Ghost

Somewhere between the debauched, pulsating city of neon and the desolate sea. Somewhere out in the dry, disenchanted blackness. Somewhere on an empty stretch of concrete... I zoom along on my TL-1000, pumping my fist in the air like Tom Cruise from a decadent 80's action film. Old army ruksack tied to my back, worn leather straps flapping away, containing a bottle of Jarritos guava, 3 apples, and a bag of flour tortillas I bought at a fruitstand in little Tijuana from a kind senorita with leathery skin and sad eyes. Leaning forward, full tuck, I twist the accelerator... 85... 100... 115... 125. The air becomes heavier and tears creep out sneakily tip-toeing across my face and then like little spiders leap into the wind to realize their dreams. One slip, one patch of gravel, one split-second screw-up, and I'm fucking dead. The poison running through my veins, the wake-up juice, the fire water, crystal meth keeps me one step ahead of the blurred lights and white stripes. Like a sniper I blend into the dreamy speed-scape, I'm one with the cylindrical, high velocity tick-tock roar of the thousand cc supersport V-twin.

I am the bodhissatva of torque.

And I heard on good authority from Awakener Avalokitesvara - he is the hearer and answerer of prayer - that I'll live to drink, laugh, and fuck another day.

Just for kicks I flip the lights off for a minute or two trusting the fact the road will continue on straight and true. I trust I won't hit a lizard or large juicy spider and skid out of control and be tossed off my bike into a jagged rock or better yet, be dragged along underneath the 600 lb machine, as the rocky cement gnaws away at my leg and torso like a hungy, late nineteenth-century industrial monstrosity. I'm playing with a revolver that only has one round empty. Tick-tock, tick tock, fade into grainy black and white, slow it down, cut the sound. Here I am, higher than high, hanging on to the giant hands of time like Harold Lloyd.