Month: February 2015

Excerpt

Posted on by justrollingby

A paragraph from the book I just can’t seem to actually finish… maybe that is the point; maybe it is not supposed  to be finished…

“Just south of the lodge known as Bell II, I look through a clearing in the forest and see for the first time Canada’s great and glaciated Coast Range. Craggy peaks engulfed in ice and nary a road any where near them, I feel a washing aesthetic come over me, similar to seeing for the first time in many years the Canadian Rockies weeks earlier. I am coming home to a place I have never been, and a heartache for all things wild and free develops within, and a budding sense of realism penetrates all that this pedal north is becoming. Thoughts of my past life in Moab are becoming a distant memory, with visions of the North encompassing all of me and all I will become. This place, the Cassiar, her mighty rivers and expansive forest, begin to feel oddly familiar. There is a vague yet noticeable tinge of something ancient in these forests; something unexplainable that has catapult me into a womb of wilderness and animals. I see a Black Bear, then another, then another. The concepts of the modern world drifting from my heart; the destruction I feel I have left behind, the crying of a world gone mad, and the never ending forest are all I see now. In retrospect, I am quite certain that it was at this point my life changed forever. Never again could I be satisfied or feel safe in a world full of madness and decay. Here, my heart lost in a sea of timber and mountains, I see nothing but balance and I could never again return to what I had left behind. I was still a long way from Alaska, and if what I was experiencing here was only a precursor, I felt I might simply explode when I arrived in what the Athabascan’s call, “The Great Land”.”

Question All You Have Been Taught

Posted on by justrollingby

The following piece was written, uploaded, deleted, and uploaded again. It is a work-in-progress

Also, If you want to get the most from JRB, and really want to read the stuff I put on here, don’t just wait for it to be posted on facebook; SUBSCRIBE!

You can do this by pushing the “follow” button to the left and entering your email address. In fact, at some point very soon, I will stop posting JRB to Facebook altogether. Just Rolling By needs to be it’s own entity, not something that is read because folks see it scrolling mindlessly through Facebook…

QUESTION ALL THAT YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT

One of the things that is perpetually on my mind these days as so many more before, is the notion of modern life. Seems we have become an article of economics, and the conceptual hows and how nots of the best and most fullfilling way in which to live one’s life upon the ever deepening demeanor of modern civilization. As Thoreau wrote, “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” This has always rung true with me, long before reading for the first time “Civil Disobediance”. I remember not so long ago, on a long distance bicycle journey throughg Alaska’s Arctic that there seems a disconnect between who we have become and who we really are. Since childhood, I have been dumbfounded by concepts of material possesion, and the means to support the idea at large, versus the the path that we all must take to achieve personal happiness, and how it might affect the world as a whole and who we are in relationship to the planet. Too many people’s happiness and well being seem rooted in the degredation of planetary and community health. This is a tricky one, this notion, and it begs those who might follow a deeper and more compelling path of what might be considered “true” happiness, to re-consider what is really at stake. Thus, there are questions that seem to ride on my shoulder on a daily, hell. hourly basis: What do we as a species require to be fullfilled? What are the underlying needs that we all have to feel safe, happy, and socially connected? Without damaging what most in our arcane and insane culture has led us to believe? My belief is that we have created a society that has empowered nonsense and belittled growth and sincerity.

How can one feel deeply satisfied with the concepts of the modern work “ethic”, paying for and endowing to banks, lending institutions, schools, social security, IRA’s, stock investments, real estate ventures, medicare, health insurance, car insurance, licensing fees, building permits, taxes, mortgages, rent, internet access, cell phone coverage, fuel costs, vehicle maintenence, hospital bills, pollution, environmentral rape, social ignorance, chemical dependance, pornography, corruption, crime, false religion, bureaucracy, and the general bastardization of a society that we have allowed to be run by those of a moraly corrupt disposition? It is total and complete nonsense to me.

I  wish to live a relatively simple life. One that is mostly free from government intervention, one that is free from scrutiny of the status quo, one that is aimed at health of self and surroundings, one that rely on a community that rspects itself and those who are in need, and the only way that this can be achieved, in my very small and humble view, is to gain what is lacking. What I speak of is a concept that would eliminate all politics, law enforcement, voting, religion, crime, dependance, and corruption of all kinds. This is a concept, unfortunately, of a radical nature, one that the human world has never , ever seen before. Ever. Religion and politics pretend to teach it, the under payed teachers of our youth pretend to convey it, and the government claims they have it, But none do.  Without it, the human world will self destruct and those not prepared will suffer.  The human condition seems to be fueled by greed and control.

There is only one true answer to the accelerating demise of this decrepit civilization. Personal Responsibility. That’s it. It is that simple. I see it lacking in every aspect of modern culture and it is destroying us. However, it sure is giving some well paying jobs to priests, politicians, welfare workers, doctors, lawyers, and law makers.

If you don’t have this basic, required  trait, GET IT. if you don’t, you are old news and will be left behind.

OK, E-nuff… off to have an adventure or two.