the fabulous fantasmagorical non-thinking machine

holly commented on my may 9 post about lovely S-curves with this message:
Your blog makes me think so hard. I read, and I read, and I read, and I always feel like I need to read each post again . . . I can't think this hard!


the irony: while she was posting that comment, I was riding my bike, mentally composing my next blog post, which was going to be all about the gift of non-thinking that cycling gives me.

hmm.
I shrug my shoulders and smile: life is full of little ironies.

because truthfully, the gift of non-thinking is possibly the greatest gift cycling has given me. as One Who Thinks Too Much, I need escapes from my too-busy mind. pedaling up hill after hill, swooping down, being surrounded by ever-changing, awe-inspiring natural scenery: these things occupy my mind and oxygen supply, limiting my opportunity to ponder things that don't really need to be pondered.

perhaps that's what I should tell holly: don't think about my posts, just let them be absorbed, allow your mind to pick what it wants to hold on to and what it prefers to let go of. that someday the pieces that have meaning for you will gel and inform some action, thought, or movement in your life. the flotsam and jetsam will drift off, leaving that ever-so-quick mind available to draw connections and light upon insights when pieces of what I write marinate with others' words and the experiences that grace your life.


I need to trust my own mind to pick through and save what matters, and jettison the rest.
unfortunately, being One Who Thinks Too Much, I should probably begin an exercise program for my mind, excising the flotsam on a regular basis.

oh, I think they call this meditation . . .


so, I must keep cycling. it affords me meditative moments that I desperately need. times when hillocks and rippling water and crashing streams all float into and through my consciousness without truly registering. where waving grasses and budding trees and the smell of freshly chopped cedar seep into my core, where sunshine and cloud cover and rushing wind permeate the shell of my thinking mind and soften my stance as a Thinking Being.

holly, then, was right on target.

and I love my fabulous, fantasmagorical non-thinking machine that goes by the name of ruby. descartes was a remarkable philosopher, but perhaps if he'd ridden a bike as I do he might have adjusted his famous statement---je pense, donc je suis---to

I ride, therefore I am able not to think, allowing me to exist more fully as a thinking being.