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Simple Pleasure: Where Do You Find It?

September 17, 2016 by Scooter in the Sticks 14 Comments

Vespa GTS scooter along freeway exit in the morning lightA New Day

Took the freeway to work one day this past week.  A crisp clear morning,  a spine pretending to almost be normal, I stopped to enjoy a moment alone on the road.  It’s a communion of body, mind and spirit that sweeps past unlooked for but welcome.  A simple pleasure that can’t be bought or planned.  A gift I’ve opened and received gratefully as a rider.

Simple pleasure of seeing my dog in the garden grassSimple Pleasure – a dog in the garden

Being open to the small moments that flame life takes practice.  Lest I miss them, I need to slow down and transform my eyes from detection devices into tools for introspection and insight.  Noticing Lily stalking through the garden grass, I realize how much there is around me that I don’t want to miss.

Riding a scooter, going forth on a motorcycle, these exercises have cleared my eyes.

Vespa GTS scooter in a pastureRiding Shrine

There are moments when my Vespa ascends from riding contraption to shrine.  It usually happens when it’s standing in some lush promontory where it stands against a wider world.  After weeks of nagging irritation from my back, it was a joy to face the morning and feel good about riding, the job I was moving toward and the knowledge that life was rich as a result of a few simple pleasures.

Tea at a morning call on a cafeTea, Light and Friends

An hour in Saints Cafe, some hot tea and conversation with a friend; it’s a simple pleasure that requires only an investment of time on my part.  Time that, in almost every case, returns far more value than the cost of admission.

Vespa GTS scooter in the blazing sunA Ride Home

My back has recovered enough to ride back and forth to work.  I’ve learned to sit up straight to minimize fatigue to that area of the body.  Still experimenting with the rougher experience of riding on gravel roads as habit leads me to old cow paths on the ride home.  The dazzling light of a low sun at the end of the day is a simple pleasure that I don’t embrace nearly enough.

Is there a good reason why I don’t see more sunsets?

Meyer Dairy milk bottle in a GIVI topcaseMilk in Glass Bottles

Twenty four hours ago the milk in the glass bottle was grass.  At least that’s what I like to think.  Meyer Dairy is two miles from my house and they still bottle and sell their milk to the community, a dying breed of dairy farmers not shipping their milk to a cooperative or factory in return for a milk check.  The simple pleasure of drinking fresh, local milk, hides the hard work and complication of daily production.

Seeing the bottle in my GIVI topcase has me wondering how long they’ll last.  Or my Vespa scooter.  Or me.

For now I’l enjoy the little rides I can take, a simple pleasure purchased with the effort I make to choose the scooter over the car.

Where do you find simple pleasure?

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The Joy of Less

October 6, 2015 by Scooter in the Sticks 24 Comments

Cover of The Joy of Less by Francine JayI’m no minimalist.  I’m haunted by stuff.

Francine Jay’s book The Joy of Less describes how stuff can weigh you down.  Her advice to imagine all your possessions being chained to your waist makes me think of Jacob Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol weighed down by the mess he crafted in life.  I’ve spent a lifetime trying to sort out my relationship with stuff.  Jay’s book offers a glimmer of hope that things can change.

If you’re wrestling with your own stuff, check out the book…  The Joy of Less.

Vespa GTS scooter on rural roadRiding the Vespa scooter is an exercise in simplicity of which I’m reminded each time I’m on the road.  Last week on the way to work I considered my two-wheeled needs against my two-wheeled desires.  Desire has led me down dark paths and left me strangled by things I don’t need or want.  I don’t need anything other than the Vespa right now.  More stuff never got me anywhere. Recognizing desire for what it is may save my soul.  Or at least many dollars…

misty landscapeI only have a vague idea of what minimalism might be in my life.  Visually, I’ve always been drawn to scenes like this that I saw last week during my ride to work — empty places constructed of simple elements of shape, color and texture.  With lots of stuff in my space, at home and at work, nothing is simple.  I’m faced with a scream of chaotic material.

Vespa GTS scooter and Mt. Nittany in the rainRain can wash the world clean — in a figurative sense at least.  Noise and activity is scaled back as a large part of daily living retreats toward shelter.  On the road I’m left with the scooter and my thoughts.  Sitting in my office I look around and see all the things that require attention — if only to throw them away.  Postpone for a day and the collection grows.

foggy, misty landscape near Linden Hall, PennsylvaniaIs it a coincidence so few people appear in my photographs?  Or in my life?  There was a time when I would self-identify as shy.  Or anti-social.  Now I recognize a strong need to be alone; with my thoughts.  Not that I’m a deep thinker, but if I allow my thoughts to become as cluttered as the spaces around me, I’ll lose my mind.  It will become, as a friend likes to describe things gone awry, a shit show.

Shit show.

Vespa GTS scooter on the roadI don’t know what’s ahead.  I’ve shed my Leica rangefinder camera system.  A mountain of photography books will be next along with clothes and shoes that should have been disposed of years ago.  Tools and gadgets and a host of camping and backpacking gear silently await a similar fate.

Francine Jay lit a fuse with her book.  Finally, after all these years, maybe there is some freedom on the road ahead.

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