“A picture is worth a thousand words…and uses up a thousand times the memory.” Stephen Hawking

I just got in from rucking, wearing the twenty lbs. vest and walking up and down German Hill. This time, I wanted to do it and felt I was doing it as a word warrior. I had kind of a diary of happenings and needed to think about sharing these fragments, very different for me.

I needed that kind of separation, before sitting down and doing something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. It is like a collection of disparate stories wanting to be told and it all started with that photograph and its story, which I am going to tell you first.

It was late morning on Sunday (7/28), the day I have religiously ridden for over twenty years, with a downpour being the only impediment to spoke my wheels. Along with so much of my life, I have experienced the most wonderful changes imaginable. I spend Saturday evenings with my love and hang around in her bed, drinking several cups of drop dead Columbian coffee.

I always get home, eyes fixated on the sky, thinking about whether I should hop on Flamings Lips and take a two-wheeled tour of the island I am hopelessly in love with. Well, it took a while for the sky to clear and it was time to mount up. Several days earlier, I had parked and turned the wheel to the right, which is counter intuitive for a biker, but it was necessary to keep it out of the way, a story not worth sharing. 

I was ready to ride. Had my jean jacket on and a tightly knit, black cap on my head, my Trojan for piercing through the road head first. Well, I threw my leg over the bike, without straightening the wheel and it promptly fell over to the right, pinning my leg against a metal canister. It took no time to realize I was stuck and there was no way I was going to leverage the bike over to the left. In the perfection of hindsight, I should have straightened the wheel as soon as I got on, but I have always had issues with the physical world and it didn’t surprise me at all.

So, there I was in the garage and I was going nowhere. Oh yes, it really hurt my right leg, stuck between the weight of the bike and the metal canister. I knew my neighbor was home, so I reached into my left, back pocket and took out my phone. I called and when he picked up, the message was short and to the point. “Could you come out to the garage very quickly.” He did and within two seconds it was like it never happened. I have had enough near misses in my life that once it is over, I am struck with a dose of very healthy and convenient amnesia, if you ask me.

After that brief inconvenience, Flaming Lips and I rolled down German Hill to get some gas. I was not interested in a long ride, I just felt quietly like celebrating another lucky break. I rode the Kipu Bypass, a road that I wish was 100 miles long, because it is that beautiful. When I got to the Alekoko Fishpond, I took that photograph, from the road above. I love that spot. So, that is the picture and when I got home, I immediately looked for a quote and I loved what Stephen Hawking had to say. 

The above all occurred on Sunday, July 28th. I thought to myself, “OK, it’s Sunday. Keep the picture and think about stuff to write at some point during the week.” I figured somehow I’d have to include my episode as Chaplin’s Little Tramp, which is how I have often thought of myself and my indelicate dance with the world I inhabit. I fucken quit the Boy Scouts, because I couldn’t tie any of the knots. OK?

Something happened just yesterday, the day after and I have to share it with you and hope I can do it justice. I am directly involved with a major island event, putting some serious thought into it. I have befriended a pretty successful business man and we worked on this event last year and have planned on doing something similar this year. It is important for me to say that I really like this guy. 

So, yesterday he wrote me a note that he was totally happy to work on our project, but he couldn’t participate directly, because it fell on Yom Kippur. First thing I have to say is I am probably the worst Jew in the world. I don’t really care about the religion. A long time ago, I came to the realization that it doesn’t matter whether you are a good Jew or a bad Jew, because Hitler certainly didn’t care.

What many of you might not know is that this Jew thing is a weird business. It is both a religion and an ethnicity, kind of like being an Apache. My people are my tribe and there is nothing I can or want to do about it. All tribes have a need and desire for a homeland, no different for my people and boy, has that turned into a deadly shit show.

So, my friend tells me this big event is occurring on Yom Kippur and something happened to me. You know, if you punch up thedate of the event, which you want to do, if you are planning, Yom Kippur explodes in your face. In English, this day is referred to as The Day of Atonement. It is the number one “holiday” in the religion and it is a very somber one. You don’t eat for twenty four hours, starting at sunset at the beginning and ending at sunset the next day.

My people have quite a history. We have been fucked over for thousands of years and concurrently, have been no angels, in terms of treating those with less. Anti-semitism has exploded in this country and all over the world. 

Now, let me tell you something. I think what Israel is doing, aided and abetted by the US, is committing genocide in Palestine. The only solution is a two-state solution. By the way, peace along those borders would castrate the motivation of the multitude of acronyms, committing the most heinous crimes imaginable on innocent women and children in places like Sudan and Mali, throughout that part of the world. That place is the epicenter, the cancerous tumor of terrorism, birthed when a country was carved out of land sculpted with thousands of years of history, going back to that tribal business mentioned above.

Now, don’t get mad at me, but 9/11 was a reaction to the inhumane treatment of people with nothing to live for, devoid of any hope and that is when one’s life loses all its value. How the US has the balls to inflict punishment on others for not practicing the values that have made this country great. Are you fucken kidding me? Please, I am not justifying that tragedy, because there is none, just saying there is always more than one side. 

We promptly went to war with Iraq and their non-existent weapons of mass destruction, when 19 of the 21 murderers were from Saudi Arabia. That day is one of the darkest days in history and a lost opportunity to seek peace in the world, because violence always breeds violence and here we are today.

I love Hawkings’ quote and I am not sure I am done yet either. It is funny, telling this story is more important than being read, which is kind of weird, but so am I. There are a couple of more days in the week, so we might not be done yet. Sorry.

Oh, fuck it. I just finished and I had to come back with this quick story about the Olympics. This afternoon, I was watching a sport I had never seen before and I still don’t know its name. There were two teams of women, throwing a ball around, not dribbling and just carrying the ball and passing it to a team mate, with the hope of scoring a goal, against some poor schmuck, standing by her goal and waiting to be pummeled. 

Listen, the Olympics are seriously old and go back to ancient Greek times, when there were these basic competitions between athletes. Yes, it was sexist and all male. What a shock!  I don’t know when it happened, but money and sponsorships got involved and all of a sudden there all these  contemporary sports that have nothing to do with history, just all about the coin. Every four years, there are new sports, like break dancing, which actually has become an Olympic sport. “Hey mom, I got a gold medal in break dancing and I am on the cover of Wheaties!”

A few days have passed and I looked at the photograph again. While it is obviously the same, I am not. In a way, a photograph is a two-way mirror. We see it and it is unchanged. It sees us and we have changed. It doesn’t move, but our eyes and our hearts and our minds do. The picture is an illusion of permanence and I think that is what Stephen Hawkings meant. Those entries above reflect where I was at the time and I am not there anymore. The written word ends up being a footprint of where we were when we wrote them. 

This morning, I look out at the morning sun, feeling nothing, but gratitude. The photograph makes me feel the same this morning, too. Thank you, Stephen.

LISTEN TO THE STORY HERE:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1292459/episodes/15522581-the-worth-of-one-picture