Do you remember Heaven's Gate, that sci-fi cult founded in the 1970s by a nut-job named Marshall Applewhite? The group achieved national attention in 1997 when they ingested poison together in their San Diego compound in hopes of being translated to an alien spaceship believed to be following in the wake of the Hale Bopp comet. When their thirty-nine bodies were found a few days later by police they were dressed in matching black track suits, wearing identical purple sneakers and purple hankies over their faces. Conformity was an important aspect of their religion. Dressing alike, thinking alike, speaking alike, and even sharing a taste for the same foods were markers of their superiority. They were plainly too good to remain among us so they separated themselves entirely from mankind through mass suicide. Conformity alone does not guaranty normality. If it did then ultra-conformists like the Heaven's Gate members would be considered paragons of normalcy. If they were normal, the word is meaningless.
For most of my life I've stuck to a personal conception of normal living. It may not look like anyone else's idea of how to get by. That doesn't matter. If others judge normal by how their neighbors are doing, then I wish them well. Good luck with that. Hope you don't end up wearing a purple hanky over your face. For me conformity never seemed attractive. Conformity never even crossed my mind.
Einstein may not have come up with the idea that every object contains energy, but he determined the extent of that energy with his well known formula E= mc2. Multiply the amount of mass of something by the speed of light squared and you know exactly how much energy it contains. There is not much in that formula for me to put to any practicable use. Those with a better grasp of the physics and the mechanics of the principle are able to unleash the hidden potential of a single atom and destroy half a medium sized city, or blow holes in the Mojave desert. The sun creates energy in the form of heat and light through a similar process, demonstrating that you don't have to be a nuclear scientist to split atoms. Put all the atoms of my body to good use and you may be able to create a blast of energy that could be seen from Andromeda and send planets out of their accustomed orbits. I don't really know. There's the energy of mass and then there's life energy. Unlike nuclear energy, it's easily understood, and readily available. It surrounds you and courses through you. How much of it will be used and how much let slip away? When all is said and done, I will doubtless look back at enormous potential wasted, never developed, poorly managed, and seldom sustained. The same can be said for us all. I have to agree with Thoreau who said that he had never met a man who was fully alive, and if he did, he wouldn't be able to look him in the face.
Naturally, I value most the parts of my life where I invest the most energy, or is it the other way round? On the higher energy side there is painting scenes. I can live off the money it brings in, but what it brings in wouldn't sustain anyone else I can think of. Being homeless has its benefits. Painting is superb for letting off steam. It's also a means for exploring. Painting is the soul of adventure. There is also adventure of the more traditional sort. When I take to the back roads on a bicycle loaded with camping gear, or to some hidden piece of shoreline in a similarly loaded sea kayak, I feel fully engaged in with life in a way that not even painting can touch.
That is living for me. That is normal. Most everything else is purposed to get me back on the saddle or in the cockpit. For twenty-two years free wheeling travel ruled, but over the last ten it's enjoyed a little less than equal time. That maybe the new normal, but not in my mind.
Tomorrow I'll be back on the trail. My bike is packed and ready to be freed from its storage locker in Las Vegas. I'm flying there tonight. Soon it will be back to sleeping inside a tent, and outside the law. Ill be free and breathing again. Ill be surrounded by beauty. Ill be wet when it rains, and cursing when it blows. Ill be satisfied at the end of the day, and the next morning ready to do it all again. Ill be normal.
For most of my life I've stuck to a personal conception of normal living. It may not look like anyone else's idea of how to get by. That doesn't matter. If others judge normal by how their neighbors are doing, then I wish them well. Good luck with that. Hope you don't end up wearing a purple hanky over your face. For me conformity never seemed attractive. Conformity never even crossed my mind.
Einstein may not have come up with the idea that every object contains energy, but he determined the extent of that energy with his well known formula E= mc2. Multiply the amount of mass of something by the speed of light squared and you know exactly how much energy it contains. There is not much in that formula for me to put to any practicable use. Those with a better grasp of the physics and the mechanics of the principle are able to unleash the hidden potential of a single atom and destroy half a medium sized city, or blow holes in the Mojave desert. The sun creates energy in the form of heat and light through a similar process, demonstrating that you don't have to be a nuclear scientist to split atoms. Put all the atoms of my body to good use and you may be able to create a blast of energy that could be seen from Andromeda and send planets out of their accustomed orbits. I don't really know. There's the energy of mass and then there's life energy. Unlike nuclear energy, it's easily understood, and readily available. It surrounds you and courses through you. How much of it will be used and how much let slip away? When all is said and done, I will doubtless look back at enormous potential wasted, never developed, poorly managed, and seldom sustained. The same can be said for us all. I have to agree with Thoreau who said that he had never met a man who was fully alive, and if he did, he wouldn't be able to look him in the face.
Naturally, I value most the parts of my life where I invest the most energy, or is it the other way round? On the higher energy side there is painting scenes. I can live off the money it brings in, but what it brings in wouldn't sustain anyone else I can think of. Being homeless has its benefits. Painting is superb for letting off steam. It's also a means for exploring. Painting is the soul of adventure. There is also adventure of the more traditional sort. When I take to the back roads on a bicycle loaded with camping gear, or to some hidden piece of shoreline in a similarly loaded sea kayak, I feel fully engaged in with life in a way that not even painting can touch.
That is living for me. That is normal. Most everything else is purposed to get me back on the saddle or in the cockpit. For twenty-two years free wheeling travel ruled, but over the last ten it's enjoyed a little less than equal time. That maybe the new normal, but not in my mind.
Tomorrow I'll be back on the trail. My bike is packed and ready to be freed from its storage locker in Las Vegas. I'm flying there tonight. Soon it will be back to sleeping inside a tent, and outside the law. Ill be free and breathing again. Ill be surrounded by beauty. Ill be wet when it rains, and cursing when it blows. Ill be satisfied at the end of the day, and the next morning ready to do it all again. Ill be normal.
So that is what a normal life is! You make the most of it.
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