Cars as Killers

Riding, eating, sleeping. Riding, eating, sleeping. Riding, eating, sleeping. These become the basic tenets of my day, interspersed by the not-so-random occurrences of serendipity. The days sort of meld together into this infinite oneness, names of places fading into the proverbial dust i'm leaving in my wake. The urge to move forward on my journey compels me to keep pushing in moments of hunger, exhaustion, and sometimes even ordinariness.

Yet there is one thing that will stop me in my tracks every time, "roadkill." If the once living creature has been repeatedly run over by vehicles and is well on its way of reconsumption by the cycle, I won't stop, but if it is fresh, I will usually hop off my bike. I find Owls, Hawks, Coyotes, Rabbits, you name it. All having been extinguished for thrusting themselves into the age-old existential query, prompting me to ask why it was they decided to cross the road just then.

In the past few days, I have found some of the most beautiful Owls on the side of the road. Freshly struck by some speeding automobile careening towards their destiny of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. This amazingly sacred animal lost its life purely for another being's want of rapidity and immediacy.

As I stopped to pick up the Owl and place them in the tall grass alongside the road, offering prayers of a swift and effortless return to bliss, I looked around me and saw nothing but remnants of this "need for speed." The obsession is pervasive and touches all of us. I am no different, only that I have ventured to step outside of my previous conditioning to heal a deep wound inflicted upon me by the culture that came before me.

So where does it come from? How did we arrive in this almost helpless state of collectively rushing towards the edge of an ecological cliff? The more I see, the more I hear, the more I feel...it comes to me that the marriage between money and oil has created some sort of dark alchemical  reaction, holding humans hostage to the lust of the curse. The thirst is insatiable. Many people look at me on a bicycle and remark how they could never do what I am doing. I always laugh with them and assure them they could, they need only start by stepping out.

But so many of the sleeping masses are unaware that they have yet to become hip. Hip to the reality that they are enslaved to an energy sucking machine, one that uses their labor and spiritual energy to hold the rest of the world hostage in a game of chicken. Wars rage on so their ease of travel to and fro can cost $2.19 a gallon, the lungs of the earth are slashed and burned so the grills can be piled high with cheap beef, mountaintops are cut and mined, radiation is pumped into the ground, rivers are dammed, and fracking becomes king...all for the images of modern day sunday slavery to be pumped mercilessly into their awaiting hypothalamus. (TV will rot your brain, Kids.)

Really, what I truly wish for is for everyone to slow the fuck down. We are not so important, people. Our journey is unfolding and all of the rushing around to do do do is really starting to bum out the rest of the soon-to-be extinct world. What do we think will happen when we reach the cliff? "G.O.D." is going to come down with his benevolent and calloused hands to build us a bridge to Zion? Maybe with our infinite wisdom and inherent awesomeness I see being touted so often, we could really collectively come up with some solutions that bring us back to earth.

Respect to all of you out there doing the work. Keep inspiring everyone you can to be their highest selves. We've all got miles to go before we sleep, miles to go...