Beware of the bear
Be aware of the bear
-Ken KeseySometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
–Neil Gaiman/The Sandman, Vol. 6: FLife moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around, you might miss it.
–Ferris Bueller
The other day, I watched a movie about the little trip Ken Kesey and a group of his friends made to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York in a school bus called Further. That trip has been written about, filmed and discussed at great length by people who are a hell of a lot more erudite than I am. Tom Wolfe, for one.
I have no fucking idea what the movie was even called. It was just sort of there so I watched it. This thing called television is a mystery to me, what can I say? [OK, Google says it’s called “Magic Trip.” Of course it is.]
The first thing to make me go hmmm was this:
Talking about the filming of the trip, someone asks one of the pranksters (Ken Babbs??)if anyone on the bus knew how to operate the 16mm camera they would be using to film the trip.
He said something to the effect of this–
None of us knew how to do anything that we were doing.
None of them knew what they were doing, but they were doing it anyway. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it? Everything in the world could go wrong. A lot of things did. More things didn’t. A lot of things spun out as a result of that little trip across the US. A lot of things turned upside down. Other things turned rightside up. The little trip to see the World’s Fair turned into a cultural lodestone. No one could have predicted it.
Even though it seems like such a horrendously bad idea, I love the idea of just diving in and doing…something. Whatever. When you stop worrying about knowing what you are doing, it can be very freeing. This does not apply to things like surgery or flying a commercial airliner, but going on a long trip? Changing careers? Learning to belly dance? Getting something pierced? Why the fuck not? You never know what gifts serendipity is going to have for you. You never will know if you’re not doing…something.
Later, as the group passes throughYellowstone. Kesey notices a “Beware of bear” sign and Kesey wonders when the meaning of it changed from “be aware of the bear” to “be afraid of the bear” and how being afraid has impacted us on a larger level. Being afraid stops us from trying things, doing things. We should be aware and notice and experience. We should not be afraid. If we ARE afraid, we can make a note of it, and keep going assuming there’s not something life threatening going on. Don’t poke the bear. Be aware of it and stay on your trip.
A lot of times, you will crash and burn..but sometimes you will fly.
It seems like it’s worth it, doesn’t it?
When I was a kid, with less shit to lose, I was a lot more willing to just jump. That wasn’t always a good thing in the short term, and it did result in some psychic bruising, but I wouldn’t really change anything. If anything, I’d have jumped more rather than less. Some positive always, always has come back to me after I’ve jumped.
Learning the value of saying “what the fuck?” is a lesson a lot of us need to learn again when we are older. We get bogged down by all of our belongings and responsibilities and money. We have more of an instinct to beware, and less of an inclination to just be aware.
If we played a lot more, and bewared a lot less, I suspect we would be happier.
So I write. About what I think. All of my secrets. Well, not all. But for the most part if I write something I worry about publishing, I say what the fuck and throw it out there.
I’ll try to do it in real life too.
What the fuck?