Creativity and Alcohol!

Had a thoroughly enjoyable time in the pub tonight! What is it about pubs and good times; they seem to attract each other!

Concerning the subject of travel. The more and more I read Illich's book, Energy and Equity, the more I seem to find myself berating those who travel by car. I don't want to be one of those cyclists, who attack, either physically or verbally, other motorists. Yet the more and more I see of the world I find a certain deadness, non-caring and basically drab part of human life. We drive instead of walk. We drive instead of cycle. Compare us to our ancestors! Whatever age you may imagine.

Nowadays we can travel to Greece, China, America, Portugal, Brazil, Thailand (always popular), Spain, Tanzania, Ghana. All these magical, unknowable places. But do we see anymore of the world, travelling by plane to all these places.

Cycling from Canterbury to Lewes (I don't recommend to the faint-hearted), I found much of my enjoyment from seeing so much of the route I took. In that day, 6 hours, I rode 65 miles. By car I could travel that in an hour, and all the differences and similarities would have passed me by. How best to explain it. By bike I was able to travel at my own pace, by car the pace is set by the traffic, a constant speed is expected and maintained. By bike I was able to experiance the road as I rode on it, by car the journey becomes merely that, a moment between the point A, the departure, and the point B, the arrival.

I planned to cycle through France into Italy with my father this summer, but due to complications of health (namely cancer) it was postponed. To travel by car to Italy would take a couple of days would be entirely skip much of the journey so that Rome became the most important point of the journey. Yet if we take life, we see that it is the actual journey not the arrival that defines us; defines our being, defines our manner, defines our life. Speed bypasses these moments, the trip becomes about the place rather than the journey, yet the journey is just as important as the place - both are experiences that define us. By bicycle we encourage ourselves to break our limits. By plane we wait for a couple of hours to be comfortable in a foreign place.

I don't pronounce judgement, nor do I seek to discourage people from their most comfortable moments, but I do want to encourage others to seek outside what is expected of themselves. Breaking tradition is a human trait, far more than speech and far more than culture, that in modern parlance seems to define us. Our world, our culture, our technology and our modernity is a break from nature; from what she desires and from what she seeks. Yet we gladly wallow in this self-satisfied bubble of easy living and easy travelling.

The holiday has become a competition; a competition to see how far a single person can travel. No doubt this is partly to blame upon a global culture that seeks equality in understanding - a noble goal, were it not for the difficulties that lie between.

What can I say to change a way a person thinks, acts, defines themselves? Nothing, we are all actors on the same stage, and the wish to change another is a folly. Not because we cannot, but because our best laid plans are as dust. What do I know of another's motivations? Yet that is what pushes those moral! people who seek to change the world for their God, or their humanity! Vanity has never known such wonderful subjects. Not even goodness for goodness sake, does justice to the proper motivation that causes a positive and powerful person to act. They do not seek to change the world, they act only to change themselves, to find peace in their hearts and in their minds (whatever that may mean). These people, these people that Vanity cannot buy, are the kinds of people that buy pencils for schools and sacrifice happiness (oh! so over-rated) for the well-being of others! I am far to vain for their glory, should they be welcomed as the human beings that they are. The rest of us are animals; rabbits who fuck and eat far too much, and worse ... find pleasure in it!