Bicyclists and IntoleranceRiding along the mountain roads while Ralph drives affords me a lot of time just to observe the jagged silhouette of the mountains, outcroppings of boulders, stands of trees, and assorted wildlife. I play with my perception. I can view things singly or as part of one vast entity. And, yet, there is a troubling exception to my view of unity - bicyclists. As I gaze out of our car window, the wind smelling fresh and alive, the trees singing, the tires humming, my senses are jarred by straining, awkward, skinny, plastic-helmeted, seemingly deranged human beings riding bicycles up the side of a mountain. I can’t get my mind around them. They come one after the other, and I am as mystified when I look at them as if I were watching a dog roll dice. |
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They look like some sort of salt water lure to me. In their shiny, skin-tight clothing of bright, unnatural colors, their plastic water bottles, and high-tech alloy bicycles, they are sort of like this metal and plastic neon mess that one puts on the end of a trolling line in hopes of catching a red fish or a marlin. I have begun to imagine what they would look like to alien beings who observe these odd, brightly colored things crawling up the sides of mountain roads from a distance of many thousand feet. Just imagine you are a space person with the mind of a sea bass looking out the window of your spaceship at the countryside below. Your eye is caught by this garishly colored object wiggling below… I hate watching these bicyclists anymore. I see them snatched off the road kicking and screaming. Maybe they become a lure in some alien tackle box. It’s unnerving. “Oh, Brother. It’s always something with you, isn’t it?” I could hear the exasperated voice of my Higher Self or my spirit guide or the Great Mother, or whomever it is who talks to me in the spaces when my mind is silent. “You start to get close to at sense of unity, and now you are imaging bicyclists picked off the road by aliens, for God’s sake! Get yourself together, Kid!” “OK, OK….” |