CHAPTER 4

FRUITS

OF THE WILD FOREST

THE IMPERMANENT SHEBANG

I have to tell you about an evil guy i met on this hitch-hiking trip.

i just said

"I have to tell you about an evil guy i met on this hitch-hiking trip",

and realize

i am speaking as though i believe,

with a bit of joyful animosity,

this other being, in part,

can be absolutely pinned down by me:

a true sub-component

of invariant him

perceived by

clear-seeing

invariant me

can be held in my mind's hand.

As though my encounter with him

had distilled

an unchanging, evil, solid part of him.

As though this

malign

invariant

captured by me

can serve as material

for a truth

(for why else would i have felt this necessity to talk to you about him?)

 

As though

via this invariant,

(evil), solid part of him

can be foreseen

his future, or mine, or yours.

And therefore is important.

As though people were a fixed species of robot.

As though my vision was absolutely faithful.

If

he did 'this'

then

he is 'this'

and, naturally,

therefore,

he will forever be 'this'

But life has taught me

TO DOUBT the power of

'TRUTHS'

of the form

"He is 'this'!"

" He is 'that'!"

Just as i would want people to feel an irritating grain of DOUBT

when one boldly affirms

that i am 'this' and not 'that'

after a short one-hour

encounter with me.

 

Having scribbled and scribbled descriptions of my life upon notebook pages for more than four decades as an explorer notches the trees in an unknown forest so that he will not go in circles,

life confronts me with

one important, BIG truth

about

human 'truths'.

i am 'this' and not 'that'

is a type of truth

that holds no predictive value.

As quick as it is said,

this

has already started its voyage

to that

More subtle happenings are happening.

The Truth-Judgement Function

of

The Universal Shebang,

(if there be a logic explaining IT,)

varies in time,

or, is so unstable

that a microscopic variation

in circumstance

alters it.

 

Every person i ever condemned for doing something 'horrendous',

that 'very same' form of 'horrendous act'

i, later,

with passionate-felt integrity,

with passionate-felt honesty,

in another social circumstance,

found myself doing.

This is such an important result of my research

that i must say it over again

in order to impress into your being its revelatory truth.

Indeed,

it is the greatest personal truth i have ever discovered

in my nearly 60 years of

search.

Every person i ever condemned for doing something

'horrendous',

that 'very same' form of 'horrendous act'

i, later,

with passionate-felt integrity,

with passionate-felt honesty

in another social circumstance,

found myself doing.

I, once, robbed an old lady.

It was just before i was to hitch-hike to Africa,

with hardly enough money

for both

four months' living

and

money enough

for the return.

I was a bit tight on that money level

and so i had been hesitating for weeks

to dive off into great adventure land...

for i was planning to go all the way down to Ghana

to meet friends there

to do, together, something GOOD for the universe..

One quiet, sunny morning,

as i am wandering through some vacant streets in London,

i spot on the pavement,

and pick up

a

wallet.

It contains a heavy amount of money.

It absolutely insures me going to Africa.

In the wallet, there is also identification,

addresses, pictures, everything that would be

needed to return the money to its true owner

--an old woman, not seemingly rich.

There is also a bill for her wedding dress;

her daughter is getting married.

The cost of the wedding dress corresponds to

the amount of money in the wallet.

I am certain that the loss of this money for

this woman would be a great one.

Did i give the money back to her?

No. I started for Africa!

If i had not built-up in my head

a sense of mission,

a sense of going down to Africa to do a specific, important GOOD,

would i have done the robbery?

Or,

if i had not come across

the perplexing wisdom,

SIN

IS

THE FIRST RUNG

OF

HOLINESS,

would i have robbed, then,

an old, poor woman of some joy?

 

If life were only clean and neat,

i would have been able to return the dosh

with adequate recompense, her smile of thankfulness.

 

The Universal Shebang

has no intrinsic moral orientation.

Two beings can start out from the same place

in the social map.

And they --though guided by the same moral philosophy--

within some future circumstance

will find themselves

on opposite sides of the barricades.

 

Therefore, who am i? A harsh judgement is asked for.

A thief? Again a harshjudgement is asked for.

Who is she? A soft judgement is asked for.

A pure and innocent old lady? Again a soft judgement is asked for.

How else make a condemnatory judgement of me?

But can we say anything with absolute certainty?

If all is change, how legitimate are condemnations affecting the future?

To defend against such abominations of thought,

there has been brought into existence

the antidote,

THE GOD

OF

JUDGEMENTS AND LEGITIMACY

JUDGES pray to such a GOD.

JUDGEMENTS

to injure another being's future

because of some past happening

must be magically legitimated.

JUDGES entering the place of judgement

must possess NO DOUBT

as to THEIR RIGHTS.

Stand up! The person possessing RIGHTS is entering!

He has a GOD on his side.

A TYRANNICAL GOD on his side!

 

A sensitive once said,

'Judge not so that ye be not judged;

For whosoever judgeth, so shall he be judged.

Someone else, MORE MODERN AND LESS GENERAL, once said,

'Being a Court Judge is a form of mental illness.'

I presume to have no RIGHTS over others.

I have given up the hard touch.

I can command no one.

I am the lowest man on the Social Totem Pole.

Perhaps, that's why i hitch-hike.

It situates me in my most comfortable position.

 

I am the lowest man on the Social Totem Pole

and yet i am a success.

Do you doubt that i am a success?

Have i not, for nearly 60 years,

got enough to eat, and escaped being eaten?

I robbed her and accepted the human burden

--whatever it be-- for this robbery.

I consciously took the sin on my own heart.

I wanted also, then, to understand what sin is.

I was young, but old enough to know that deep knowledge

is only gained first hand.

This was the biggest sin i had committed till then.

It fell into my lap and i couldn't say "No!"

I had become a thief

of a poor person,

at 35 years old.

 

THE QUANTUM THEORY OF FLEETING ENCOUNTERS

A righteous upstanding citizen might now, at this very moment,come ambling up to this 'me',

and turn around

and looking at you, the readers,

smilingly say

"He...", pointing at me, " ... is a thief!"

And you all might grin and up-and-down wag your heads in agreement.

And i am, from that moment forward,

'a thief'

and not

'a good person'.

 

Or, a friend hurts my pride

and i fall into the easy judgement:

"He is a fucking dominator!",

and distribute my attack on his reputation to one and all,

and grow rigidly cold to him

and refuse to speak to him

ever again.

 

Is this what i risk believing in?

A world in which

i have to renounce forever

the infinite other possible beings he is in life?

A world in which

he will have to renounce forever

the infinite other beings i, potentially, am in life?

 

Who am i?

i was ONCE 'this' and ONCE was 'not this'.

Who am i?

I am 'this' here and playing 'that' there.

Who am i?

Who is he?

Who is this 'evil guy' i met on this trip?

Who is any he or she i meet in my life?

Can i say more than

She is an usher for me

providing possible access to the million, billion rooms

which life opens to her alone.

Who am i?

An access route for another being

to the million billion rooms

which life offers to me alone.

Can they or i be more VALUABLE than that?

Would i want to condemn forever such keys to the infinite?

WHAT IS THIS HITCH-HIKING SITUATION anyhow?

A 'multi he' and a 'multi i'

encounter

through a particular circumstance, 'hitch-hiking'.

In the first half-minute, or sooner,

each of our multiplicities

resonatingly collapse to 'oneness'.

Our pair of onesses jog along together

for a small, small interval,

enjoying each other,

playing a small, small role in the other's cosmic multiquest.

I get one fleeting flavor of him as he gets one fleeting flavor of me.

Not more.

But maybe that's as much as one can expect

in 'fleeting encounters'?

 

Then, again, what are permanent encounters?

I am nearly 60 years old.

My father has shed his mortal cloak.

My older brother --my first mentor-- also..

Two of my long-time, best friends also..

My body is changing. I am inside the human rhythmn.

I am certain of my ultimate impermanence.

Doesn't this understanding

effect who i shall be?

My father told me and showed me

the last age is the sweetest time in life.

The culmination.

The summary.

That which gives meaning to it all.

Doesn't this parental blessing

--coming after forty years of my life--

effect 'the who' i shall be

in the future?

'the who' i was in the past?

'the who' i am in the present?

changing and fleeting

are our lives

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.

MY ONLY DEMAND

Hitch-hiking is a special sort of 'fleeting encounter'.

Almost before it begins,

both parties consciously know

where and about when it will end.

In fact, this mutually contracted constraint

is the first, and, hopefully, only demand

that i make upon the

driver.

Though i have just gotten a "Yes" to The Big Question,

and my rucksack is in the car's boot,

and i've just seated myself in the seat adjacent to the driver,

and fixed the seat belt about me --if there is one--

and i should be bursting with excitement,

i contain that excitement

till

we have settled upon

a mutual agreement

as to where he will drop me

-- at the exact Service Station he will leave me--.

The formula --as i might already have told you-- is,

"I want you to leave me at the last Service Station

before you leave the motorway.

Do you know that Service Station?"

And many smilingly say

"Yes, no problem!" and we are off.

And others say,

"i don't know exactly",

and that's when i know

that i have to be my own, very, very responsible,

navigator.

Before he starts to gun the motor,

or with it just idling,

i hope to look at a map and determine exactly

where begins the crucial terminating stretch of motorway

in which our hitch-hike together shall end.

Any Service Station in that crucial stretch is good for me.

That settled, i lean back

on the comfortable cushioned chair of the car

or

on the upright regality

of the lorry's 2nd driver's chair,

on high,

and...

look out the window

at the passing countryside

--no trees and plenty of cultivated fields--

and this driver

--with seven years of experience on international routes--

introduces himself to me as an 'Ecologist'

and raps about the passing countryside:

"Did you see that fox?

Do you know there are twenty hunters now for one

fox?

Its absurd.

I gave up my gun. I bought myself a camera.

There's too many of us humans on the earth.

A plague is what is needed.

And that means deaths in all our families.

Otherwise, all the animals will be destroyed.

and then,

we'll soon destroy ourselves.

We need a real, human calamity to save us."

A light-hearted, deeply sincere encounter with

someone whom i might never have met.

someone whom i will never see again.

 

Perhaps, these two qualities preserve the conversation's

lightheartedness?

We, hitch-hiker and driver,

are not preparing to act together in two weeks or two years

or two days.

No conspiracies are contracted hitch-hiking.

The hitch-hiker and the driver are somewhat

in life together

but,

the two of them,

sitting alongside each other

in what they both know to be a unique happening,

are also not in life together.

In an hour, they will never see one another again.

A love affair doomed from its very first minute,

accompanied by invisible tears from its very first minute.

"This shall end." "This shall end."

(But, what shall stay? What shall stay?)

How best act in such a circumstance,

where the death of the present is a guarantee?

"All, all is flux on the road.

Hitch-hikers can hold onto nothing."

I retain memory. A type of pseudo-reality.

How best act in such a circumstance?

GIFTS, GIFTS GIFTS

Give each other gifts,

and quickly leave. No lamentations for the inevitable.

Feel the pain, but do not mourn.

Act

as though this car-room or lorry-cabin is

a detached, observation booth

looking out upon

The Universal Shebang.

This detachment renders us bodyless.

Interchanging knowledges in this observation

booth

is

a sacred service,

an importation from

the

Infinite.

There are no gains beyond the present

to distort our mutual honesty.

We give each other gifts:

honest feelings

about things and happenings

learnt in our disjoint lives.

We exchange our unique creations, our wisdoms.

And, via some cosmic recognition system within each of us,

the driver and the hitch-hiker

know

that the free, exchange of these feelings and knowledges,

is,

somehow,

aiding The Universal Shebang;

that we are participating in something holy.

.... SOME GIFTS ....

LOVE'S POWER

One of the lay leaders of a very religious sect,

--a businessman

whose patrons were mostly from the sect--

picked me up and eventually told me

that he, married though he is,

is having an affair

with a married woman,

a member of his sect.

Though they tried, they could not stop seeing each other.

He did not know what to do?

Disaster was necessarily in front of them.

I only listened ....

A young, French guy tells me

that he was part of a crack military commando.

They

had,

a year or two ago, flown in

to an African capital city,

and, in lightning-fashion, captured the city militarily,

and

forced The President of the country

to bend

to the will of

The President

of

The French Republic.

POST SCRIPT ---he added.

The commandos' actions were never reported

by The Media,

though the change in policy

of the African President was....

CLASS

Long, long ago,

when i had just begun to live in Great Britain

as a young, successful academic,

sporting an American accent

more visible

than a luminescent, orange top-hat,

a very smart-dressed woman of a certain age,

told me in a very studied English accent:

"We Ahhhrr not like you Americans.

Here, in England, we have 'CLAhhSS'!"

Hitching, way back then,

and everybody happily recognizing me to be an American,

--and Americans, then,

were all thought rich,

and, ALSO, liked a lot--

i ran into a topguy in Top-Business.

A member of 'The In Group'.

He told me,

that if you are 'In' in England,

and you got into financial difficulties,

you would be aided by a

£1,000,000 loan at 1% interest,

payable in 100 years.

POST SCRIPT

At that time, bank interest for punters

was not less than 5%.

If the money were simply put in a bank,

it would generate

a clear profit of about £800 per week.

State Unemployment Aid for the common person

--what he or she had to live on for the ENTIRE week--

was then £5.

"We are not like you Americans.

Here, in England, we have 'CLAhhSS'!" ....

Weaknesses

Occasionally,

i come across some driver who

has nothing to say to me,

and trying to engage him

is met with hardly a response.

I ask myself, "Why did he take me?"

I am dropped into an undesired time

in which

I must be a prisoner inside my own head.

He demands nothing further of mute me than

to SIT AND WAIT for my stop

and then get out.

He does not allow me to work off my debt to him. I am made

uncomfortable.

Language-dead in the extreme,

was a guy

who had been driving trucks internationally

for the same company

for thirty years.

He seemed to not know how to formulate a thought.

He had not enough practice.

His voice,

the few times that he did risk replying to a question of mine,

faulted out only fragments of a sentence. A couple of words.

I felt he was more comfortable not talking.

His flicker of social life was extinguished. He hid from discovery.

He has made himself a truck driver. Nothing else.

I hope i am wrong.

He,

as i portrayed him,

--the hypothetical, permanent, objective 'he'

whose

existence i doubt--

never will sing, never will dance.

 

The cocooned life

of the international lorry driver,

--alone, for days on end, in his noisy, droning cab

EXCEPT

for the hitch-hikers he picks up--

can insulate him from active, human contact.

Unhappilly, it also can keep him from the possibilty

of breaking through into contact highs.

Cocooned,

For thirty years, cocooned.

I hope not.

There are many unique flowers in the forest. .... .... .... ....

THE GREATEST INSANITY I HAVE ever ENCOUNTERED

A Spanish truck driver

said "Yes"

at

The Dream Motorway Station

200 kilometers North of Paris

to take me beyond Paris to nearly Bordeaux.

My goal was Toulouse and Paris was my big obstacle.

The time was the time of the World Olympics.

 

A good-sized television set

in working mode

was perched on the controls panel in my corner of the cabin.

Every now and then

he would turn his face to the television

and

gaze,

mentally exchanging

physical time

--the time of our corporeal bodies

in which body injuries can be explained--

for

television time,

Virtual Reality time.

What a dangerous situation i found myself in.

A crucial second in an Olympic race

could retain his interest

and

allow him unawares to get mentally lost in it.

We were belting along. A second was a long time on this motorway.

So,

i keenly watched the road.

I knew i was in great danger.

I was hardly 'just a passenger'.

I had been transformed into a frightened co-pilot.

The other end of Paris, at a Station on the main Bordeaux motorway,

happy to be intact, i got out.

I had risked

and lived to tell it .... .... ....

COWBOYs and HITCH-HIKERs

International truck drivers,.

are at home one weekend every two weeks.

Sometimes more. Sometimes less.

For them, making a family requires

a loving wife

who can live with such conditions and not feel cheated.

His inability to be home,

is the greatest cause of problems for the young driver.

His young wife or girl friend,

after a day's work, wants to go out at night.

And that spells p r o b l e m s.

Yet, this moving, cowboy life, on the road,

is felt as freedom and enjoyed.

With no boss over one's head.

With money jingling in the pocket..

With bunk space for sleeping, just behind him.

With all matter of music entertainment and radio to listen to.

With sole captainship over

a difficult, responsible, and well-paying task.

And when it finishes,

a return to the mysterious woman

--not debunked by life's day-in, day-out details--

waiting.

What could be lacking?

And the answer echos: People. People.

And i answer, Hitch-hikers. Hitch-hikers.

PRACTICALITIES

But Insurance Companies

threaten all the other companies

with the misery of their littleness:

'A passenger allowance costs more to insure.'

They know they can make more money with this rule.

But this rule surely doesn't decrease accidents.

It probably causes more accidents.

To the benefits of having a non-necessary passenger,

the business mentality and insurance calculations are blind.

 

Why did the driver say "Yes" ?

Why did the driver,

decide it would be good for him to have

someone alongside him,

chatting?

Is it possible that

there are MANY LESS accidents

when hitch-hikers are also in the cab or car,

than

when the driver is alone?

Is it possible that people

healthily decide to say "Yes" to a hitch-hiker

because they feel a need

for a little relief from the solitude

and boredom

of the motorway routes?

If they don't get that relief,

aren't they more likely

to be in an accident?

POSTSCRIPT

ENERGY TRANSFER

ABOUT TWENTY YEARS AGO,

Christine and myself were driving Michele's van

up from Marakesh in Morocco to Toulouse in France.

We had crossed the Straits at Algeciras and

were making our way northwards towards Madrid.

I had a lapsed New York driver's license,

so Christine was the only driver.

She is an excellent driver. And we are in love.

When you're driving several thousand miles,

five days of nearly non-stop driving,

you've got to develop techniques to handle

the menace, 'Driver Fatigue'.

We solved it in two ways:

We slept well during the night.

And we devised this technique:

When Christine was beginning to feel sleepy,

I would go in the back and take a

nap.

When i awoke,

i would return to my seat alongside her

and begin to rap about things

that i knew interested her.

I pumped out energy through conversation

and she absorbed this energy through the

conversation.

And so on we travelled. Christine's batteries had been

recharged.

This technique amazed both of us.

How can it be that energy is actually transmitted

from her to me by conversation?

But something else occurred which gave us

complete proof of this interhuman energy-transfer

phenomena.

At one point, about 600 kilometers south of Madrid,

--on a road with roadstones telling the exact distance from

Madrid--

Christine had come to the end of her energies.

She was whacked out of her head with tiredness.

So we began a search for a siding in order to sleep.

After about ten minutes we finally found a promising siding.

But, entering it, we discovered it to be

adjacent to a stinking garbage dump. So off again we

go,

in search of a spot to sleep, when... on the side of the road,

waving

to us,...

are two, young, Spanish women... hitch-hiking to Madrid.

Well, we're young and they're young,

and they excite me and excite Christine,

and we gab away excitedly

all the way to Madrid without a stop.

Christine, Do you remember that?

Where did you get that energy from?

What a proof of energy transfer!

Who dares tell me that hitch-hikers are not needed?

THE KING OF BALSA --an aside.

A month before the energy transfer events described above happened,

Christine and myself had hitched down from Toulouse,

down through all Spain and into Morocco's Atlas Mountains

to live with Berber friends of hers.

Afterwards we hitched to Marrakech

to Michele, a French school-teacher, friend of Christine.

Talking about that era makes it impossible for me

to skip the tale of a French guy who,

on the ferry across the Straits,

reluctantly accepted to give Christine and

myself a lift.

He told us he never gave lifts to anyone.

This was a first for him.

But we both spoke French, and we were young, and,

though dressed rough,

we were clean and evidently 'University Kultured'.

He was dressed in a smart suit;

at the spotless, immaculate level of the British Barrister class.

His car was a super-duper, air-conditioned German sport's car.

For several hundred kilometers, in the dead of the night,

we zoomed along deserted highways.

To have a car in Morocco then, meant something special.

His commentary on the common person was filled with scorn.

He was a Frenchman, with a Moroccan passport,

who only dealt with rich Sheiks.

And this only for business purposes.

He is one of the few persons --very rare in my experience--

who dislikes humanity.

"Just after the second world war", he told us,

" my uncle bought up hectares and hectares of balsa wood

trees.

I went to aid him in his business and it never stopped

growing.

He died and i took over the business.

All the Balsa wood of Morocco i own.

I am the King of Balsa Wood"

He also owned a hotel on the French Riviera.

He was what my friends would call 'stinking rich'.

But his life was not a joy for him. His wife and his son hated him.

They no longer lived together.

All that he had built up was going to be inherited by people who hated him.

This fact tormented him.

And being tormented by a life-situation

amongst the 'successful' makes me recall

this other, very human, French guy,

owner of a clothes factory upon which depended two hundred

families.

He had picked me up on his way to Paris where he lived.

He had been out scouring for business.

"Why do i continue to do it?

I have money enough to retire."

His wife and child, a year before, had left him.

His home, that he was returning to, was empty.

He had worked and worked and made his business a success.

"But for what?," he asked.

INHUMAN CONTRACTS

No person should be forced to be alone.

No contract should demand that.

We are social animals.

We become ill from lack of human contact.

He Says,

"I can't pick you up. Insurance... Insurance..."

and warmly, i vibrate back,

"I know... i know..."

 

According to an inhuman logic,

certain company-lorry drivers,

and certain company-car drivers,

must always refuse to pick up a hitch-hiker.

Or else,

if an accident happens,

and the hitch-hiker sues the company,

the driver

will almost certainly lose his job, if not worse.

Some drivers get worried by this menace

and systematically refuse to pick anybody up.

But there are many,

sufficiently many,

who

don't give

a two-bit fuck

for bullshit restrictions

upon their life in-detail

made by

distant, legal

accountant minds

and greedy, pin-striped

insurance men.

When a driver, as a person, strikes me

through the force of his being,

--the way he bouncingly walks or wisely talks--

then i know, in advance, that he would be ashamed to say,

"I can't pick you up. Insurance... Insurance..."

Then i know he will say, "Yes".

THE WORLD'S UNSPECIFIED LOSSES

As a person,

trying to be happy,

the lorry driver's greatest weakness

is knowing only his native tongue.

So not speaking French, for the British lorry driver,

means France and its French-speaking population

are to be forever at a distance,

means that the French person is to be mistrusted

because un-understood,

because not deeply enough encountered,

means that British lorry pickups and deliveries in France

are not lived

very happily.

And, symmetrically, the French people,

lose potential British friends

who are living in a very visitable, foreign country.

If information is considered power

in this information-hype time,

then how much more invisibly powerful

is the ability to befriend strangers?

A million times?

I'd say a billion, billion times.

Information gets you to where you want to go.

Acquaintance with a stranger,

takes you

to where you never thought of going.

Everything begins in the unknown, the obscure.

The unknown is the storehouse of future attractions.

Plenty to exchange, because each to each other is strange.

As the hitch-hiker, me, am a stranger to the driver, he,

So he is a stranger to me.

When i --the hitch-hiker-- make contact and get a "Yes"

from the driver,

--and our mutual strangeness becomes accessible--

What Joy! What Joy!

Another part of life's puzzle

will be provided each of us

--good children in the garden

of eden--.

And i know, in most cases, this expectant feeling,

though described

differently,

is mutual.

If accessible strangers

provide each other such potential meanings

and pleasure,

then aren't all social barriers

s p i k e d f e n c e s

created to prevent our

trespassing?

to prevent us from eating from

the tree of life?

rules against happiness ?

Huddling together

and signalling to one another,

"Aren't they peculiar?"

as a swirling wave of foreigners comes washing in,

is a self-contracting stance.

Rather than rigidly defending the fixed forms of the past,

why not recognize

the beginning of the future?

Maybe its migration time?

Maybe the old solutions are to be set aside?

This is an open ended universe.

Rules are defenses of past achievements.

They, who do not recognize this, suffer a loss without knowing it.

And therefore, doesn't the world lose out

in erecting fortress walls against

the hitch-hiker and the foreigner?

A human encounter is a sacred act

for

from human interchange, how to understand the other, grows;

from human interchange, how to understand oneself, grows.

Think to what a dangerous juncture the human race has come!

One voice,

from a nearly-outcast,

human type

--hitch-hiker--,

feels sacredly obliged

--because he hears no other like voice, singing--

to warble out argument for

unlimited, accidental, 1 to 1 encounters.

More of the unknown,

in its rich intimacy,

should be risked.

We are at a dangerous juncture,

Wisdom through direct interchange is needed.

Think to what inhuman juncture the human race has come!

He, this hitch-hiker, as a social participant,

is considered marginal,

if not mad, if not dangerous,

while

meaningless, artificial, innocuous,

'STAGE-SHOWS' of acclaimed 'SUPERSTARS'

downstage and mesmerize, nightly, hundreds of millions:

--robbing them of their individualities,

--raping them of their potential futures,

--preparing them to never grow up.

 

Watching T.V. tonight

or going out for a strole?

The progammable universe

or the unprogrammable?

DEATH or LIFE?

What a choice!

What a rut the human race is in!

 

What's a rut?

When you don't recognize a dead-end.

When the finite illusion seems infinite.

When the imagination of 'a beyond'

doesn't kick in.

My 'mother-in-law' Mimi and her sister Paulette

were born and lived their youth

in a small, French, Mediterranean town,

surrounded by vineyards.

After work, after dining,

everybody

went outside

--strolling if you were young,

otherwise, sitting in front of your house

and watching and talking.

The whole town was outside a-bubbling.

 

Now, television has come to the town

--as it has come to all the towns on the French Mediterranean--

and killed the life outside.

Death is what you encounter wandering

their streets now.

Death and a few old guys,

playing 'Boules',

rolling

balls,

refusing in their senile obstinacy to remain in and watch

The Super Stars.

Isn't your home town

becoming an after-work DEAD TOWN

because television is capturing nearly everyone?

What a rut the human race is in!

And for what reason and by what power

has television become our willful conqueror?

What a rut the human race is in!

 

 

A CONFIRMING TALE

It was getting late, too late possibly for a food store to be open.

My lorry driver desperately needed something to eat,

like a sandwich and a large bottle of soda water,

so we were searching in panic for any food place.

It must have been a hot, early evening.

The lorry driver had been treating me to a long harangue

on how fucking racist the French are.

He had only problems to recite when he spoke of them.

"The French could do no right!" he upheld as an

absolute truth.

He spoke no French. Not a word.

From this distance in time, i have no idea where we were.

On the motorway, --that seems impossible,

because motorway Services are always open till much

later--

or off. So my memory of this showpiece has lost many

details.

But why i retain even some of its segments

is because

of the tale's ending.

There were lights in front of a shop.

And they were being turned off.

We had come just at the instant of shutdown.

We raced into the store. The owner or manager was behind the counter.

My lorry driver

races over to the open fridge

and grabs a big bottle of red-colored soda water

and races over to the counter, saying

that he, also,wants to buy a sandwich.

The French guy, all the while,

is waving with his hands over his head and shouting,

"C'est Ferme! C'est Ferme!"

"We're closed. We're closed."

But the Englishman is not understanding the Frenchman

and the Frenchman ain't listening to the Englishman.

It's all gut-reaction happenings being enacted.

Each knows his part perfectly.

The scene frantically plays itself out.

The British driver eventually puts down the bottle

and furiously leaves the store.

The Frenchman is furiously shouting at him

from behind the counter.

I calmly, warmly, go over to the counter,

and explain what my driver wanted. I talk in French.

The French guy is immediately won over.

He probably recognized that he had exploded irrationally.

He gives me the bottle of red-Soda water and a sandwich for the

lorry driver. When i wanted to pay, he refuses to take money.

So i left that store carrying a true gift from this Frenchman to this

British guy.

To my British, fellow driver, i allowed myself the comment ,

" Frenchmen are human. If you spoke

French

you would enjoy yourself in France."

I remember us, sitting alongside in the cab, before we surged into

the night,

him munching on his yellow sandwich

and drinking this black-colored Soda water,

and me looking at his munching, drinking, profile bathed in

sodium light.

A LORRY DRIVER'S LIFE ABROAD

fact 1

Eating, for the British lorry driver in France,

usually means eating only at motorway restaurants

where other British lorry drivers

might be congregating.

fact 2

Eating at the popular-priced restaurants

dotting the towns of France,

has always been counted

highest in the delights offered foreign visitors.

What's happening?

These facts lead us to an overwhelming question:

"What's happening to

the British lorry driver

in France?"

He is suffering from a rarely-tested

prejudice against anything French,

rife among British lorry drivers.

Untestable, because of this lack of language knowledge.

He is suffering, also, from

an unconfrontable fear behind the prejudice.

The fear of 'appearing stupid'.

So he contracts his life to stupid food,

and veneer relationships

while in France.

Trying to be helpful,

i spread the word.

To anyone wanting to be an international lorry driver:

Take the problem of learning foreign languages

as a joyous and important one.

To the schools that teach lorry driving:

offer a simple practical taster

in languages and social skills

for living in foreign countries.

Help break down the language and social barriers

which are so humanly

costly

to the

international lorry driver.

His life is narrowed to unendless driving,

days on end on the motorway,

and with little else of adventure.

New experience to talk about

gets narrower and narrower.

He lives more and more on media material.

Radio or recorded music.

Some read books at night lying in their bunks.

But most are social-retreating human beings.

This is a harsh judgement.

I make it in order to sound an alarm.

The huge lorry companies might believe

that they get a steadier and more devoted worker

out of guys who are too frightened to socially experiment.

After all, frightened drivers wouldn't drive off the motorway

searching for a new treat, an unexplored corner.

So how can i seriously propose better schooling

when the business powerhouses of the lorry game

might see themselves losing out?,

when the pawns are now cheaply replaceable?

THE FEW

Only about 3 lorry drivers, of the fifty whom i have travelled with,

had pride in their sense of adventure

beyond their work.

These three were independent beings.

Their bosses, appreciating that they did their job well,

did not interfere in their individual manner of doing it.

They somehow had built in to their work rhythm,

time for adventure.

These were the admirable ones for me.

When i enter the cab (or car) of an independent being,

we immediately realize we have something to exchange.

And there is little time.

Both of us soaring.

A real, energetic encounter.

Watch Time? Its not present.

Highway Distance? Highway Distance becomes a threat.

The hitch-hike will have to terminate

after a certain Highway Distance.

And Highway Distance

is what the driver's foot on the gas pedal

means.

And for Highway Distance the driver is paid.

And to decrease Highway Distance the hitch-hiker asks.

And so, the contradictions of life are showered on the blessed

occasion.

(With the other lorry drivers,

in one way or another, something good happens.

But too often not much.

No energy to talk much. Mind is somewhere else.)

To know how to live well and still be an international lorry driver

--to go off the motorway at times,

to study a neighborhood,

to find a good restaurant,

to still be excited by the new and investigate--

means

beyond giving me the marvelous gift i asked for, namely, 'a lift',

they also have, on offer.

the results of their conscious, unique search.

And therefore, a ready appreciation of my unique offerings.

And then, i feel valued

and feel

i, too, am giving a gift.

Unhappily, for me

not enough

consciously self-creating, international lorry drivers

exist.

For i like to chat.

That's why i tend to try my luck first with car drivers.

International lorry drivers, at least most of them,

are too overburdened with work to develop

themselves.

A harsh judgement.

Needed badly:

styles

of making work live,

of nourishing our own individualities,

of asserting,

"I am not only a lorry driver,"

of gaining distance from our forced-labor roles.

THE INDEPENDENT COWBOY

Another rare category of lorry driver,

one that is disappearing in this BIG-BOY'S Union of massive Europe,

is the lorry driver who owns his own lorry.

Usually, these driver-owners are very full of life.

They have to be on the road nearly all the time,

while their wife at home

is tending the business office,

preparing the deals,

watching over

their young kids

who are

naturally

growing up psychically

preparing to drive.

They are passionate about their work.

Family love is very high.

They are most of the time on the boundary line, financially.

Interest on Bank Loans

to pay for the purchase of a lorry is immense.

Insurance against accidents

and paying for replacement lorries, when their's breaks down,

proves costly, costly.

BIG COMPANIES have a massive advantage here.

THE EATING

OF THE small

With the recent, economic down-years of the 20th century's last quarter,

--a long-time recession

created by THE VERY BIG

to shake the small from the economic tree--

the small lorry company --with 1 or 2 or 3 lorries on the road--

has been going broke. And the BIG Lorry Companies,

absorbing the little guys' businesses, becoming massive.

The BIG are growing BIGGER than ever

and the small, smaller than ever

in this European--BIG GUYS' CREATED-- 'UNION'.

And the growth of the BIG is very visible.

At present, their is a VERY BIG French Lorry Company

whose

unique red-painted lorry design

is more and more evident, more and more encountered.

This company, i have heard, wants to eventually monopolise lorry

transport. It is in the process of taking over firms in all the European countries.

BIGGER is more viable

in the present European 'UNION'.

And being small, means 'to the wall'

in the present European 'UNION'.

After all,

THIS EUROPEAN UNION

organically evolved from

THE European Common MARKET

where

(market) SUCCESS

means a greater cut of the fixed pie.

 

As you see, dear readers, i am not a fan of BIGness.

My experience in hitching ABSOLUTELY tells me,

the BIGGER the company

the less likely the driver felt at liberty to say "Yes" to me.

And when the company was owned by the driver,

then

--i believe but can't prove--

he more often than not would take me.

Because he was his own boss,

he felt free.

Yet the truth is, he probably did not have any insurance for me.

And if he didn't, he might lose his entire company,

if an accident occurred

and i sued him for all he was worth and more.

Yet, he took me.

Such fears did not frighten him.

My experience

ABSOLUTELY proves

'The BIGGER the company,

the less freedom for the driver'

is the rule of the road.

The BIGGER the company,

the higher the fences

separating the small from THE BIG.

AND WHO IS smaller THAN A HITCH-HIKER?

STRENGTH

I got picked up once

by a guy in a suit just outside Bristol Airport going to London.

He told me

that afternoon he had won £400 at the Horse Races in

Dublin.

But he felt bad about it.

This was incomprehensible to me.

This money represented my-then living expenses for 40

weeks!

He felt bad. And he told me why.

He had a very unique,

professional position in the Irish Race-Horce World. So he knew exactly which horses didn't have to

win

in order to maintain their

market value,

and which horses had absolutely to win.

Those, who needed to win were described as "trying".

When the number of horses 'trying' in a race is

1 or 2,

then the race might be called 'fixed'.

But he never mentioned that word. Nor did i.

So winning made him feel a little guilty.

Such honesty given me,

which i could never have had,

had i been someone active

in his life's turf,

he freely offered.

Exchange Across The Divide

and

GODEL'S THEOREM

One of the high, responsible officials

of one of the largest corporations in the world

smiles comfortably at me for a second, and then returns his eyes

to the road, when i told him about the new corporation taxes

just imposed by The British Government.

"But that's what we pay our Tax and Legal departments for.

To find holes in laws so that we can roll through them.

Our men never fail.

Inside of three weeks they will have found holes,

so big,

that we'll be able to drive lorries

through them."

 

And because he gave me that piece of 'hidden' knowledge,

i gave him, in return,

one astounding result from mathematics;

which 'proved'

what he was saying

is 'good mathematics'.

I began by saying,

"Did you know that there is a mathematical theorem,

called 'Godel's Theorem'

discovered in the 1920's or 30's

whose meaning,

since its discovery,

has had to be suppressed

by

the stability forces of the

universe?

For what Godel proved is

there is always

a

hole

in any

(finite, self-consistent, logical system's)

reasoning.

Therefore, To any verbalized assertion

--like a tax law or a legal pronouncement--

there can be no

necessary, real-world implication.

Any verbal explanation

of what a verbal assertion can mean,

has to be embedded within a finite number of verbal assertions

--be part of a finite, explicit, logical, verbal argument--

has to be part of a finite,explicit, englobing, logical system

and, thereby, a logical system subject

to Godel's Theorem.

Any finite,

logical system,

so beginneth Godel's Theorem.

and the law and the tax systems

are each finite logics.

 

They are obsessionaly rebuilt by The Legal Authorities to be internally consistent.

Their core truths --called 'precedents'--

at any one time

are finite in number,

being found in

a finite number of

Authoritatively specified

finite-length books,)

Any finite,

logical system,

that

escapes

the catastrophe of

self-contradiction

must, of necessity,

be

INCOMPLETE.

so sayeth Godel's Theorem

The incompleteness of our Tax and Legal systems

means

there are tax and legal cases

not judgeable

by the pre-established system's precedents.

 

(In mathematical lingo,

"The Truth Judgement Function, generated by the precedents,

is undefined for these cases."

Neither a Yes nor a No can be logically asserted.)

 

These undeterminable cases are

the holes

in the system's reasoning,

which, once discovered,

can be grown large enough for lorries to drive through.

Patch up these holes, today,

with the cement of a finite number of Authoritative Orders,

--a committee decision,

-- a judge or a jury's decision,

--an administrative decision,

and, tomorrow, there still will be holes in the system,

different holes.

Your tax and legal departments make their living

on this, system-mocking, Godel truth."

Finding holes in the fence.

Finding holes in the tax system.

Maybe we are all preparing

in one way or another

to hitch-hike?

 

Here was a hitch-hike in which

i,

amongst the poorest, money-wise, in our society,

was speaking with

one of the richest, money-wise, in our society.

And speaking with a sense of equality.

We were two cocks from different worlds, comparing notes.

 

I didn't expect anything from him nor him from me.

He told me what he wanted to tell me.

I told him what i wanted to tell him.

Not as one who is 'poor' or 'rich'

but as two, independent, fellow human beings

passing an accidental hour together,

wishing each other well.

An exchange of knowledge and adieu.

 

His wealth had no magic for me.

Only his knowledge was valuable.

My wealth had no magic for him.

Only my knowledge was valuable.

Across barricades,

hundreds of years in the making,

our knowledge passed.

 

Perhaps, the world is made safer because of such transfers?

Perhaps, hitch-hikers and those drivers who say "Yes"

are important, hidden, incalculable links

maintaining the world's bridges to salvation?