Don Pomeroy got tired of haunting the ungreen crawl so he went out in the woods and made a camp. On top of a high hill he found an old microwave communication tower that had been abandoned and stripped of its transponders. He camped under the tower like time’s own spider, listening when the wind made ghostly moans among the metal beams. Finally he realized what he was going to do. Old Don Pomeroy went back to the city and got his office chair. He brought it back to the camp and then hauled it to the top of the tower. Even the slobbering chipmunks of Pennsauken had to admire Don’s efforts in getting the chair up there. He had also brought some nylon rope and he used it to lash the chair at the top of the tower.
So now Don Pomeroy sat up there and spun himself around in the chair, using his feet to propel himself in circles. His view was unobstructed in every direction. When he spun around, all the land became one sort of panoramic chanting song to his eyes, and the effect was sublime. So the next thing he did was to go back to the city and get a couple of bicycles and a torch and so forth, some tools and all that, and with a surgical grimace he built a recumbent bicycle which turned itself in a circle instead of moving forward. He mounted this bicycle on top of the tower and if he pedaled forward he spun clockwise and if he pedaled backwards he spun counter clockwise.
Yes! And he would pedal for entire days. He saw the sun come up over this panoramic vista. He ate raisins and peanuts and dehydrated rubber meat with wax potatoes, and he saw the sun ascend up into the sky and then slowly descend and then sink into the earth and he saw the stars slowly come out and shine. He got pretty cosmic up there, spinning. He got to where he felt perfectly normal spinning. After a while he got into a trance state and just pedaled the machine, which was geared to make the pedaling near effortless, and he experienced many flowing insights and great unspeakable joys and he worked through some bummers.
When Don Pomeroy came back to the city with a look of deep wisdom and peace in his eyes, his friends asked him where he had been.
“I’ve been spinning on a modified recumbent bike on top of a derelict tower in the woods.”
“I see. And what did you learn?”
“I learned that there is a lady named Lucinda Lynn, and that she gets up at four in the morning to make the best and most perfect pancakes, which she feeds to the birds. Further, I learned that when we are in the frame of mind in which we find Lucinda to be ridiculous, then we are far from truth and beauty. When we understand Lucinda and her pancakes, then we are in the proper frame of mind and we may some day learn to live together in peace and to use our technology in more constructive ways. I learned that we need to trust our own deepest feelings and not be hoodwinked by hellwaxers imposing further insidious mind control.”
“You sound like a danger to society.”
“I guess that depends on what you want society to be…”
COPYRIGHT 2002 DOUGLAS CLOUD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED