pause.......

The Frosty End

I long for the swollen feel of fresh powder crunching beneath the base of my skis....a stacatto release of crystalline-induced failure and compression transmitted upwards past my bindings, boot and femur, entering my sensory system, reminding me that this is the only truth.....the path up the ridge that blows snow across the cornice into eternity somewhere over the mauve-peach-vermilion sunrise of the painted desert, melts all worries and gripes born inside walls....walls preferred by people who do not live but through vicarious inclinations, exploitative meanderings and armchair pontifications found in Entertainment TV and Facebook.

At this moment, nothing matters more...this stochastic analysis which has occurred since mankind became self-aware. Nothing will ever be as important than this feel and thought....a sharp run-down of risks vs. consequence....benefit begrudgingly relegated to third place.

I dream of the sharp end where I feel only the risk...and manage to find a path forward. I struggle with a world in which I see only benefits and force myself to temper my decisions....and I envision an outcome where the paradox is balanced...but it is just a dream...for any balance we may find is hoisted upon gossamer hopes and happenstance. We are all victims before the rules are fully explained...I was dead the day I was born and I'm a victim of my own prejudices......but when will the two become one?

I don't have a say in this final question...it is one of many things I can not control. My only hold on this process is that I might push out the inevitable until I am long worn from the struggle on the frosty end.