Saturday, February 03, 2007

Ghosting and weaving into the dark future

My old silver bike broke at the front fork, after decades of faithful and reliable service, so I went to Bristol and bought a desirable new light greyish one, and set off across the dark city on a mission of visitation. The gears had not been adjusted at the shop, so I had only one gear with an embarrassing chain rattle, but apart from that, it was a dream. Cycled carefully (not used to Bristol) among the crowd of dangerous tin-ton motorised enclosed mad poisonous sinking quadricycles and stopped at a red light. A cyclist breezed by me, across the stopped traffic and off into the darkness. I set off after him. We floated noislessly along the ragged network of cycle/walkways across Bristol’s bombed out centre, and gathered another three or four or five comrades, ghosting and weaving along the ways, rarely stopping, just working the old forgotten lanes and paths, noislessly without effort, one sometimes leaving another sometimes joining, pushing together into the dark future of our lives, dark alleys picked out by scattered lights until one by one we peel off at our warm, hollow welcome home, leaving the never resting motors to their inevitable doom.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why the dark future? I understand, but I don't believe, for me this name 'future' is always light, positive. Isn't positive, that future exist?

DocRichard said...

Hi Mia, thank you for the criticism, I have written a happier ending now for you and all of us. We must make an active, conscious choice to believe that we have a future because the alternative is to slump into the inactivity of despair.

Anonymous said...

Hello,
yes it is what I mean. We people are for fight, not for surrender. But we need a bit of sorrow to know taste of joy. Our life is so simply, why we don't notice it?
I read your Profile and expect your blog will be very interesting, besides I found by chance - word "weaving" fault...