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Sorry I've been neglecting this blog , while out and just using my phone I just tend to punch into Facebook. There's a group page I've setup relating to this adventure -
https://m.facebook.com/randallsreallybigbikeride
Anyway, here's where I'm at this morning:
Finding it harder to interact with people. I get a few seconds into a conversation and something inside me clinches up and I can't do it. I talk to my girlfriend on the phone and suddenly hit a wall where I can't talk anymore.
My friend Pete, whose done lots of long cycles, warned me this would happen. You go back to being an animal, you look for food and places to rest and piss where you want, and think out loud and then suddenly it's smiling faces who want to know all about you and your bike, like striking some massive uphill you had no run-up for.
Between my eyes, right where I breath in, there's this space, all the landscapes, sky and ocean sit there. Everything I look at it is a photograph. Everyone I try and speak to has the volume way down. It's too much for linguistics. Words are like acts of vandalism against it, in here.
When I pedal you can't stop me, you can't reach me, I think my thoughts the way you might approach a big meal. I saviour every bit. Lick the plate. Lick the cutlery. Lick your fingers. And you don't share a single morsel, it's all for you.
I remember vipassana meditation, three years ago, how freeing it was not interacting with others. The life in my head is equatorial, tropical~ no seasonal energy drop off, just more and more, growing like elephant grass.
I get mad and it keeps going, I love life and it keeps going. No fuel, no battery, just calories.
The music breaks me. I listen to my mp3 player, other times I just sing the same stuff to myself. Ani Difranco, Ennio Morricone, Daft Punk, GangStaar, Hilltop Hoods, Icehouse, Philip Glass, Incubus (early albums), DJ Shadow, The Disturbed, Steve Jablonsky, Hermitude, Black Sabbath all compete in the shuffle.
And poetry... it's gone. I mean there's nothing left in the tank, and there's no tank, and there's no space here where there used to be a tank anyway.
I'm writing (obviously, hello), so it's not writers block, but the idea of poetry is nauseating to me.
After Slamalamalynchmob happened in late February I started writing again, having already quit and still getting hawked, I began writing reactively. But without that proximity I just don't care.
I look back on it like these very mental, very young-young people were trying to kick me out of their wretched garbage heap, and I objected to being told I can't be here. Silly, shoulda just shrugged it off, but y'know... I still think those fascist little shits needed someone with a spine to challenge their ego mania, so no regrets, but fuck, keep the heap. There are better places to squat, kids.
I'm still looking forward to the gigs coming up, still love the work and that crystalised aesthetic emotion you get from inhabiting your words on stage.
I'm still excited about putting together more chapbooks, and collect narrative strains out of my existing work, I still stand by my style, and am proud of those poems. But whatever is next is different. Everything that has a beginning has an end (that's why there's no Matrix part 5).
Writing at this point is a journal for me, articulate and collect, edit and catalogue later.
I make it public to not get lost amidst that elephant grass in my brain. Maybe you read this and some of this will mean something to you, help you get through. Sage Francis, Ani Difranco, Henry Rollins, Ronald D Moore, and so many others, they all helped me.
Right now, I'm sitting at a table with my back to the bike. I've manifested a thought into reality, cycling out there in Australia. People helped, are still helping, but I made this happen. Life is short, cut the shit and get some kicks.
-Randall Stephens, September 2014
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