Ride of the Valkyries

Cold and the rushing wind take my breath away. Or is it fear?

I ride motorcycles – but not as a pillion passenger, not now. I rode with Alan a week before he was killed. He tried to scare me – and he did, but I didn’t show it. On the night he died he had a passenger; although seriously injured, the lad survived.
But hey, a motorcycle combination has three wheels; it cannot fall over. If you believe this, try going for a fast ride on a child’s tricycle, and see what happens when you take the first bend. True, in the hands of an expert a ‘combination’ is one of the safest vehicles on the road, but driven by a novice it can be lethal. And I forgot to ask Myra whether she was ‘expert’ or ‘novice’.

The Buddhists say that two things should be avoided at all costs: hope and fear.
I can avoid hope easily enough, but fear?

When I was little I was frightened of becoming ill. It may have started when a pal was taken into hospital with ‘appendicitis’. I was terrified of becoming constipated (someone had told me that this was how you ‘got appendicitis’). I developed what I suppose now would be called a ‘phobia’ about food. I was always asking my mother ‘will this do me any harm?’ The ‘this’ was usually something that I particularly liked! Now, after years in the therapy trade, I can see how this gradually progressed to the point where the enjoyment of anything was followed by an attack of anxiety… This translated into the unconscious injunction: You can do anything so long as you don’t enjoy it.

But I think it began before the Wilfred incident (the appendicitis boy). My mother was always telling me to ‘be careful’. She used to say ‘I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you – you are my life’
I was terrified of making my mum unhappy. She used to say to me, ‘you will make me very unhappy if you do that. ‘That’ could be anything. Sometimes I did not get an advance warning. So I made many mistakes – and felt guilty.
Anxiety and Guilt: the foundation stones for a beautiful neurosis.

Time is elastic – yes, I’ve said that before, but tonight the elastic is being stretched further than ever. Dark looming shapes approach, flash past; intermittent patches of blurred greyness; more black shapes – it goes on and on. I have been sitting on this hard, vibrating loaf of rubber for hours, days, weeks… forever, as this old ‘B’ movie - my past life - jerks its way through the projector in my head.
Occasionally I glance down to my left and glimpse my brother, reclining in the warmth of the sidecar, his eyes closed; I think he’s asleep. But where was he when all this stuff was going on? Ah well, that is another story – but more of that later.

I was led to believe I was somehow ‘better’ than other children: cleverer, more polite, thoughtful, considerate, tidy, trustworthy and – most important of all – sensible. Of course, it went without saying that I was more fortunate than other children. All in all, a terrible responsibility, a heavy burden for young shoulders to carry. But carry it I did.

Without warning, time starts to contract. We top a hill and there are lights ahead. The engine note has undergone a subtle change – it sings; the vibrations have become a stimulating massage; the bike, a living thing – and I am a part of it. I am no longer afraid.

It is not that I have resigned myself to my fate – whatever that might be - neither have I gained a sudden trust in my driver. It is more like acceptance: a positive acceptance. A giving over to the present moment: the speed, the swing and swoop of the machine, the crackle of the exhaust, the smell of engine oil, the surging power beneath me.

I want this to go on forever. But the elastic snaps back. The lights are upon us. Suburbia swallows us up.