Saxton at Two Wheels To There

Seeking a Suitable Truth – 2011.07.24

Published on February 28, 2015 by Ry Austin 3 Comments

From the old countries, exotic to each other, to a land foreign to all but its sons and daughters… From Home, to a place to pass innumerable nights… From the bustling east–by rail, wagon, horse, and their own blistered feet–to the spirit-testing and body-breaking west they came.

From their proud, stern fatherlands they stepped with heads held high and legs atremble. From their dear, sweet motherlands they weaned themselves, and there and here folks wept. For fortune they forged toward the new frontier, as to the new world their forefathers had fled oppression. Or so the textbooks tell.

Are anyone’s reasons ever really two-dimensional? Should anyone’s reasons ever be oversimplified? As we are complexly human, so were they, and multifaceted beings must be allowed to have multifaceted motivations. Many might have come for solitude, challenges, fame, for adventure. For that which drives us now must have driven many then.

They came, settled, labored, dreamed. They moved, stayed, and sought elusive wealth. They worked hard and took pride in the work they did. They lived, loved, dispersed. Oh, how they struggled. And they perished, often tragically. It seems they sought so much—maybe unwittingly.

Oh, the subtleties and secrets of our seekings…

En route from Saxton, back to the City of Contradictions, Surtch Pherther stopped for a breather at middle-of-nowhere-in-the-remoteness Outpost Inn. Under the fuel canopy, he switched off Escape Artist on the slowly shifting sand of a shallow drift. At the foot of the nearest gas pump, a huddle of small tumbleweeds seemed to cower, maybe stricken with fears of flame and of being crushed.

Into the noise void left by the shut off bike, a scene-typical sound rushed without turbulence, like hot oil: that strange, high sizzle that often accompanies sweltering wastes. An insect chorus? Faint crying of expanding sand and stones? Maybe a several-source small symphony. Or just the ringing in Surtch’s ears.

He grabbed a cold drink and slumped onto the bench of a weathered picnic table in the shade of a juniper. The day, barely past noon, was already over 100 Fahrenheit, and shade in such heat can serve only the psyche, never the body.

Yet Surtch had cut his teeth on desolate terrain—in its extremes his personality was minted. He’d tried to dissect the enchantment, but it defied; tried to understand his attraction, but he defied. Perhaps that was why he persisted—for understanding.

Religious friends and family had often said that some things simply weren’t meant to be understood. Over and over and over again, Surtch had tried to subscribe to religion, but the publication always seemed to get lost in the mail. Maybe they were right about this… If it would risk his enchantment to understand, he knew he’d rather remain a fool.

Nearby, next to their unbelievably overloaded bikes, three cyclists read and rested. Reticent though they were, Surtch succeeded in gathering that they were far—from their origin, from their destination, hell, from a city of any consequence. Yet maybe not from a suitable truth, for stitched in Hebrew on one bike’s panniers was Proverbs 9:6 “Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.”

Common motivations, even the drive for adventure, might fade, the unessential of them even becoming unfashionable. But the desire for a suitable truth?… That could be one of humankind’s common denominators and the base to which all other motivations must be anchored.

A suitable truth: which isn’t necessarily a tailored truth or a religion to conform to one’s “sinful” ways, but a truth that penetrates the filters of one’s experience—a truth that makes sense. For an unsuitable truth, however eager one might be for its absorption, will never take.

The Ouroboros Never Rests – 2011.07.23(b)

Published on February 13, 2015 by Ry Austin 3 Comments

Kronos slowly swallows Thysia… As it has for over a century, so it will–indefinitely? Thysia, the town the Kronos Mine bore, peopled by the miners who sustain Kronos, the miners that Kronos sustains. If not for history, the telling of truth might be lost to the tailings of time: Thysia doesn’t stand in its first footprints. Indeed, over the over-a-century, it has been displaced at least once, is where it hadn’t been. And where it was–as it was–is no more, has been either excavated or entombed. Given another hundred, Thysia mightn’t be where it is, and where it is mightn’t be.

They are an ouroboros of treasure booms and busts; an amalgam ouroboros–Kronos heads the Thysia tail, and the miners course as blood; an ouroboros not of hopeful infinitude, but of insatiety, which is want, presumed need, and a grain of greed at least; an ouroboros likely to swallow itself to its tightest possible constriction… Then what?

Surtch Pherther straddled Escape Artist parked on a rise outside of town and safely opposite the Kronos tali while through Thysia sped a jacked pickup, its stereo blaring, “But it was not your fault, but mine. And it was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time. Didn’t I, my dear? Didn’t I, my dear?”

Surtch wanted to control time: not to usher its passing, for that would be unfair to others aboard this absurd conveyance, but to slow his own so that he could witness ad infinitum Kronos’s consumption. For witnesses, however broadly “witness” can be defined; witnesses not as judges; witnesses impartial and incorruptible… Dammit, there MUST be witnesses! Otherwise, there is no possible testimony.

There must be witnesses to the indications of the existence: of man, of florae and faunae, of the natural world and the unnatural, of the universe, of possible infinity, of possible God. There must be witnesses to the indications of the existence of existence. Otherwise, it’s as though nothing exists, as though nothing occurs. So, NO! HELL no! If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, it does NOT make a sound! In fact, without witnesses, the tree and its forest don’t exist!

The sun lowered on the drama, and Surtch turned over Escape Artist and rode off, returned to high desert Saxton for Chinese food and then to the Saxton Hotel for an amber ale, reclined on a warm and quiet twilit bench on the sidewalk for a slow cigar, retired to the tub in his room for a late, hot bath with a cold Guinness and then, finally, to bed for rest. Outside, Saxton was still; up the canyon, Thysia surely was still; but Kronos… Kronos was hungry, and slowly, ever so slowly, it continued to eat.

Surreality Salt-Sand, Smoke, Steam, and Sheep Skins – 2011.07.23(a)

Published on February 13, 2015 by Ry Austin Leave a Comment

With his right grip fore and his left grip back a few, engineer Harry pumped the levers in unison once, twice, thrice, paused, and then pushed and held them in like a conviction. A low whirr led to a short rev and then–KA-WHUMP–the 70-year-old diesel-electric rolled coal to the roof and chug-chug-chugged thunderously to life, shimmy-swaying like a quaking drunk. Surtch Pherther’s jaw dropped. It was thrilling, but suddenly he wanted to get the hell off that stirring beast. He clutched Harry’s hand, shook involuntarily, thanked him for everything, and then jittered down the nearest ladder and watched from terra firma as Harry drove out for the noon tour…

Surtch had landed in Culbert at the posted speed that morning after low-flying at 90 the final forty-five miles. He’d been worried about missing his appointment. It turned out, having not figured for timezone hop, he’d arrived about an hour early, so he wandered the sleepy few streets of the old smelting- turned ranching-town. Finally, after some pleasant hours with curator Dan at the cute Culbert Museum, Surtch had eagerly headed for the old Saxton Depot and Railyard, fifteen miles on.

He’d been solo-strolling the engine house for a while when Harry had approached and said, “Come, I’ll show you my favorites”. They bypassed three locomotives–two working, one wanting–for a wrecking crane and a rotary snowplow, all steam and from the early 1900s; in a forge at the back, they gaped at a great pneumatic hammer, yet another mechanical monster in the railyard’s little land of giants; and they discussed Saxton’s evolution from mining bust-town to rail tourism and how the City of Contradictions and its outliers North DeLusiville and Witt have their own similar pasts.

After the depot and following a brief stop at the charming regional hodgepodge of the County Museum in Saxton, Surtch was drooping from the early start, the long ride, the full day, and the heating afternoon, so he hit the nearest gas station for drinks. In the lot he met a Cadillac Texan who momentarily marveled that the F800’s twin wasn’t a single, “though that’d be a helluva single”, and then went on about crazy Europeans who were supercharging Triumph Rocket Threes so that “no mere mortal could knee-clench those torpedo-cruisers”.

Grabbing a Gatorade for refreshment and a Coke for a fix, Surtch rolled down to Saxton’s big city park, unusually green for the desert and delightfully bordered with ancient Cottonwoods. He took a shaded spot just as a group of bagpipers walked in and began playing.

It was surreal: From dawn in little, middle-of-nowhere Aridia, where he’d downed coffee and breakfast beneath a casino’s e-marquee flashing “Extreme Midget Wrestling!”, to the time machine railyard and his excitement on the waking locomotive, to a dozen bagpiping pros practicing in the park in small, desert town Saxton… He was tempted to think, smugly, “only here, in my corner of the world,” but he knew that wouldn’t have been true. And Surtch was grateful for that.