Hope and Promise

Motorcycling, when it is an act of loving the world, is the practice of keeping the present open to the light of just this moment.  This place.  This experience. It is a kind of hope.  Or promise.  With no content, no predictions about the future: that having started out, the path will not lead nowhere, that I will be set down in a good occasion up ahead that will not take place without me – among wild lemons, a sun, corrugation, and the scent of dirt. A proof of this is the stony graded road among its paddocks; someone has been here and set down a life - this corner marks a birth, that one a death.  Another is the warmth of this land, shimmering in its distance. Up close a reverberation of insects in the hot weighty air. And a pool of fresh clear water, pierced by leaves. The present is always open, and to what I am making as I replace the map and turn my body, who can tell? Moments worked out in silence, mathematical equations built on chance. Later, when I lie down, I am that same body, which is where the road led. Seeming to tag along, it made the route. But so did time, clouds melting into tomorrow’s promise, which is only ever the present.