Author’s Note: Ten years ago, I briefly considered resurrecting my 12-year-old, scrapbooked, Detour Version 1.0 journal notes in a series of email postings. I dashed the attached off the narrative below and then let it sit unshared until my recent 2001 scrapbook’s unearthing in Jan/Feb 2023.
I then started recasting it as a possible opening approach to crafting my road diaries going as far back to a 1968 Angers-Paris r/t in France, the Appalachians in 1971, Thailand in 1978 and all my US European wanderings during the ’00s into a single book form.
That was an impossibly bad idea.
Marlow
06 MARCH 2023
Life and Island Times
Forecasts Magnified & Distorted
When you take upon yourself the schooling of others using your own life
adventures as sign-posts, and to acquaint them with what monsters lie in
deep caverns, cruise beneath the sea and lurk in our souls, do not, through
ignorance, omit telling them of these beasts’ power to heal the inward bruise.
It is impossible to meet a motorcyclist on the road without being struck
by his appearance. While small and slight compared to the drivers and their
four wheeled motor vehicles, the rider is eagerly scanning the wide expanse
around him, with a totally different air from those engaged in regular motoring.
It is not until well after the motorcyclist returns from his
pursuit of distant byways, that non-riders can see in his
appearance the beast within and the savage road he has just traveled.
It is not generally well known that few motorcyclists
ever return from a trip unchanged by the road.
Forecasts Magnified & Distorted
Some call me Marlow. Many years ago – I am unable recall how many with precision – having stuffed more than enough money in the pockets of brokers and bankers on my behalf, I achieved a certain professional mastery during adventures upon the seven seas, and nothing particular to interest me at home. I thought I would ride my motorcycle to see the drier parts of the world. It is the sole means I had available to quell my ennui and regulate my dyspepsia.
Whenever I find myself down in the mouth, growing disconsolate about the newspaper headlines trumpeting the crisis of the day; whenever it is a sticky, humid August in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before whiskey bars, and considering posting some rant on every internet listserv that I follow; and especially whenever my maternal Irish curse of melancholic rage begins to rise in my chest, that it requires a strong drink or utter exhaustion to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically insulting and brawling with strangers – then, it is high time to mount my motorcycle as soon as I am able.
That is my sole substitute for automatic weapons, booze and aimless self-destruction. As the samurai wields his blade during his daily dawn-light practice and search of zen, I quietly ride my two wheeled machine. There is nothing surprising in this. If others of my acquaintance knew it, most men, sometime or other, cherish these very feelings towards motorcycling life’s back roads with me.
As I approached fifty, I lived in a pre-American Revolution town, now belted round by interstates, lobbyists, commuter rail, and tourists as the Florida Keys are by coral reefs and predator fish. This tidal water town was just below the eastern continental fall line and had long been a place where people traded. Its raw materials and hard goods commerce had long ago been replaced by the froth of service barter. Right and left, brick and cobblestone streets take you waterward to ferries, boardwalks and tourist attractions. Its oldest wharves, which had launched America’s sons, daughters and war machines to defeat the country’s enemies during two hundred and twenty five years, are now bedecked with million dollar condos, chichi restaurants and watering holes. Along the few remaining undeveloped parts of the river bank, crowds look northward towards the proud monuments of an empire in unknowing decline.
No longer do men stare out from these quays beyond the tidal flats fixed in ocean adventure reverie. Most lean against the Riverwalk’s rails with Big Gulps in hand, while some slurp Ben and Jerry ice cream cones while endlessly twiddling their texting thumbs. No one appears to want a better view of adventure that awaits in distant lands or seas. Neither sailors or landsmen, these passive virtual trekkers seem tied to smartphones, nailed to benches, and affixed to a world unseen and unseeable. Why and how is this? Are dreams of distant blue highways, green fields, azure seas, and verdant islands gone? What can they do here?
At night there come more crowds – younger, energetic – racing past the Cohongarooton’s water, and bound for the local dives. It is strange that nothing nautical in this maritime portal contents them. They loiter under the shady lights of faux alehouses with pro sporting contest coverage blasting forth from large screen video displays, alternately consuming energy drinks and high-powered cocktails. Why these Inlanders all come from their lanes and cul de sacs, streets and avenues to unite here by the sea only to get as far away from the water as they possibly can without digging themselves a grave and jumping in remains a mystery.
Life carries us all to watery pools in streams, then to rivers and the sea. We are compelled to follow and seek water and its magic. Philosophers mediate next to it, artists paint it, romantics dream by it, travelers seek its charm, and all require its nourishing power. I feel its mystical power most when upon it. It becomes a holy place when land is no longer in sight. Gods and monsters are there. They vibrate it and all those who sail it.
The ocean is where I became what I became, where I first saw the reflection of what I am. It made the phantoms of life graspable. Upon it I know that it is all right and am content.
Life is about balance, and incomplete is one who seeks extending life’s line without knowing the original point. So I seek, not as passenger, but as simple able-bodied seamen before the mast that is the source of the water.
Motorcycling to my cradle waters provides the same benefits that sailors at sea receive – mental and physical exercise and fresh air. Just as at sea, two wheeled mariners encounter prevalent head winds. Bikers sense the weather like their waterborne brethren do in forecastle and aloft in the yardarms.
My motorcycling voyage may have been part of some divine plan drawn up a long time ago. Were it a picture show at a local movie theater, it would have been a short in between two top-grossing, long-playing features. The playbill would have listed it:
“WALL STREET CRASHES, MANY SUICIDES”
“MOTORCYCE DIARY BY MARLOW”
“BLOODY WAR IN AFGHANISTAN CONTINUES”
Why make this journey? What motivates one to depart comfort, chuck success, and eschew chance for war glory on foreign shores? Ennui, certainly not. Adventure, yes. Monsters and gods, perhaps. I had encountered them in forbidden seas, but never really ashore. The journey would take me to places and people remote and potentially barbaric. I like that.
Copyright © 2013 From My Isle Seat
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