Mark Gowan's Blog, page 18

Helping

There is something about helping that can raise the spirits, make the world seem brighter. Even if it is a thankless thing, an anonymous hand that pulls the string, a minute to stop is all it takes.

Don’t expect to be thanked. Don’t expect the world to stop and graciously bow before your helping hand. Don’t expect anything but know that it does make a difference. Just look in the eye of that dog you stopped to help, or that cat that needed a hand. Just look in the eye of that person.

Money, yes, but better is time. Help by giving your time. If you can, give as much as you can. It’s amazing how fulfilling, how wonderful, and how life opens up when you give that thing that we all take for granted. Time is amazing.

Do what you can. Do what is needed. Do the right thing. Give the world your time and smile as the warm feeling of happiness fills you. Help til you’re tired. Help until you need to help others. Help yourself.

Help is that sort of happiness that so many don’t believe exists. Help them to understand that it truly does. It truly does.

Pay Attention

Don’t let a phone get in the way of looking at someone while they talk. Visit with the flesh and blood sitting in front of you. Share their smile or grimace. The picture doesn’t matter. The text can wait. Turn off the ringer. There is nothing more important than that person that you are sharing a minute, an hour, a day with. There is nothing on that screen that can give you as much or that you can learn more from.

That small, magical box is Pandora’s. Let her have it. Give it away freely. Forget about it. Let the battery run dead and find your life once again. People are flesh and blood, and they have given you their time. The silicone and plastic, the oil and electricity soaked entertainment takes your time and sells you an illusion. Put it down. First for an hour, then a day. Then a week.

It’s worth the pain. Don’t look at it while it sits and lures you in the the fake imagination and shiny promises of a preacher. Let the wires retract from your veins and let the sun shine through the backlit LED lies that flash so quickly as to not be seen. Don’t be fooled. Be bored. Don’t look for information. Find knowledge. Find yourself. Find what friends used to mean.

Pay attention to the moment. Pay attention. Now.

Search for Truth

Happiness is fleeting and probably overrated. This seems cynical but it is not meant to be. We in the west tend to desperately desire to be happy, all of the time. In Denmark, rated the world’s happiest country for several years in a row, the question was asked: how? How is Denmark so consistently happy?

The answer: lower your expectations. This also seems cynical, but it is not. The truth does not always lead to happiness. It does not always feel good or adhere to your particular ideology. The truth is often in simple statements. The truth is often simple and most often does not meet our personal expectations. It does not always give us what we want. But it is the epitome of human existence, at least that part of human existence that matters.

But what is this truth? What is this concept that matters so much?

True, justified, belief is the short answer. But there is one other possible answer. Consider it.

Truth is the quality of the relationship between an idea of a thing and the thing itself.

The search for truth is an unending process to raise that quality, the quality of our thinking and of our thoughts. We must raise the quality of that relationship. The search for truth leads down dark paths and contemplative nights but the search for truth is our only justified means. It does not rely upon happiness, but it is perhaps the only way of lowering our expectations.

True to Yourself

What should I do?

What should I be?

Where should I go?

These are the questions that children ask their parents and that parents ask themselves. We all want answers. Answers range, but narrowly. “Follow your heart” is a popular but platitudinous answer, dripping in emotion and vague. So what is left?

Truth. But truth comes at a high cost. Not that it is not worth it. It is, but it takes a lifetime. And it takes failure. Truth demands that the “heart” take a backseat. Truth demands questions. And truth changes. It depends upon situations and perspective.

Truth starts simple enough, with a belief. But then things get difficult. We have to justify the truths that we find. Others demand it and we demand it from ourselves. The first lesson is that we must be true to others. The second lesson is that we must be true to ourselves.

Don’t misunderstand. We cannot live for others. We cannot live for our children or our spouses. But we must be truthful with them. Being true to yourself, well…that’s another thing altogether. We may tell the truth to those we care about, but we easily lie to ourselves.

Being true to yourself takes courage and will often lead you to places unknown and surprises not thought about. Anyway, in the end what else is there but truth. It is the only thing that matters.

The Necessity of Normal

This last year was, of course, not normal. But that goes without saying…or does it. Over dinner a long time friend comes over and we hug in the doorway. We don’t think about it. We sit and talk and eat for over five hours and the time goes by quick, in a blink. Before we know it we are saying goodbye. But before we do we realize that such things are no longer normal. They need to be normalized. And that takes work.

While we sit and during dinner the normalcy of our situation slowly pours over us. It’s syrupy sensation is warm and inviting but my friend is heavy in thought even though he doesn’t say so.

“You know, I use to think that bad people were the outliers.” he says. “I thought that good people outnumbered the bad. I thought that moral people were the norm and that those that didn’t care about others were psychopaths. You know…I don’t know…like someone who does something heinous. But, I don’t know anymore.”

The conversation went silent while my friend gathered his thoughts.

“I’ve always considered myself an optimistic, a hopeful person. I’ve always thought the best, I thought that the good guys win…”

He told me a story of people on his flight acting like children because their connecting flight had been cancelled. We talked about the inevitable, about T**** and about the Republicans and the people that continue to support him.

“Is it that?” I asked.

“No, maybe. I think it was the pandemic. It just seemed like common sense that everyone would do what it took to be safe. Why the fuck not just wear a mask?!” he exclaims. “Maybe everyone, most people not everyone, is simply not that good. That’s a fucked up thing to say I know. I don’t know.”

He sits on the couch in thought and sip my scotch. Before we know it we are saying goodbye. but before we do we realize that somethings are no longer normal. They need to be normalized. And that takes work.

The Waiting Game

There is no doubt about it, it is a strange mix of happiness and sadness. Seeing the motorcycle sitting silently in the garage, patiently awaiting me to flick the key and push the starter button. It has the patience of a motorized saint. It knows the day will come. It knows somehow. And I know as well. It sat, dirty, after the 6600 mile trip for a few days…for a few. But then I washed it and polished and put it back in its place, beside the wall in the garage to wait for the next time.

The adventure came to an end, a pause in between paradise. I see the handlebars just over the hood of my truck as I slowly make my way into the garage, squeezing the large truck in between the motorcycles and the other car. It is strangely silent when I turn the key off. I’ve found myself walking over and just staring at the bike, sometimes I start it just to hear the engine. One day the maps will come back out, just for fun, and routes will be considered and then I’ll know the time has come again. It might take months or days, or maybe hours.

Touring on a motorcycle is really simple. That is, if you want it to be. A few bags, a tent, a loose plan. Go alone for the most freedom. Riding a motorcycle alone is talking to yourself in your helmet as the hours whiz by with the wind and the road in your ears. There are many good conversations to be had inside a helmet. You are really never alone. Riding alone is stopping when you want and riding into the night.

Touring on a motorcycle, the complexity of life disappears. Simple things at home become more simple. Instant oatmeal and a pour-over mug of coffee is all it takes to jump start the day. Dinner is just as simple, cooked on a one-burner camping stove in a single pot. Two wheels, not four, no glass, just the wind and the rain and the cold and the heat. Go or don’t go. Sleep or don’t sleep. Either way your two-wheeled ticket to freedom will wait. Just as it does in the garage. It knows the waiting game well. Silently, knowing that the time will come when you will have to feel alive again. To feel human once more. To wonder and to laugh out loud inside the illusion of safety as you lean into turns and watch the world go by in a blur.

The Motorcycle

A motorcycle is most at home on back roads, leaning into turns and switchbacks. Not sitting in the garage or chomping miles on a highway. It will do these things but will taunt the rider at every chance. In the garage it will beckon, promising adventure and excitement. On the highway each exit represents a chance to feel alive and test your endurance and moxie.

These things, these motorcycles, are cumbersome when standing still. Like a seal on beach. But give them a road to go through their gears on and they come alive, like a seal in the water. Down gear and give it gas just as the curve comes up and gun it out of the end. Swing your body over to and from to follow the jaunts and snake-like line that the road takes. The motorcycle knows that you are smiling.

Motorcycles are often called death-machines but really they are a chance to live. They take one out of the mundane, out of comfort zones, out of life spent looking at a clock or the world through a windshield. There are roads that speak a language that only motorcyclists can come to understand, and that only motorcycles can decipher. On a motorcycle it is easy to realize that comfort is your enemy.

A motorcycle is a conglomeration of gears and steel and oil and gas. But it is more than a sum of its parts. It becomes a part of one’s body and psyche if enough time is spent on it, if enough patience is given to understanding the machine and its limitations. Experience will open up avenues to adventure and a motorcycle opens adventure up to life.

Poems From a Recent Future #4

There must be experts in this field of dreams

That ponder answers and though it seems

They guess and imagine all that they know.

Forward, not backward, they will always go.

And though the way is oft filled full of weeds

And darkness hides their curious needs

They slowly cut a path so clear,

Bringing them ever and so importantly near.

The light they seek from darkness grows.

And stupid is from those that know.

To make a dollar is the only way

To eat and drink and sleep, they say.

But art and music and science, sound

Not by answers to questions found

But by questions asked and questions formed

The strange and curious, and not the norm.

Poems From a Recent Future #2

As old as the ages, the number does it no justice.  The thread is long and strings its way through the forgotten timbers and rolling dunes, sharp grass and prickly bushes and wandering winds.

There are people in this place, never met, but old friends never die.  I know them somehow and they welcome me.  Generations of them wander through the sandy hills of Raabjerg leading me astray at times and singing me to sleep in the bright sun and the light of the gods.

I’ve never met them and I know them somehow.  This is home and always has been and yet my bed is many miles away.  I come here, though, and they seem to understand, although I never will.

Stories to be told, I close my eyes on the high hill and listen to the gossip of ghosts.  This is my family, though I have never met them.  The blood that courses through my veins is not theirs, but yet we are the same.

There is solace in the thought that time is immortal, and they laugh at my foolish mumbling.  The light in their eyes still burns bright.  They have no need for hope or poets.  Just talk and beer and work.

I dreamt once of this place, no doubt a present, a gift, from the mischievous.  A joke from the jester.  And now I walk the line that is not mine.  Befriended by those never known, they are my friends and my family.

I will stop and drink with them on days walking and will stare up at the stars of the endless and glorious nights.  They never sleep as does not my mind. 

None of this makes sense, but there is comfort nevertheless.  The cold, grey, skies come but there are always the endless days and blowing sand and the sacred silence of secrets.

Poems From a Recent Future #1

The memories of that part of my life lie on the ground from long ago.  Pieces of the puzzle scattered in the sand and in the trees.  I walk around wondering about the empty places in between and what will fill them in times to come.

The well-worn path leads around the home we once had, and the sounds of machines and horns and laughter can still be heard in the wind.  Long ago gone, the white-washed walls stand, a testament of time.  The path continues, stopping after the memories wait, as I take in the pictures of my past.

The remnants of the countless repairs and a darkened doorway, oily and always open, guarded by the steel and tools and machinery, and the sweat, the consternation, and blood, and hope of a working man.  I am drawn towards it (as I always am), stopping over forgotten answers to forgotten questions.  I smile because the smiles never leave.  They linger.

There is too much here, the ghosts too numerous and so onward past to the open maw of the highway that all harvests lead to. The sand blends with the cement, slowly to dust, peaceful with the seclusion and bleating silence, it stares as it has for countless seconds to the rotten remains across the way.

Every crevice has a voice that cries out for my attention and I turn towards the hall of machines, broken and dilapidated, the wood for repairs that will never blossom, leaning against the back waiting still for a day that will never come.  The beams and gables, the supports and trusses broken and bent, giving way to the nature of life, the endless entropy.

There is the tractor before my time, moving in feet not in miles for many years sitting, covered with work, and now dust, and now time, and now stuff, buried deep, the oil in the engine black and the grey paint that was once washed has now been the roof of rain-tattered wood.  The implements, once pulled, now planted.  From iron to rust, to dirt, to dust.  The wind howls and the young memories call, catching my attention for one last time.

What is waste is wonderful.  What is trash is treasure.  The beams creak and I cry a little.  Around the corner, mushrooms.  Down the path the garden of cars, now empty and the stand of trees sway freely, unencumbered by even older memories.  Taken by the hand I am led still farther to the profit that never proliferated.  The promise of the reward that became an empty chest.  It doesn’t matter now, the room of regrets.  It had no meaning then and it has none now.  Just pain and promise and the cost of purpose posed as the beginning which was the end.  There is sadness within those walls and always has been.

The shit-stained yard though, is a paradise of life, the heart of any garden is the brown, not green and the floor of this palace has never seen the light of day.  I remember the waist deep wanderings when the chains broke, and the profanity of necessity, the dismissal of dire cleanliness and the taste of bitter pride as it was swallowed up.  And somehow a smile lifted from those lips as we wiped shit from our faces.  It worked somehow and we never wondered why.

In July of 1990 a turning point, the time I saw the face of a friend high up in the clouds, hammer in hand.  And my own face flush with naivety with the love of my life on my arm and music in my mind.  There are lessons learned there, too many to count.  Out of place it stands as a testament of hard work, not paid off, and the never-ending hope that defined so much, and still does in a way.

Another hallway beckons and the sweet smell of rotting grass and warm noses, of the fog of heat and the whirring pumps.  The place is only alive with animals, but time has long since forgotten the days of Danish Reds and hay and straw.  But I cannot forget because this became my life and is who I am.  The years cannot erase my love of the place and the memories that it holds.  They will never be replaced as long as my eyes can gaze upon this wonderland of spirits.

I know there is death and I know that the memories are meaningless to many, but there will always be new that replaces old, easy life that replaces essential toil once called craft, once called knowledge, once important to life itself.  These ghosts, these memories know as they have seen the passage of time but welcome me back with open arms and heaving breasts.  The blood of the place gone, it still lives as long as there is someone to remember the memories and regrets of a life once lived.