With every season, my sister and I have a sport of choice so that we don't mourn the seasons passing, but enjoy changing with them.
Winter---ice skating.
Summer---swimming, and more swimming.
Spring & Autumn---and every in-between season my sister and I love zipping down the road on our bikes, wind, rain, sun or shine.
I love smelling the air, like dog does when it sticks its head out of the window.
Earthy, wet, and fishy smelling irrigated fields of grain, and alfalfa. Wafts of strong blooming sage.
Smoke rising from a backyard barbecue.
Pancakes and eggs.
Fabric softener.
Vanilla Candles.
Horses.
Blooming Russian olive trees.
Zesty wild roses.
The smell of green--cut grass.
The muddy river.
It is amazing what your nose can tell you about your neighbors, and their lives. Who likes boxed cakes, and burnt toast, and fumigating their house with perfume, and cleaners.
Biking is truly a sensory experience. It's not something I do to workout. I gave up that notion, though everyone who sees my sister and I biking always asks how many miles we travel. As if miles, and length were our objective, not the journey itself.
No one ever asks if we enjoy it.
I like to bike up and down the roads, and see the yards and houses. It makes me feel as if I am connecting with the people who live there, saying hello even when the houses seem mostly vacant, except for on the weekends.
I. Love. My. bike. Though it took up screeching, and hollering out to my neighbors, telling them how much fun we were having. I would tell it to shush, but that only made it screech louder. It was getting to the point I was quite embarrassed. But what to do?
I'm sorry to say that it died, right after I bought a new one. I think it felt replaced. I hadn't even intended on using the new one until I had to.
Old and beat up as it was, my old bike was my good friend, the best. It gave me it's all, and with heavy heart, only a few days after my new purchase, it's tire went flat, both pedals nearly fell off, and a huge spider moved in. It's decay astounded me. And I felt sorry for it. If an object could have a life, I'm sure this bike had one. And a soul, squeak and all. And if there is a heaven for bikes, I'm sure it went there. In it's heaven, I hope it has a kind rider, who enjoys biking down winding roads as much I do.
I'm still at a loss for why it died so suddenly. But I am grateful it didn't fall apart miles away from my house. So it is a noble bike for all its squeaking.
Now on my new bike, though it can never replace my old one, in the cool evening air, or in the morning, we make sure to harvest the best bits of nature, appreciate friends, houses, and old buildings.
Friends we usually see are Randy, Joe, Jim and Claire----they sounds like some country band name. And rightly so, as they are very countrified, on a countrified road.
When no one else is home, you can count on them, that you will see them, somewhere on the road.
We see Randy the most.
Actually, Randy is everywhere.
Sometimes we take our friends and family to visit him, as well, as you can usually spot him down the road, and in places you might not expect to see him.
Randy.
Most people are confused when we introduce him.
But when they see they finally understand.
Invisible to most. But visible to those who see the writing in the tar.
Then we show them Randy's artwork. Written epitaphs on the road. Art dedicated to the passer by.
Signed.
Randy.
By the railroad tracks.
There is Randy.
Who is randy?
An artist?
A soul, who while on the hot pavement of life scrawls out his messages and as his way of expressing himself.
His museum is the road. His viewers, travelers.
Randy.
Just when you think you found everything he's left. I find his name, and another piece of artwork. Even while driving.
Randy.
A glittery old shoe stuck in the tar. A gift for someone to stare at, and appreciate, and ponder.
Randy.
Yin, yang.
Randy.
A flower.
Randy.
A heart.
Randy.
Peace.
A pointing arrow.
An angry face.
Several old cans of tobacco stuck in globs of tar.
Randy was here.
DNA strands.
Faces, and names.
All there, writing in the hot black tar.
Mostly invisible. But not to those who look.
And so, like Randy, I think we all sign our name somewhere, on the road of life with whatever tools fate gifts us.
Randy.
Writing in the sand or on the road. Just a bit of tar melded to the road, for bikers, and joggers, and the contemplative minds to appreciate.
Some build huge towers on the side of the road, or castles with rooms, and doors and walls, and great chambers with flags, and trumpets---so that everyone can see and worship. To justify some part of our existence, to get what? To sign our name, and hope it lasts?
Yet is all just sand. All tar, mostly.
The harder we try to keep the pavement of life from covering up our monoliths, the more miserable we get, and the harder we try to prop them from falling.
But it's all mostly just sand castles, and bits of tar that will wash away, eventually no matter how many times we sign our name.
The ocean of life will wash it away. The road will get repaved by others, and signed by other travelers. As it should. And if something stays, maybe it's part of the road of life itself, or the ocean, like a shell, or a piece of polished see glass, or a washed up bit of treasure.
Far better to play in the sand, and know that it is just a earth castle, built with human hands.
As one of my favorite people, and a literal play director, who has a natural delight in life, always says, no matter what life hands him, "Easy come. Easy go."
Words to live by.
"Easy come. Easy go."
Words that should be etched onto all roads.
Life.
The motto of children---they ease into life. They know it is only real play when it is a bit of fun. They stop when it is not, and call out all the boring bits with no reserve. It's just a bit of earth, a bit of sand, just a bit of tar.
They don't make an empire they can hold onto. Only a moment of fun.
"Easy come. Easy go."
Then they go down another road, and find something else to delight in.
To be on the road, with the ocean, the water, the waves, and each other. And know that our sand piles are that. Something to enjoy, alone, or together.
The waves they rise. They fall, and go back where they came.
"Easy come. Easy go."
Life is much easier that way.
"Easy come. Easy go."
There is nothing that can be held onto.
We are all just bits of sand.
The real bits never die.
So we might as well play. And when the time comes.
"Easy come. Easy go."
When the curtain comes up, the masks fall off.
And we will find out that it was all just a dance, a play.
We might have played a bit more.
Held on a little less tightly.
Lived a little lighter.
Laughed a bit more.
The drama of life.
The roads.
The tar.
The vehicles in which we travel.
Our names.
The dance.
The play.
"Easy come. Easy go."
The waves come, and the castles fall away.
And it's best our castles go. And we finally realize how much, "Make believe" us adults have been playing at for generations, far more than the games of the children.
Yes.
Let the ephemeral, changing, unstable castles go.
They will go anyway.
No matter how tightly they are held on to, no matter how much tar is placed on our roads, they will eventually crack.
My neighbor just had an accident and smashed every bone in his face.
In one moment.
The life he knew. Changed.
Another neighbor slipped off the road, when she wasn't paying attention, and got totally stuck in the barrow pit, her car stuck on top of a post.
We all pitched in and dug her out.
One moment on the road, driving to where we think we need to be.
Another, in the barrow pit.
I had a pile of darling little chicks I was carefully watching over, only to have a skunk burrow into their pen and eat all but two up in a single night.
Poof.
Gone.
Writing in the sand, the 'chickens' we tend to.
All anyone has is right now. The nature of life and the road will always change, as will the view, and the lovely seasons, and the people we pass by. But that's why it's so delicious.
Writing in the tar.
"Easy come. Easy go."
The more that I get with that, the more life seems to flow. The more I appreciate the squeaky old bikes. And the new ones. Old friends, and new.
Randy, Jim, Joe, and Clair.
The writing in the tar. And if we read it right, they are just arrows pointing on the road of life, hopefully to the same place.
And if they say anything worth saying, they are just emblems of something bigger than just tar and sand, emblems of the ocean where they came from.
