My Texan Girl

She sang sweetly in the cold rain. She came outside in the cold and smoked by the fire. She was there to love me in the night. She ground coffee in the morning and brought me to the kitchen and massaged my head. I left her that morning and never saw her again. She was a young woman from Texas and her man had died in war.

From the snow

This is a good etiology, the surplus. It gives a man power and levels those who have the funny numbers in the bank accounts and feel special. There is much wild here, much beautiful, much distracting. It would be fine for a man who is riding, he stops a few days, and then continues on. But in my contemplation to live here, already this commerce takes away too much of my energy. Looking for a t-shirt yesterday, any cheap cotton t-shirt, I wasted too much time. I want back the life of my being on the road. It was good and severe in Argentina and I told myself I would never go back to the cold. But last night I had no energy to see the city. I know too much now--the result of a party, even with the beautiful women of the city, would be weakness and weariness in the motning. And the only way of living possible to hit the clubs and get the women is a life of surplus pursuit, because Rio, and perhaps Brasil, is controlled by the successful pursuit of surplus.

I thought I could rent an apartment and practice the language but once I take the bike away the whole journey has lost its meaning. I can't do it. Those italics just appeared out of nowhere and I can't see the screen on the sun but they are good and fitting italics.

All of a man's senses are destroyed by the surplus. He becomes like the three ovejas on the boat at Villa O' Higgins, terrified to move and playing dead after the ties to their legs were cut. I have nothing to unleash.

One could say that there is something wrong with such a man who can't adopt. Perhaps the Brazilian men would criticize me. Yet they also would not be the ones who kayak, run, cycle, and climb across the world. This is the activity that makes me happy.

What a thing, a man who wants to rest but is only happy when he is on his bicycle. It is better than a drunk who must have his beer. It is better than the cocainista who must have his blow. It is better than the man of surplus who must have his surplus.

The question we must ask the bicycle man is: Oh man of the bicycle, tell us of your way of being. And he says: don't confuse me with the Buddha or the sitting, for I am nothing. I am the dogs who run with me. I am the polenta at night which doesn't warm my spirit but warms the spirit of my journey.

And so the man of the bicycle rarely has anything to say. He listens to many stories yet he rarely says anything. Rarely do the westerners have a heart for his stories. He must go to where there is cold and wind and open pampas if he wants to speak to a man. And sadly he realizes there is no way to use any of his life of surplus to be happy every again. He cannot purchase a bus ticket to Patagonia as he must arrive to the holy land by foot or by bicycle or by horse. And so Fabian, his friend in cold snowy pampas, is very far away. Perhaps it was a mistake to fly to Rio but I didn't have it in me to ride up Ruta 3, Christ, in the cold I had defeated. I think of the men who go on a second tour in war.

Brasil was a challenge against the matrix as its toxic waves washed up against the shores of a happy, tropic people. How the Brazilian people smile, eat, and make babies as the large matrices shamelessly kill them and exchange their lives for the life of surplus in the cities.

How much of the surplus is the of the people and the richness of the foods and the ice slush in the cold beers and the music and dance of the city? Aren't these just the same things the people would do outside of the surplus of the city and in the abundant surplus of the jungle? This is the great paradox of Brasil and perhaps of the jungle.

There will be a time for me to sit and it is not now.

Men

Recent feminism isn’t a failure of women, but a failure of men. When men degenerate, something fills the chasm of power that is left behind. It could be dogs. It could be disease or environmental destruction. In this case, women, sensing the need to protect their children, fill the gap. We receive a terrible result. The men of North American who blame women are as men who blame corn when it is not tended and watered. It will not grow and flourish. Shouting at the barren corn fields does no good. Telling men how to find and eat the remaining healthy plants does no good. Men must look at the fields and recognize there is trouble in this year’s crop. They must tend to their crops, and then, only then, think about their next meal.

Andes

This was what I was looking for—riding alone in wilderness and beauty. The cities have too much—far too little beauty and far too much which weakens a man. Far too many people. A man loses his independence and edge. Once a man’s desire for security predominates over his actions, adventure ends. When adventure ends, masculinity declines or disappears. When masculinity disappears, you have the societies we see today: socialist, weak, dependent, sick. This must have been the authentic attitude which Sarte spoke about, at which he grasped but was never able to articulate. For, as Moraline aptly put, Sartre was a sitter, a man of the city. He was brilliant and realized how false the human mindset had become. He said there was an authentic path, a path that was available originally. He just could not see that it was the ‘primitive’ adventure for the man away from others that held the key to this authenticity.

The Sun

1. A man wakes and rises with the sun. Now, a man should rise as the sun rises. This is his being an individual, alone and away from the village. Yes, the men in the village may awake at the same time, but none of them know singly what wakes them. Is it the sun? Is it an animal or the animals? Is it other men? Even if a man, among other men, thinks he knows why he wakes in the morning—perhaps he is convinced it is the sun—he will never know unless he alone. (And how can a man really ever be alone?)
2. Why should a man be awakened by the sun? Being awakened by the sun represents a pure connection to the earth. His sleep suddenly has meaning. He no longer follows the meaningless rising tides of other men, of society, of a village. The sun is the last great reach of a mountain from which a man can pull himself from other men.

archeologist of morning

Shitting out the West

Nietzsche claims a man who leaves his culture will be weaker for it, but his creation—what he tries for in his lifetime but won’t get—will be stronger than the culture he left.  This is right, and is describes the pain frustration, isolation, and loneliness of a man who has left his primary culture and has moved on to start a new one. 

When a man has such space, a vacuum is created. If he had many ideas that could not flourish in his old land, they explode in size and depth in the new land--so much so that we can call these 'new ideas.' 

Yet in the new land there are new people and new languages. These new people and new languages compete with the man’s ideas which are now flourishing in the new land. The language competes with his new ideas and soon his mind grows exhausted. 

He admires the new culture and wants all the new women. He must make a living and find shelter and explain himself constantly. All of this competes with the strength of his new ideas. Nietzsche means to say that the ideas are stronger and better than ever, but the man himself cannot handle both his new ideas and his new surroundings.

Only his children will know the ease of a familiar culture and the strength of their father’s new ideas.