Riding Circles...

A cowboy saddles up in the early dawn... and rides out to make his circle.

Turns out... life is mostly that... Riding Circles. You pack up your warbag and take off from where you are, searching out what you hope to be... if you're lucky you find it... Only thing is, most times, you find out that you already were.

* Dumb Kid... somewhere around 1968*

The kid I knew... Knew exactly what he wanted to do and to be... But others had other ideas... and weren't reticent about abusing his ambitions or creating obstructions; Through misdirection or if necessary, outright theft.

The damn fool mistake the kid made was to LISTEN (against the advice of wise old hands) to the lying BS that soh-sigh-uh-tee and even family will dump on a person's dreams. He swallowed the guilt trips of malicious civilization, and for too long believed those lies.

Poor dumb bastard... He already WAS... pretty much everything he ever dreamed of being.

*punk kid's instincts were truer than he realized way back in '68*

 ... and all he was ever meant to be... and people, I'm here to tell you... than Cowboy, there is nothing finer.

It still enrages me that... anyone... thinks they possess the Right, Wisdom, or proper place to lay judgement on the dreams of another.

Either you give moral support, emotional backing, material support even... or you keep your damned trap shut. The parent, friend or passerby that thinks they know enough to judge the dreams of another is to say it clearly... an order of magnitude more useless than tits on a turd.

But then... what the hell does soh-sigh-uh-tee care? It's onliest desire is to squeeze all the juice out of a person. It squalls about duty and loyalty and honor... yet ... those treasures only flow one way... its way.

Soh-sigh-uh-tee... civilization... is nothing but the conglomeration of all the negative assets of humanity. When civilization shows up... Wild Country and the best of a man fade away.

Power, tyranny, institutionalized prejudice, greed, lies promoted as truth, lessers of two evils, nationalism, lipstick on a pig, the philosophy that tolerance is the way~as long as you understand that my way is the only way... Arrogant Eloquent Cowardice... THAT is soh-sigh-uh-tee.

I'd sooner ride a spavined mule than listen to another minute of the laughable fantasy that civilization is some accomplishment to be bragged on. It is a lie built on a fabrication wrapped in a fiction fueled by greed.

It didn't take that poor dumb kid too long to realize that... just way too long to give up being polite about it and call the stinking pig... just that... a reeking, stinking pig , clear and plain... but... like they say; It's never too late to be what you would have been.

So if this Ol' buster catches you pissin' down somebody's back and tellin' him it's rainin'... don't get all twisted up when I leave your cajones hangin' on the fence...

 Iffn ya'll think I'm just talkin' loose... try me out. I ain't the scared kid no more. ;)


Headin' back to what I was and what I should have done... a long damn time ago.

Sayin' it Plain
Brian

To the Store and To the Shop... the Bitter Taste of Reality

Heidi's gone back to the store... I have moved to Roosevelt Lake. A hundred miles or so closer on the long slow roll north. Trying to stay south of the snow... but many tasks stand ready to be accomplished.

The line is slowly being reeled in and I'm slowly being pulled back that way... back it seems to much of the old life.

Simple reality is... Dollars rule the world. Unless you're one of the gutsy few willing to live with two T-shirts, a couple pair of underwear and whatever else will fit in a saddlebag slung over your shoulder...

... you get in line and put one foot in front of the other toiling for the man... for however long you can stand it... because outside of a precious few outliers... The Man holds the key to the vault that holds the dollars.

Without some of those dollars... Nothing happens... so... don't curse prostitutes for being of low morals... are we all not selling something ever more precious?

I have little ability to tolerate standing in that line of obedient servants... at all.

SO... for me... the prospect of "employment"... in some "normal" way... has become ever more detestable. I might as well just knock over a liquor store and go to the state resort. In my eyes... it's much the same...

One saving grace for me is that I basically have very low requirements for bangles and doo dads. The motivation for those things has become ever less over time. Which reduces my need for the corrupting cash...

That protection seems thinner though as the cost of living rises; faster than the wages it outruns... concealed of course by not raising the prices... but downsizing that which is bought.

Is not reducing the size of a 12 oz. package to 10 ounces, while holding the same price... basically a 16% inflation??? while they report "Success" in managing inflation to hold it to 1.6% ... uh... riiiiiiight...

Shades of that sort of thing runs clear across the board. It burrows its way into every facet of soh-sigh-uh-tee... double the price of phony health insurance... while tripling the deductible and reducing the services paid for... and call it a change to make it Affordable. And then, to make sure those who see the game and try to walk away from it Can Not... Make it illegal to not participate. Fine them if they do. Make sure they PAY to perpetuate the stupidity... willing or not. Legislate the suspension of common sense.

Compound that with the cost of equipment to wander with anything other than boot leather and a back pack... and it's pretty much a mathematical equation... One day that grumpy drifter is gonna hit the wall where there's just no dollars left to push the rig over the next mountain.

So... hunting the trail that brings home the necessities of subsistence... while avoiding the lash of the man's overseer... and the noise that altercation would bring... I'm heading toward familiar ground.

Writing, because the Shades of the twisted economic model have dug themselves deep into googles algorithm (where THEIR profits remain much unchanged as that of the Publishers who produce it plummet) combined with the fickleness of book publishing is not meeting the thin requirements placed on them.

So... a return to the old craft of a "Maker" in a Leather Shop seems in order. Diversify... Which of course... requires an infusion of those %@&   #@&^ ...missing Dollars!... as well as a less gypsy life.

The only place that sufficient dinero to fund that resurrection resides sits in the space between two wheels. :(

So... the way the winds blow...it would appear that barring some unexpected changes in fortune, in the very near future...

... a piece of Red Machinery will be going down the road... carrying somebody else...

You do what you have to do
Brian

One More Day

It's been a weird race week. It's like there's a strange "vibe" moving around through people impossible to explain. It even resulted in some well defined "frictions" within the crews working the race...

... or possibly that one or two egos over impressed with themselves, that were given a small amount of power, got a mite out of control. Etiquette restrains me to ambiguity ... (haven't used fancy words like that in a while!)

Suffice it to say that there are those who are motivated by being part of a team... and those that are driven by a bully mentality and to show that they are top dog... and when that sort runs into those who won't be bullied or allow them to get away with their nonsense... there's smoke and sparks!

The weatherman predicted a huge storm to hit us with up to an inch of rain... turned out to be mostly huffin' and puffin'... Nothing much happened fri/sat night, just a few drips in the morning which was supposed to be the big blow... and then nothing appreciable until real late Saturday...

... now that got stiff enough to finally call the race with something like 20 laps left... and a good soaking rain that had already emptied the stands in the track...

So, with that mostly past us we now only have a day of haulin' Nascar butts left.

Heidi will fly back to the Front Range and her store on Tuesday... and I'll start rolling the rig on a long, very slow migration north. Hoping to get to the eastern side of the Rockies... After... the last snow...

 Ya'll know how well my planning works out generally... so it's likely to be a tail of the winter spring.

Starting to look north
Brian

*edited; because going in circles for ten hours or so you start getting days confused...