Long Strange Trip, More A Stream of Consciousness, Less A Ride Report.

(written over a series of days)

After dinner I found myself reading a little bit of Joseph Conrad and a sliver of Daniel Defoe. A thought has been growing in my mind for some time, percolating. Finally I feel as though I am approaching something that remotely resembles a conclusion. The past year of my existence has been quite excellent at banishing all thought of finality out of my life; particularly in my ability to make decisions…but in this instance I feel that I am actually quite close to right.

Diner tonight was a spicy dish of penne. I started with a glass of wine, it was not satisfactory. Some how I ended up with Miller-Lite out of a bottle. I went to school in Milwaukee, for a time, but Lite was on sale…so it really should not feel special or any allegiance. I sat alone at my desk and eat while Dylan sang about a woman and her need to stay, to lay about his big brass bed. How she should stay with her man awhile, how she needed to stay and make him smile. The thoughts of Her and the thoughts of a wedding that was planned but never happened flood back over me; what year indeed. I have another gulp of the Lite. The next thing I know Bob is singing about another girl, he was wondering if she had changed at all. I can tell you She hasn’t. He was standing on the side of the road, and rain was falling on his shoes…he comes back over and over again to this woman, and his inability to escape her. What a poor sucker. I wish there was not so much Bob in me.

For centuries past, time out of mind, men have taken to the sea. In this time there were Sea-Men and there were Land-Men; Defoe and Swift understood this concept, Conrad was the ladder. These men had a birth or many a birth that gave them the resolution. The answer always manifest itself in a blanket of undulation, a fluid uncertainty marked their paths. For these men nothing fixed the indefinable hole in their hearts like the medicine of the sea. It was never about getting to Burma. The journey was only the conduit, the conduit that through solutions to their messed up lives could flow. This is what she never understood, that is what they never understand.

The Lite is getting empty, luckily the pipe is just tampered, and in these times there is an icebox in the kitchen, I believe more Lite lives in the bottom shelf of the door.

End of the thought.

Average modern man has not changed with the rising and settings of a few suns. The problem of problem solving, the inability to resolve issues, and the general principle that the harder you look at something, the less you really see, is still quite evident in said modern man. Though cycles have heated grips, abs, efi, traction control, boxes that carry more gear than one can shake a stick at, and all other fashion of other fancy gadgetry…these completely missing the point of the cycle and what it endows on the modern man; what the cycle actually DOES for the modern man. After all, the Seamen did not seek the sea because the helm of “The Dauntless” had heated pegs. I am quite certain it was not until “The Dauntless IV” that anyone even considered the idea of heated anything. These men went to sea for one reason, only one. Only there were they far enough away from the forest to see it through the trees. It is only in ‘the doing’ only in ‘the sailing’ that they found what would have never been revealed in all searching, high and low, about the earth.

“In this particular place, in this particular time, there were two small boys. Sam and Simon. Sam and Simon were best of friends. Being small boys, their world was large and small at the same moment. Large in the sense that they both understood that beyond the smoke covered mountains there were many, many miles, kilometers, fathoms, or whatever one fancies for measuring given sections of land-mass, to be discovered. Conversely, their world was small because they made it such. The concept of how small they were was not lost on either of them, particularly Sam, or Samuel. Taking a wild world and cramming it into one’s pocket is not an easy task, as one can imagine. It must be done one day at a time, one spoonful of dirt by one spoonful of dirt. Sam and Simon did, in fact, dig in the dirt with spoons. Though they were not keen enough, neither of them, to realize what they were doing, they did go out and make battle on the world everyday, determined to make it palatable.”

--

If one is to claim that they lead a life anymore amazing, interesting, or excellent than anyone else…one could suggest they were an arrogant self-centered prig. Yet, it would seem that based on the way of the world, and the decisions that people make that inevitably there will be folks with more colored pasts, and folks with more even keels. There is a particular chap that will more or less shape this story, his life is his own, far be it from me to make an conjectures regarding it, or upon it any judgment pass.

--

04.29.08
Had dinner with a fellow inmate (stromboni) tonight. The topic of conversation was all over the place. Cycles were a headliner, naturally, but we also dabbled in ride reports. This musing came up as I tried to explain my issues with rrs in a very inefficient and round about sort of way.)

05.31.08
Had my last dinner with my sister and her family, my mom, and another inmate Lamoson tonight. When I left I said good-bye. The good-bye was my much different than the usual ‘later’ I offer as I peel off on one wheel. Something about ‘the next time I see you will be 5.5k miles and three weeks later’ stopped me, made me check myself, sort of a taking account moment. The weekend was spent in preparation, oil changes, checking bike, rechecking bike, repacking….sorting, lose this bit of luggage, repack. Finally, had to go blow off some steam and did some dirt eating on the drz, always a good time, nice to hone the dirt, mud and crud skills at every opportunity. I digress, as I was saying good-byes, heartfelt ones --- Nordstrom’s types --- not the Wal-mart variety, I was flooded with emotions. It is easy to get on my bike and blitz down the road, never thinking twice about too much of it, but this little stretch is not as such. It is strange, things happen; bad things happen daily on bikes. Once in awhile I pop into the ‘faceplant’ forum, helps the perspective. I love my family; negative thoughts never helped anybody, I doubt even for motivation, but supposedly an argument can be made. Pretty tough to keep my mind going in a straight line these days, there has not been much sleep lately. But then again isn’t the game of this trip to get my mind sorted out a bit? Maybe being a mental slob is ok for now, maybe for always? Guess the next few thousand miles will tell me a bit more about that… I wonder if my water pump will fail, I should have done it, but with 5k should it be able to handle it? I don’t speak French, how did I end up being born in a third world country and end up with only a smattering of village speak coupled a Spanish vocabulary of a verbally stunted 24 month year old Spaniard child? What about those fuel pump threats or the fact that I am running a TKC with 600 miles on it, and my trip is no less than 5,500 miles? Guess I will throw the old Scorp on top of the rest of this luggage, it is good for a few more miles…just need a place to swap it, and break that accursed 950 bead….ugg.

I was riding my Z through town today, and I just had to give her a hug. In a strange way, when I lost one girl in my life I gained another, and then another. These last two, though much more mechanical and seemingly cold, have been much easier to deal with than the first one. Moreover, they do not talk much, except in excited purrs, thumps and or growls…none of which ever involve lies, with I relish kindly.

djmase

05.31.08

Tell Me a Story.

“Tell me a story, Jack,” she said looking at me through the tiny slights created below the bottom of her upper eyelid and the top of her lower eyelid.
“Ok. (time passing) Lets see... (time passing) Give me second here to collect myself,” Jack half spoke, half motioned, setting his task aside. Simultaneously he ceased chewing his mustache and commenced tapping his foot absent-mindedly.
A few seconds passed, but neither Jessi nor Jack felt it as such. They both felt much more time pass but also it seemed only a sliver of time in some other queer way. It is a tough thing to understand exactly unless you had been Jessi. Or Jack, I suppose.
Eventually he, he is Jack, get it together. She is Jessi, to be fair with introductions all the way around. My apologizes, I was never one good with introductions of any sort. Someone once said, “Men don’t introduce themselves, it is a strange thing, but men can be friends, of a sort, for years and never learn each other’s name. We are blessed to have a language with so many words that can fill in where a Christian name ought be.”
Now, now…full disclosure here, I am----you know what? Lets leave that bit out for now and move into The Story for Jessi, on a Particular Eve.

---

In a world, not greatly unlike the one in which we presently dwell, there was a Purveyor of used books. Day after day He toiled away in His dank, dusty, and all together desolate book shoppe, The Book Shoppe as the neighborhood knew it. He loved books, there was no other task at which He loved more than lording over the Shoppe, continually buried in volumes all in different tongues, tones, and times. Now as one can well imagine, He had read more pages than the whole of Harvard University collectively since inception. I kid you not (and I am not one prone to exaggeration) after-all; He was a very old Man.
It came about that on a certain summer eve, as closing time was drawing near, He finished a particularly unsatisfying tale and was not keen to settle His night with such an unsavory read. As was His rule (His general rule) He did not take works from the Shoppe home with Him. He was very conscious about mixing works. Yet, as I have said, He was quite put out of sorts by His recent pages, so much so that He slammed the book down, collected His hat and pipe curtly, and made a straight line for the (seemingly) rarely utilized portal that ceaselessly (when utilized), creaked on its hinges. Just as He was passing through He glanced an ‘unsort’ as He called them, that struck a chord in His Great Heart. This chord had not been heard in a dragon’s age. (The ‘unsort’ books are books yet to be sorted, no great word-smithory here though assuming makes an as---nevermind. Oh, and a dragon’s age is a very…long…time, write that down!)
The book that, drat, what was His name…I have missed that introduction too…boy, I really was never much for names. It was a rich, grand name, fills one up like hot chocolate does the tummy after a long night of skating on a stiff forest lake. Nonetheless, I digress. Rest assured, if I come to recall it, I will tell It at once. More than likely it will come to me when I least dwell on it, that seems to be the case, more and more as the time, unyieldingly, marches on. My Oh My how my tongue needs a tighter leash!
The book! Yes, The book was named…Oh dear…not again! No! Here it is! It was hidden in this little nook of my brain, the book was named, “The Tale of Jessi, Queen Over the Three Hills.” As aforementioned, He had read most of the books ever to be written, but not this one, what’s more, this book promised a Fantasy, which touched a well hidden soft spot in His heart. Hurriedly, He shuffled home skipping dinner, after all, what was wine and bread next to The Feast “Jessi” promised? The beginning was more or less the boilerplate type of fantasy, only very well written. There was, of course, Jessi, who was a princess (of course), in a vast, prosperous kingdom. There were two sisters, who one could only imagine were the other ‘two hills’, and there were the usual merriments surrounding life in a fairytale. As the pages passed the story moved more from a well worded, fantasy into a darker/deeper story of Love, turmoil and introspection. (along with the occasional lack thereof.)
Our Reader was One who could read at pace, He could digest the syntax even faster. No time was needed to ‘mull it over’ as commonplace, coffee chugging hipsters often claim, in desperate attempts to sound wise. (curses to wicker park and their hipster poison) The same moment that the words crossed His eye it was already through His brain and observed from more angles than an average human could observe in one hundred of our years. Again, I am not overstating the breadth of this Beings intellect…shear madness by all measure. “Jessi” was growing into a delicious Banquet, He felt all time before had been ‘a Fast’, just for this event. There is no word in our tongue to classify his disgust when He turned the next page, about one third of the way through the book at this point, to find nothing but white staring back at Him. “A colossal publishing mistake!” He bellowed, for at this point He truly was, utterly engaged. He scornfully rolled His piercing eyes and whipped to the next page as if it was yet another unfit application in the hand of a scrupulous dean of admissions.
Another set of pages sat and smirked at Him. There was nearly an audible chuckle from somewhere in the binding. Without a moments delay He hurled “Jessi” across the room, knocking His cap clean off its nightly storage place atop a bust of Winston Churchill.
It was late, He sat for three minutes, then went to His quarters and settled down to sleep.
“Jessi” lay on the floor near the entryway. The questionably audible chuckle had long since faded and was questionably replaced with what sounded like very quiet, muffled sobs. The kind that people let out while hiding in their closet because they do not want to be asked by anyone, “What is wrong my dear?” (Yet, it nearly seemed that “She” grew ever so slightly bigger through the bawling. The book actually would not have fit onto a shelf that previously it had just squeezed into)
He was up early. Two poached eggs and two slices of toast for breakfast. On His way out the door he stooped to pick up His waylaid hat and saw “her” lying there. All was quiet now. He picked “Her” up gingerly, slipping “Her” into His satchel. He only had half a mind what He would do with “Her” but there was clear air outside and eight blocks to consider it. When He arrived at the Shoppe, He decided that any book that had caused Him such a fit was un-fit for resale, nay; it was far too precious a treasure for some brute to buy, undoubtely with a mind slightly above that of a german shepard.
“Jessi” sat in the safety of His Backroom. The company was good. There were not many volumes in this part of the otherwise cluttered Shoppe. A child of Israel would have seen this section as something akin to the ‘Holy of Holies’ of The Book Shoppe. Organization of the Backroom was impeccable, this and the fact that there were only the choicest of volumes in this backroom, were the main differences between It and the rest. And whether one chooses to believe it or not there were a handful of other volumes that He had run across that too sat with pages unfilled. He filed “The Tale of Jessi, Queen Over the Three Hills” next to “The Tale of Jack, The First.” He filed these two volumes next to each other with more than half a thought. One should not be so simple to think that it was not was due the first ten characters of their titles matching. I said He was organized; not alphabetized. All of His precious books are placed where they will be written best.

---

I get ahead of myself though, and no more comes into this story at present…


djmase
01.26.08

It is Calming to Know I Am Not Alone.

"Shadows are falling and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal
There's not even room enough to be anywhere
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Well, I've been to London and I've been to gay Paree
I've followed the river and I got to the sea
I've been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain't looking for nothing in anyone's eyes
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

I was born here and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

~R.A.Z.

Observation of the Eighteenth.

The streets have a street light shine on them. One would swear the rain had just stopped dropping on them. It has not rained for days. The atmosphere is of such a composition that the tarmac seems unable to shake the grip of the tiny gloms of hydrogen and oxygen. Photographers prefer streetscapes to look wet when photographing them. It seems they look sexier, zoomier, much more of an ‘unattainable presence concept’ when they are freshly hydrated. Light dances on wet asphalt in way that it does on little else. How else can such a prehistoric medium look so delightful? How else can a city, so easily, maximize its light value than by drenching its hard-scape so that nearly all surfaces become highly reflective? Ironically, when the city is wet, when the ground is bouncing light as fast as it can process it, they feel more unsafe. It could be that when one steals a glance over their shoulder, they not only see the world above their sight line, they also see that world reflected in the ground below their sightline. They see each person, each shadow, each unidentified-moving-object, twice. One would think that this ‘double’ vision would make the walker seem more comfortable, and informed, it is not so. The walker is disconcerted, the sound of footfalls is different, the dropping of dew on an alley garbage can lid there is even a feeling of eyes, a great many eyes upon him. It would seem now that the once thought great ability to see an object as well as its reflection, is turned out to be a great vulnerability to the walker, a chink in the armor.

djmase

12.18.07

A Juncture.

To date these notes have been a bit peppered in direction. I have no intetion of changing this, but there will be additions. The pepper randomness will continue, while I may begin to add in other stragglements of slightly more current issues than goblins and digging dirt roads with spoons.

"A full tank takes me almost three hours without a stop, three hours of contemplation and seculation, contemplation of past mistakes, speculation on future dangers." ~Ted Simon

Life is a continual mixture of old and new. The Bob Dylan of my life is the same sound waves as the one of my fathers life. Meanwhile the KTM of my life is the Triumph of Bob's life, such very different animals, such similar services they provide. (more on this to follow) One could well be born in a decade or century that is wrong for them. Allow a qualification to this statement, one *could* well be...were there no God. It seems that one may have been happier at a past time, and one can only speculate this sentiment for two reasons, one they know not the shape of the future, two they lived not in the past so they can only romaticize the fantasic nature of it. 1945 would have been my birth year...were there no God, and were I given an option.
What rapid change in the world from 1945 to 1989. First hand experience of that would have been well worth the lack of internet, cell phones, and whatever hoop-la one would insist make living in the present age worth the effort of it all.

djmase

05.16.08

Scar

I had hoped to have much more worked out at this point, as far as writing things down, creating stories, notes, and the history of me or you and me. Alas, I have not. There are a handful of excuses for why I have been remiss in doing this, none of them honorable.

This passage is going to ramble; it is going to wind.

We had a rather remarkable discussion yester eve. We went whirling about the merry-go-round at a horrendous rate. It was something to see. Apparently we have very contrary views of feminism, or I am very misinformed, or you are mislead, or it is a combination of all things. Regardless, it was what it was.

You said it was heated, you said, “I was heated”. There was not a time when I was heated, there were times when I was scratching my head, both mentally and physically, as to how we could be missing each other. I wondered, are we near, are we far? If it is night, I can imagine that boats could slip past one another, very closely at some points, particularly if there is a low fog hanging above the water. I wondered, is she in that boat, the one just over there beyond my power to see, the one that I can’t even hear in this deafening silence of deep, black night?

There are other thoughts, lurking…creeping along in my mind, very afraid to show themselves for fear of lambastement. (new word) These thoughts keep themselves hiding in the deep layers of my mind…(heart?). When I look at you there is intrigue, there is wonder, there is awe (in a way) and it captures my mind, if only for moments in time.

We chat, we slowly, sometimes quickly, pick at each others scabs. By the time one is 27, unless wonderful miracles have happened, he will be a walking road-rash. If, per chance, you find one that actually has some flesh not covered in scab, take a picture, it is rare as a yeti. Broken hearts are difficult to mend. Twisted minds are hard to straight. In this arduous process of picking and healing we often run across those little sacs of puss and watery blood that so often prowls beneath the particularly ugly and unclean film of temporary skin. At first you just see a little pin prick of it, then it bubbles up as you apply pressure and squeeze out the filth. Next, the process of separating the scab from the being… At the end there is a pile of grotesque gauze, a scab and a clean wound that will move toward closure…yet the patient will wear the scar of the procedure for the rest of their days.

Sometimes there is an infected scab on the knee, this is very easy to self medicate…what of the one on your back though? This one is directly between your shoulder blades, as if some imp had reached out of hell and poked one with an undying coal. It has been ground into the skin, into the muscle, it is smutty and indecent; certainly it will birth the desired infectious result so graphically aforementioned.

When this scab is present, this festering back ailment, while this contamination exists is it not required that others help us medicate? Is it possible that when we have a weeping wound, dripping of blood and soot deep in out back that it is not a suggestion, it is a requirement that it is attended to by someone that can see it? Could it be a human condition to require this, or to not require this…? Could it be that One is not really One, that One is actually one? This question needs to be answered.

If one is to help, if one is to be helped…a novel set of issues immerges. Between all mortals, all cognitive mortals, relationships undulate. There are some that never exist, people who never meet, a simple rift in the fabric of space. There are others that always exist. When a relationship exists, it will flow like wind over a mountain, it will rise up, then it will fall into a valley, further still through a gorge…unending…till death do them part. (Idealistically) The manifestation of these mountains and valleys is as diverse as the elevation of the relationship. Furthermore, the existence of the wind and its movement is very much defined by the form of the earth over which it flows. Note, earth, is very much a different thing from mountain, valley, gorge, plain, plateau; these are mere manifestations of earth, languages that our intellect can decipher, or vistas that our minds can take in. For millennia the World was believed to be flat, an eyeball on a tall tower could not see the blue, white, and green Ball, hung is Space, that Mister Armstrong could see.

Millions of these earths float in our space. Each little coop marching along in time. It is widely accepted that some terra is harder than other, chemistry will show us that a given sample may show more stone, or more clay, or more sand…different terra, different earth, different. An earth covered in sand can and very well may develop a sea of dunes, as well as wide waste lands littered with small ripples and nothing else.

Another earth may have rich varied soil, it may even have water… The sun shines on it and heats the water, then the atmosphere cools as it sun pales. The water condenses into rich clouds, the prevailing wind sweeps it off into the landscape. Perhaps an earthquake or internal turmoil erupts; regal mountains spew out of the fragile crust of globe. Great rains, carried from the sea, fall on this range and the water runs off, there is erosion on the surface, there is biting and tearing, the crust is torn open. All of this tragedy, all of this destruction, the earth bears the scars of it.

It is a wonder how gorgeous our Earth is…when one stands in the forest, in the trees, in the Sierra Nevadas, listening to a brook next to them, looking at the soaring peaks over their head, feeling ever so small, but buried in the absolute bliss of the beauty.

Maybe when you stand in a scar it does not look so much like a scar. Maybe the bigger the scars in the earth, the more beautiful it is? Maybe not.

djmase

12.18.07

Green Socks.

I am wearing green socks right now. They are short ones. They barely cover the little nubs on my ankles. Are those actually my ankles??? What is the ankle? I thought it was kind of the composite whole of where one’s foot meets one’s leg…? Maybe I am wrong. I only make it through two semesters worth of chemistry on my way to becoming a doctor…that is old news…
Anyhow. So these green socks are splendid indeed.

About 5 minutes ago I sat down to indulge myself in a long bath after a very rough day of work. I had to go in early, then I ended up staying late to clean up others messes. Upon arriving home I wrote a check for my December assessments, then I wrote a check for my electric bill. I always turn off lights and electronics I don’t need, you are not as good at doing so… I in find myself following you around shutting off things you have just utilized---but I digress.

Anyhow, after the check writing and bill paying, I open a fresh bottle of wine, made a sandwich, (French bread, muenster cheese, and Genoa salami)(1) drew a delicious bath, lit a candle and some incense, then proceeded to indulge in a soak. I had take all of two bites into my sandwich and one savory taste of my wine when the cell rang… "why take a cell to the bath tub…?” good question. It was you. You were calling to chat. I did not answer it, for the following reasons, I was naked and in the bath which tends to make me feel vulnerable, I was eating a sandwich, and I my bathroom has hard, tile walls so there is no doubt that you would have said, “where are you, it sounds really funny?” and I would have had to explain the situation to you, and frankly, I was out of gas for the day. Furthermore, to do said activity would have been---what is the word I am looking for here…awkward(?) or awkward’s stronger, older brother. sorry.

Carrying on here. I had just finished my sandwich and my first glass of wine, washing it all down with a cool glass of water…when I began to make a little poem in my head. I was saying something along the lines of a guy sitting in a room filled with smoke and steam, with warm rain falling on his head, while having a cup of wine. Very standard stuff, I am certain most people think if such things while enjoying a bower(2). It was just about this point when I leaned forward to bump the temperature up on my water supply. One is no doubt familiar with the turtle (or is a frog?) in the pot of water, as the temperature is increased, he does not see it and suddenly finds himself cooked---while I do have similar characteristics to a turtle, for example my hard, exterior shell; my keen sense of water temperature is not a shared trait with my tortoise sibling. At any rate, as I continued to ‘pour on the gas’ as my grandfather would say, it would seem that I was fighting a losing battle. The more I twisted the handle, the cooler the water became, mind you, at one glass of wine, I can not blame the drink for this malady, we had simply run out of warm water in my building. THINK OF IT!!! Sitting there, a small pool of luke warm water surrounding me, stomach content with delicious sustenance, candle and incense present, and NO WARM WATER. I bid the shower good day, got out and dressed myself. It was somewhere near this point in time that I became aware that I had not taken your call, only to be frozen out of a perfectly good shower…this made me doubly upset.

All is well now, I sat down to pen this note, which save the cold water, may never have happened…maybe all things do work together for good…according to His riches and mercy.

djm

11.29.07

1please don’t think I am so simple minded. While I am a creature of habit, I am also a creature of means…if I have muenster, salami, and French bread, I have a sandwich. Nothing more, nothing less.
2bower is a bath-shower as you know. But do to common day phonetics, one could, inadvertently pronounce it BOW-er, with a long O, it is not as such. It is spoken as the name Bauer, as in Jack Bauer.

World in My Pocket.

Some amount of time ago, not certain how long it was and if one were to ask 5 different people one would, no doubt, get five different answers; if the reader can picture this time, then she understands when this story takes place. It was a far away land. To journey there is possible, generally speaking, but it is an arduous journey, great peril is involved and one may find that upon arrival, they feel cheated for risking life and limb for such a state.

In this particular place, in this particular time, there were two small boys. Sam and Simon. Sam and Simon were best of friends. Being small boys, their world was large and small at the same moment. Large in the sense that they both understood that beyond the smoke covered mountains there were many, many miles, kilometers, fathoms, or whatever one fancies for measuring given sections of land-mass, to be discovered. Conversely, their world was small because they made it such. The concept of how small they were was not lost on either of them, particularly Sam, or Samuel. Taking a wild world and cramming it into one’s pocket is not an easy task, as one can imagine. It must be done one day at a time, one spoonful of dirt by one spoonful of dirt. Sam and Simon did, in fact, dig in the dirt, with spoons. Though they were not keen enough, neither of them, to realize what they were doing, they did go out and make battle on the world everyday, determined to make it palatable.

Simon found very great pleasure in capturing hobgoblins. There is a great art to capturing them, but once you have one, the possibilities for entertainment are endless. This specific lad, Simon, loved nothing better than dressing them up in little girly doll clothes complete with ribbons, makeup and all. Once he had something worth showing, he would take his pleasure to the market and parade it around. Naturally, the hobgoblin hated this and was mortified, often being forced to relocate to another part of the world thereafter, if ever he was able to escape. Simon relished this, the way that the little evil bugger would sit in his cage and sputter, shaking the little bars as ferociously as the tiny creature could. Sam also had strange character issues of the same nature, after-all, he was a little boy. These issues do not come into this story though…………

………ok, there was one habit that Sam had which is worth noting. While Simon was obsessed with Hobgoblins, Sam was interested in good old fashion trolls. Trolls can be particularly nasty, specifically at night. Sam had a long history with trolls, one incident that DOES NOT come into this story but failure to mention the following one would be plain negligence. This being said, Sam enjoyed catching, ‘and then…’ trolls. The ‘and then’ is the humorous and disconcerting part of Sam’s malady. Once Sam had the creature, he would not dress the creature up, but he would somehow convince it to play act. For instance, he once convinced a troll that he was actually elvis, mind you, trolls are a few french fries short of a happy meal. The confused little fellow had a troll-sized guitar, glittering outfit, the whole shooting match. On a particular evening when Elvis troll was really ‘rocking’, so to speak, Sam slipped into the room with a very small squirt gun filled with water. Sam must be commended on his patience, at the exact right moment, when Elvis troll was looking into the bright lights of his mind, singing his heart out, Sam sprayed him down with the squirt gun. Interesting to consider is that trolls turn into wood, immediately upon being sprayed with water. Sam was giddy with glee. Running about he had what he had dreamt about for so long, a wooden, singing troll, in the perfect stance…it was a moment of bliss. After he had thoroughly tired himself out he set his new, static friend on the shelf. The shelf had hundreds of wooden trolls in the most bizarre of states.

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Sam and Simon decided that the run of the mill dragon chasing and treasure hunting wound not suffice on a given spring morning. This was not a concern as there was a fallback routine that was certain to satisfy, and quite mandatory to practice if one knew what was good for him, and both of these ones did know what was good for them. BMX. BMX was the bee’s knees of all the land. With lunches packed by their endearing mothers the lads set out for the BMX mecca. It was a similar experience to that of actually traveling to this aforementioned land, once one arrived, the mecca often failed to live up to the name of mecca. But it did have one huge hill. Huge. The theory of this track is that of any racetrack…when the gate goes down, go as fast as you can, first one done wins, last one done disgraces their family and is executed. On the particular day of this visit, there were no formal races, it was the ideal time to tempt fate, see what this dragon of a track really had beneath it’s scales, poke around and see if there was any way to exploit the track to avoid death by last place come race day. After doing a fair piece of detective work, the lads arrived at the same answer at which generations of boys before them had arrived, the dragon is impregnable. One can only win by winning, live by not losing.

Armed with a new resolution to win, or at least be the second slowest (for fear of family disgrace followed by an untimely, painful death), they set about practicing. Simon was older, he was bigger, he was faster, and he was in a different age group, which was lucky for Samuel. This did not dissuade Simon from poking fun at Sam regarding his choice of starting location on the Hill. The real racers all went from the very peak, one gets the most speed, and frankly, it is illegal to start from any place else. There is a caveat to said starting Hill. At the bottom of this very large Hill, is a very large jump. In this far away land, gravity, conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy, and all the normal physical rules that Humans live by, were to be followed. Upon sufficient berating, Sam pushed his bike from the preferred, middle of the Hill starting point, to the top of the Hill. It is a historical fact, sweaty palms were invented on this day. He narrowed his eyes down the Hill. He had borrowed Simon’s helmet for the occasion and it gave him some false sense of courage in his quest to slay. As he imagined the voice of the announcer calling out the starting position verbiage, his small heart beat loudly in his Big World. There was a moment when the announcer in his mind summoned him and the other 6 invisible racers to go. Hurtling down the Hill was pure ecstasy. The speed, the whirling, the rush of victory at hand suddenly made his World small enough to fit into his pocket.

Somewhere between the split second realization of how large the bottom of the Hill jump was and a rough calculation of speed to weight ration Sam’s World began to grow, rapidly. He nearly had had it all the way into his pocket…but inflation was inevitable, as inevitable as he eminent trajectory. There was a moment, Simon saw this, Sam left his bike, he, Sam, was traveling though the air, but not majestically. The travel was that of a bird that drank too much wine and passed out at a bird party, as birds are known to do. His fellow party going birds then decided it would be fun to shave all of his feathers off and wake him with screaming that the nest is afire. The schwaggled bird jumps out of the nest, devoid of feathers and ‘flies’ (read falls from the sky, hitting every branch on the way down) that is precisely how Sam looked. Lucky for Sam, he had good solid gravel beneath him, and a God given chin to cushion his fall.

djmase

11.06.07