Its been 44 days I’ve not driven the car. The motorcycle still rests in its winter cloak, this in spite of many warm days I could have ridden. Others have been out screaming down the highway on their big bikes. Many of them without helmets. They’ve considered the risk of not having the chief protection available to motorcyclists. They considered it and ignored it. The CV19 risk was considered and ignored too. I always wear a helmet on a motorcycle. I always wear a seat belt in a car. Yes I would say I was risk averse. I might also say I was realistic and trying to avoid a broken neck. These 44 days I’ve avoided people. I don’t drive or ride because a breakdown would put me into situations where I’d need people – the hospital for instance. Evaluation of risk is always a litmus test of personality and world view. That glass half empty glass half full dichotomy. To a fault I consider the worst case. The better outcomes don’t need the attention. Half the population seems to think believing something makes it real, at least in degree. This lets them turn hopeless into hopeful. I see the external world, the world not modeled by my mind and informed by my senses, as solid and independent of anything I believe. Being human I only have a 98% faith in objective reality. That 2% doesn’t go away. Magical thinking? Maybe there is an invisible world of magic, a more spiritual place. Hard thinking about impending death without considering the afterlife. Motorcycle accident or tiny little virus…dead is dead.
The above design calls on mythology. The river Styx is said to separate the underworld, the hell of myth, from this world, the world of the living. I imagined the river as flowing hot lava. When one of Lucifer’s evil posse takes a pause to relieve himself he raises steam. When ships were wooden sailors would raise sail. When ships were powered by coal burning steam engines they got underway by raising steam. Go figure !
I have attempted to learn to use the airbrush a couple of times. It’s not a progression from using a stylus, a pen or pencil. It’s quite different. My last airbrush is in Ecuador, part of the pile of stuff I sold in 2019 when I removed my foot print from Vilcabamba.
Playing with words is something I can’t seem to avoid. Especially when meaning is layered as it is here. Doesn’t sell shirts, however, without promotion. Who gives a damn about an Oxford coma,,,anyway?
This graphic was inspired by the way various nations were zapping their own satellites to show other countries they could. Also there is so much stuff in the low orbit belt that it collides without intervention. So it is really true that the Earth is the newest of the solar system’s ringed worlds and the approach to our planet is thru a junk yard. ya, that’s us.
CSB 