Southern Discomfort

Pardon me while I stumble all over myself.

“Do you ... do you have ...... Do you want to make a car?”

Do I want to make a car? Well ... (lingering pause) ... What I want to do ......  Ashley

There was something in the way that he said my name, whereby I’m still somewhat challenged to unravel, that both relieved and exacerbated my fear at the same time. I was trembling. I wonder if he noticed.

... is, I want to focus on ... uh ... I want to focus on a task that’s incomplete. And that is, I want to work on the C4. On a new bike. Right now. And I’ve assembled a new team to work with me on this bike. This is gonna be the best one.

One of the - the lead design guy on this new team, he would probably say “yeah, one day we’ll do something like that.” But I mean, you know, for a middle aged guy in the latency period of middle age, I’m pretty buoyant. I’m kinda the anti-gravity guy. And I tend to get too far out in front so right now I almost don’t want to even think about that.

Because I’ve got - I want to get exactly what I want to get out of the motorcycle. I still - it - and I, ya know, I hesitate to even say, ya know, I haven’t finished because i don’t really want to live... I don’t think that life is really about finishing. I don’t think anyone really does finish. I think that’s one of the most misunderstood aspects, is that there’s not a conclusion.

He seemed to be considerably more comfortable discussing the bikes.

And I think that, I think we got off the track a long time ago. The . . . if I am on the right track, and I probably am, then my passion is to communicate through the motorcycle. So the real narrative for me is the narrative of the Confederate series of bikes, which will be a perpetual series of motorcycles.

And each motorcycle, in it’s own way, is like a screenplay - for me. Each one has its own unique narrative but they all, essentially, are asking the viewer to fight that toughest fight - to be willing to go up against that noise in your head, that negativity, which really isn’t organic. It can be dealt with but you have to be aware of it. And it’s, I think, harder because of the indoctrination.

And so here’s this high strung, super badass, superabundant energy, rebel motorcycle. And it is basically pulling you to say: beware, beware. It’s like a beware sign, it’s like a skull and crossbones, you know, poison, you know, I am the elixir to cure the toxicity.

But in his own words, comfort wasn’t what he was after.

So we live - comfort seekers buy pleasant fiction. If what I want is comfort than I don’t want hard truth. I don’t want to know the truth. As a matter of fact my brother would say don’t. We’ve had discussions about our elderly mom and he would say don’t tell her the truth. And he would get angry with me because I want my relationship with my mother to be organic and natural and real. And he doesn’t want her to have a real relationship. He thinks that she’s too old and it’s disturbing that she should live - that she should be told things that will make her comfortable even though they are lies.

I look at life through my own prism. And my own prism tells me that: God! I mean, I have three sons and I certainly don’t want my sons to, at some point, look at me and say “now that dad is at this point, we’ve got to lie to him all the time so that he’ll be comfortable.”

My life is not, I was not put here to be comfortable. I was put here to seek and understand truth, to discover what is real. That is the purpose now. Within that I mean: that’s the broad base purpose for everyone. What is real for you?

You’re here, in my view, you and I are both here to discover the truth of what’s real for us. What is real for you, obviously, is something only you can define. No one can define that but you. So I think it’s good to get away.

I spent about a year in San Francisco so I got to have a lot of solitude. I’ve had times in my life when I had great solitude. And I used motorcycling as a tool for self discovery, for meditative self discovery. When you’re on a motorcycle, particularly our motorcycles, they have a rhythm and a heartbeat. They have life force. It’s almost like they have blood instead of oil pumping through the engine.

And when you’re on a bike like that, a Confederate, it does bring the noise down and you do find yourself in an experience like I think you’re describing about aspects of your time in New Orleans where, all of a sudden, everywhere you look it’s like a mirror. And you can see, only you’re not just looking at what’s physical and you can see what’s spiritual. You can see the real inside the motorcycle. Under the right circumstances can strip away what’s physical and get you into what’s actually going on inside the heart, the soul, the mind. Yeah. 

When I left, I didn’t want to be comfortable either.

I drove aimlessly for some time. Running the words “commercial girl” through my head, I decided to try the label on for size. He had pushed me to think of a recent frivolous purchase and I hadn’t completely been able to. But I wanted to try again. So this go-round my intention was to think of the most recent, unnecessary, material thing that I had wanted. 

 Instantly, the Tiffany Compass came to mind. It was so lovely. Why hadn’t I purchased it for myself? As I thought about it, big tears rolled down my cheeks. 

 I didn’t want the compass.

At least, I don’t have any desire or inclination to purchase the compass for myself. What I long for is companionship. I want to be close to and have the (intimate) support of someone who knows what it means to me to be mindful of my direction.

So here's what was in the vanity mirror that afternoon... 

My uncomfortable reality is that I’m a little exhausted by the peculiarity of my personality that creates a certain degree of solitude. There are many times when I don’t fit in this world. And that hasn’t made me want to be anyone else, but it’s certainly not pleasant fiction. 

The truth is that most of the time I go back and forth between resolve:

“I’m not different for the sake of being different, only for the desperate sake of being myself. I can’t join your gang: you’d think I was a phony and I’d know it.” 

Vivian Stanshall

and melancholy:

“I’m tired boss. Tired of bein’ on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. Tired of not ever havin’ me a buddy to be with, or tell me where we’s coming from or going to, or why. Mostly I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world everyday. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head all the time.” 

John Coffey

But that day, there was Romance.  That day, in the car, I received a gift so lovely that this lifetime will rarely, if ever, find cause to eclipse.  And, ironically, it was a gift from a Man who put the question "what could possibly be romantic about a car?" into my head in the first place.  But the answer that I got didn't belong to that question entirely.  The answer that I got belonged to "what could possibly be romantic about being alone?"

And I can tell you, this Christmas Eve, that answer is all the present I'll need.

(Note: On the 26th of December, I exchanged the idea that I would ever see Europe for the first time with another person for a trip that brought more Love & Passion into my soul than I could ever have imagined that it would hold.  And I am no longer afraid of being alone.)