textfiles/fun/CAA/gecaa-48

DANGEROUS INFLUENCES



#48 in the second online CAA series



by



Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)

Palo Alto, CA

December 7, 1988



copyright 1988, Steven K. Roberts





     Maybe it's the Pink Floyd.  Wordless memories overtake the present,

obscuring it, confusing it, rendering the computer puzzling even while

practiced fingers perform their familiar little dance. Perhaps madness lurks

herein:  time is inside-out; the swirling vapors are real.  Guitars like

scalpels part the calloused years, revealing visions of terrible glorious color

overlaid upon frieght trains rumbling gritty in the night, adventures and

obsessions shot through with scalding orgasms and icy knife thrusts of panic

potent enough to raise gasps and gooseflesh...



     Yep, it's one of those days.  There is some uncertainty about whether my

eyes are open or closed, for the imagician of the intellect runs a shell game

with reality while the fingers patter on... I recall suddenly a day up Boulder

Canyon, long ago, the mountains inside my head barely differing from those

outside, rock hard and hot against my cheek, legs vibrating with the tension of

death's leering proximity, and that crazy moment when the internal model of the

world gets lost in a dozen hotly competing alternatives -- each convincing,

each alluring, each equally fatal if mistaken for the real thing.  I grinned

into the stone and inched impossibly upward, curiously disconnected, vision

overloaded, abruptly free...



     Ah yes, freedom.  Maybe THAT'S what's behind all this.  The sudden

exhiliration of walking empty-handed away from Somebody Else's Plan and

sticking out a thumb, leaning against the girder of an Illinois drawbridge for

thrumming three A.M. liftoff, dynamiting a love nest with walls where once were

windows, releasing the brakes what-the-hell and flying with a shout down a

mountain road, releasing reality and flying with a scream into the infinity of

psychosensory unknowns... it all tastes of freedom.



     Try, PLEASE try to capture this.  Reach into your past, before marriages

and businesses, and examine the gaps between major commitments.  Inside those

gaps are subtle tears in the fabric -- glimpses of wild seductive alternatives

to everything you knew at the time.  They're like tantalizing clandestine peeks

through slightly parted curtains:  alternative realities only inches away...

close enough to fondle.



     Hey, maybe you not only peeked, but passed through.  Did you get a wild

hair and hitchhike off somewhere, not caring where, just for the sweet sense of

movement and adventure?  Did you leave your self behind one night, carried on a

seductive wave of music and light to a nameless place that left its mark across

the decades?  Did you drop acid, shave off all your body hair, and have a

menage a trois with hot-blooded Turks in a bat-infested Mexican pit cave?



     Or hell, maybe you passed through and STAYED.  Are you reading this via

satellite in a sweat lodge of musty buffalo hides, toking righteous ganja and

idly scritching a mad tangle of gray beard while your eyes twinkle knowingly in

the soft blue glow of an electroluminescent backlight?  Is the notion of

staying five years in one "place" (defined however you like) repugnant?  Are

you doing exactly what you want to do with your life, not only now but at 9:00

Monday morning and tonight in bed?



     The most delicious freedom comes from living beyond the known -- and not

necessarily in the "alternative lifestyle" tradition.  Seeking is fine, but the

real prisons are those of expectation:  denying the possibilities of a life in

order to be what somebody wants you to be. I've watched brilliance tarnish,

fade, and finally disappear in the murk of a stupid marriage.  I've seen those

capable of pushing the big envelope waste a lifetime waiting for little ones

with paychecks, rationalizing lost time with dreams of retirement and future

ventures. I've seen others, constrained by circumstances or interests to a

steady job, discard all leftover energy in a nightly haze of television,

alcohol, pot, religion, and numbing routine.



     I am not a proselytizer for nomadics -- or anything at all, really, other

than what's already inside you.  There are countless ways to explore that, and

my own peculiar choices are obviously not for everybody.  But damn it, do you

have any idea how much brilliance and wit rots away undeveloped?  We need to do

away with the numbing influences of this mad age and start developing PASSION.

What could you teach others if you applied your skills and insights to whatever

you love most?  Could you change the world if given the chance, even if only

through a tiny increment in the exponential evolution of intelligence?



     Today's assignment:  do something that involves risk, learning, awe,

passion, courage, invention, insight, or the sweet sparking of another's

awareness.



                                * * *



     Interesting phenomenon, speaking of all that.  Watching "The Grey Fox"

last night, I found myself intrigued that society has always lionized a certain

class of criminals -- outlaws, renegades, and charismatic purveyors of misdeeds

various.  We make heroes out of those who hurt us (as long as they do it with

panache and avoid the taboos of rape, child abuse, grisly murder, and so on).



     There's something here that's more than a literary device, and I think

it's the same phenomenon that keeps the "Computing Across America" madness

alive.  People are fascinated with life on the edge - - endlessly obsessed with

freedom and adventure.  The fact that 99% of the culture never HAS any freedom

creates a vast market for anyone who's "really out there doin' it."  And so, if

you're a nomad, adventurer, wild-eyed inventor, or even a colorful bandit, then

you have a direct line to the envious sympathies of an entire nation.



     In my case, this translates into easy sponsorships, frequent invitations,

and book sales.  Scores of opportunities arise, far more than I can ever

accept.  The contrast is dramatic:  as a faceless drone with a forgettable name

trying to eke out a freelance living in Midwest suburbia, I hustled hard for

consulting gigs and magazine assignments, grateful for every byline.  I even

did a few engineering jobs that were every bit as complex as the Winnebiko, but

so what?  My computer-packed NEMA 12 enclosures disappeared into factories,

blinking their little lights alongside the creations of a thousand other

forgotten behind-the-scenes specialists.



     But then I trashed my lifestyle, sold the house, and hit the road without

a security blanket -- living hand-to-mouth as a high technomad on a compu-bike.

 The change at first was subtle, but within months my file of newspaper

clippings was too fat to carry and I was appearing on national TV, Time, USA

Today, and so on.  Why?  I was still the same person, wasn't I?  Was it the

bike?



     No, it was the risk.  The freedom.  The public reminder that inside each

of us is a bit of madness.  I started getting letters from people I had

unwittingly pushed over the edge, strangers thanking me for showing up in print

at a critical moment in their lives.  I began witnessing the groupie effect, my

<pangs> of longing for sexy strangers turning into a succession of short,

intense relationships. And despite worries about day-to-day survival, I began

sensing envy from those with stable incomes (even a few millionnaires).



     And soon it crystallized:  The bike is an essential component, for it

legitimizes my claim that this is a lifestyle of blended techno-passions and

allows network interconnection with a global community.  But the bike is ONLY a

part... the whole is something ancient, wonderful, and by no means my own

invention.  Freedom.



     If all this makes your chest tighten with something akin to lust, makes

your thoughts turn to wispy nostalgic images of wide open spaces, or fires you

with the urge to live on the edge, then don't just sit there, damn it... go for

it!



                             * * * * * *