{"id":775,"date":"2011-10-29T08:48:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T08:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blamming.wordpress.com\/?page_id=775"},"modified":"2011-10-29T08:48:28","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T08:48:28","slug":"24-martinsburg-cycles-of-somnambulism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ehomba.ro\/blamming5\/24-martinsburg-cycles-of-somnambulism\/","title":{"rendered":"24. Martinsburg: Cycles of Somnambulism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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October 29, 2011<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s been a light, cold, steady rain falling here for hours.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday there was a threat of rain changing to snow, but all I got on the top of my tent was a light rain \u2013 as I listened to every inning of that phenomenal game six of the World Series on my radio.<\/p>\n

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It was cold this morning as I sipped powdered coffee from my camp stove in the woods, but the sky was blue.<\/p>\n

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Now the weather forecast for Martinsburg, WV, says \u201cmixed rain and snow overnight \u2026 [with] Rain and snow in the morning turning to all snow. Snow may be heavy at times in the afternoon \u2026 Snow accumulating 4 to 6 inches.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I got to Winchester around noon, something shut off inside me and I made up my mind to rent a car and drive straight home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In fact, I was lucky again, in the sort of way that fairly often happens: by being stymied in what I thought I wanted.<\/p>\n

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I went after a cheap motel room, intending to watch the 7th<\/sup> game of the World Series and rent a car the following day. They said they had Internet wifi, but when I\u2019d unpacked and set up in my room, the wifi wouldn\u2019t work. So I asked for my money back and reloaded my bike \u2013 quite a chore \u2013 without the least irritation. They let me use the phone in their office to arrange for a rented car. If I had waited another day, the agency would have been closed for the weekend, and who knows what I would have done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is a good time for me to call it quits \u2013 rather than a day or three or five from now, out in the sticks someplace, on slippery and treacherous roads, in foul weather, with no public transportation or car rental agencies \u2013 many of which, incidentally, won\u2019t rent in one direction. The first place I called this afternoon, Enterprise, would only rent for local use.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Discretion is the better part of valor. I\u2019ve run up 2045 miles on my bicycle odometer, pushed myself and gotten by OK. I shouldn\u2019t press my luck. It\u2019s better to quit while I\u2019m still ahead. I\u2019m tired, more than ready to get back home and return to a semblance of normal living. So I feel good about this move, even though I didn\u2019t accomplish what I set out to do. Or \u2013 who knows? \u2013 maybe I did, in some way I don\u2019t yet understand.<\/p>\n

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I experienced a serious affliction this past week which slowed me up and had me calling ahead to the VA hospital here in Martinsburg.<\/p>\n

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That second night back at Gentry\u2019s Landing campground, I felt a sore throat coming on. I didn\u2019t take precautions to nip my illness in the bud. Starting back around Buchanan, my throat was so sore for a couple of days that it felt like I had a razor blade lodged in there. The pain was so acute one night that I could hardly sleep. I was coughing thick phlegm up from deep in my lungs, my muscles ached, and my energy was gone. For about three days, the trip was no fun at all.<\/p>\n

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Wednesday I stopped at a very shabby motel. Fortunately, the World Series game was canceled due to rain, and I went to bed early. My bed sheets got soaked with sweat in the first half of the night, but I turned a corner and felt I was getting better. There were moments as I lay there, drifting back to sleep after a trip to the bathroom, when I felt the stirrings of joy inside of me again. Later, on the road, I could feel my strength returning and, again, it made me smile just to gaze out on the open road winding over lovely autumn vistas, and to breathe the crisp air.<\/p>\n

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Now, there is another aspect to this whole adventure that I feel compelled to mention, only because I\u2019ve experienced it so intensely.<\/p>\n

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I am not a spectator in any sense. Least of all do I follow professional sports. I generally regard public spectacles as a form of mass delusion, and I regret that so many of my contemporaries give so much of their energy and power away to these various distractions in the realm of entertainment. I think this is one of the principle reasons our world is in the dire situation that it\u2019s in. Which is not to say that there\u2019s anything inherently wrong with sports or film or entertainment or even spectatorship \u2013 but only with the deadly trap these pleasures have been fashioned into for the masses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But consistency is the bugbear of small minds, and I began to indulge myself in a spectator\u2019s passion for baseball when my hometown St. Louis Cardinals went into the playoffs against Philadelphia. At that time, I knew none of the players and nothing about the league competition up till then.<\/p>\n

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I did grow up in St. Louis, you know, perhaps the most passionate baseball city in the country. Baseball is the only professional sport I have the least interest in. I suddenly quit being an ardent fan in the early spring of 1965 \u2013 due to circumstances I wont digress into here \u2013 but I never lost my appreciation for the game.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So I have just finished watching the Cardinals win the World Series, here in this Martinsburg motel room, and I am very happy. This outcome is significantly associated with my journey \u2013 vulgar as that may sound \u2013 and I feel good about closing my bicycle adventure on this note.<\/p>\n

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The coming-from-behind, dark-horse aspect of the Cardinals\u2019 whole run \u2013 during exactly the two-month period when I\u2019ve been occupied with this excursion, leading up to their final triumph tonight \u2013 seems particularly meaningful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The theme of late-bloomers and underdogs has been a keynote in my life. It\u2019s characterized a lot of my favorite stories, personal myths and heroes, from childhood on. I would enjoy elaborating on that now, if only I had the time. I will limit myself to embellishing a single, loosely related observation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I sat for hours in my tent last night, feeling sure that the Cardinals had flubbed it, not once but repeatedly, that they were badly outplayed, even with the other team\u2019s mistakes, I kept wondering why I didn\u2019t just turn off the radio and go to sleep. I didn\u2019t have an answer. They kept drawing back into the game \u2026 then getting knocked back down. And I was just inclined, I guess, to be a diehard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

During those last, incredible, late-inning comebacks, I won\u2019t claim that I actually believed<\/em>, but I did start saying to myself \u2026 if they can do that one more time, and actually win this game, I\u2019ll believe that anything is possible<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is something wonderful about taking that conviction back home with me tomorrow \u2013 to whatever it is that\u2019s in the offing, in the various aspects of personal and public reality that I\u2019ve been studying intensely now for \u2026 well, perhaps about half of the 10 years since 9-11 \u2026 that I\u2019ve been experimenting with, dabbling in, puzzling over and wondering about in this particular, roughly coherent segment of my life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am still at a loss as to where I am going or what exactly is coming down around me in this immensely volatile world. Unlike my brother Tom, however, I still have the gift of life and health, I am still in play, and as my childhood baseball heroes proved to be these past two months, I am keyed up for my improbable existence right here on the edge \u2013 playing all out for total glory and ultimate triumph, whatever that may consist of \u2013 by letting the game unfold as it will and staying with it, one pitch, one batter, one inning at a time.<\/p>\n

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There is also an element of serendipity, or meaningful coincidence, in events as they unfold. This is a phenomenon I\u2019ve observed for years now, and I think it\u2019s something real, woven into the very structure of the Cosmos, if only we have eyes to see it, and the consciousness to look.<\/p>\n

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One of the seasoned announcers said last night that he\u2019d never seen a game like that one the Cardinals won so unbelievably. I\u2019m sure his statement was no exaggeration.<\/p>\n

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Now, I absolutely loathe commercials. I cannot abide manipulative sales pitches, yammering voices, hyped-up emotions \u2026 all of which could scarcely be more out of synch with whatever it is that you\u2019re listening to that\u2019s being interrupted. So I would turn off the radio between innings and read a few more paragraphs of The Sleepwalkers<\/em> by Arthur Koestler, which I\u2019ve been so slowly working my way through.<\/p>\n

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The book was reaching a sort of climax, halfway through, that reverberated in the most uncanny way with that \u2013 \u201cimmortal\u201d \u2013 sixth game of the World Series, as I heard it described on television tonight. Koestler applies this same word, \u201cimmortal,\u201d to Kepler\u2019s Second Law (332). He sums up Kepler\u2019s accomplishment in the following grandiose statement: \u201cThe great Ferris wheel of human delusion, with its celestial catwalks for the wandering planets, this phantasmagoria which had blocked man\u2019s approach to nature for two thousand years, was destroyed\u201d (338).<\/p>\n

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Recall now the title of Koestler\u2019s book, and note the plural form of this noun. It doesn\u2019t refer only to Johannes Kepler.<\/p>\n

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I can\u2019t resist quoting the passage that I read, virtually awestruck, over and over again, during commercial breaks amidst the last three innings of last night\u2019s wild, see-saw, error-ridden game:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet the last step which had got him out of the labyrinth had once again been a faulty step . . . . The correct result is even more miraculous than Kepler realized, for his explanation of the reasons why his errors cancel out was once again mistaken, and he got, in fact, so hopelessly confused that the argument is practically impossible to follow \u2013 as he himself admitted. And yet, by three incorrect steps and their even more incorrect defense, Kepler stumbled on the correct law. It is perhaps the most amazing sleepwalking performance in the history of science \u2013 except for the manner in which he found his First Law, to which we now turn (332-3).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Such are the greatest accomplishments of the greatest scientific minds of the ages, of the greatest athletes and sports teams, and \u2026 I suspect \u2026 of the rest of us more or less average folks, who may paradoxically exhibit our own greatness of spirit, albeit on the most minor and unlikely fields of endeavor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However unnoted or inconsequential our most cherished deeds, doesn\u2019t it happen, if we persist,<\/em> that error compounds upon ridiculous error to yield the most magnificent results? It\u2019s as if, on the most fundamental level, the miraculous is woven into the very fabric of the Cosmos; as if we are simultaneously confounded, directed, and benignly laughed at \u2026 while, in truth, anything is possible<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So I have unwound 2045 miles on my bicycle odometer. My improbable, oddball odyssey has suddenly reached an unanticipated finish line. Long before this hour tomorrow, I should be safely back at home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do need to get up very early. The agency in Clifton where I\u2019ll return my rented car closes at 4 p.m. and doesn\u2019t open again until Monday. So if I\u2019m late, I\u2019ll have to pay for three days instead of only one. No way I want that to happen!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Therefore, I\u2019m going to call this a \u201cposting,\u201d or a \u201cpage.\u201d I\u2019ll attach several token photos from the past few days. Sometime after I\u2019m settled back in at home \u2013 within a week, I would think \u2013 I\u2019ll fill in the details of this last leg of my journey, and aim at putting closure on this entire ad hoc project.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n