CASI UNO

the sun was hot on that stretch of highway that passes by all the resorts,  between town and where the road turns left out onto the windy, sea-side of the island. the road there is a bit snarly, but then turns smooth as glass as the crosswinds begin to howl. next, you have gusts of salt air licking at your skin, and then the road turns again, and the wind is behind you as you fly down the highway into town, past tequila shacks, police cars, small children cheering, and the odd stray dog just looking at you funny.

you have been reading "the G-d delusion" by richard dawkins, strange material for a resort pool-side during the week of an ironman, but that is what was available on your wife's kindle. and, true to character, you improvise as you read, and generate themes of your own; strands of thought, that began with dawkins, but stray far from where he was taking you. near but far.

it was dawkin's treatment of spinoza that got your mind really going, and your heart resonated...spinoza and his all is one substance brand of pantheism, spinoza who saw G-d in everything, spinoza whose G-d was as big as nature, not confined by it, and most impersonal. but as much as you imagined yourself to be spinoza during your last training run, as much as you let the moist heat, humid sun, greenery and damp pavement sink into your consciousness and tried to live the drop of totality that is your experience as part of the oneness that contains and transcends it, you felt a bit emotionally robbed by that, even though it was intellectually appealing.

blame it on the sun, on the too many margueritas for a race week, on poor concentration, but, there you are, some distance into an ironman bike ride, pumping your way around this lovely little tropical/spanish island and this song about near oneness comes into your head. and with it, thoughts of spinoza, pantheism, purpose, will and the tension between the beauty of an impersonal G-d who spans all of nature, who is best apprehended in the intellectual raptures of science, and that personal G-d you reached out to in your thoughts just before you plunged into the ocean at 7 a.m.....the one who makes the day sunny for you, who plans the winds arounds you, the one who cares about your day as much as the rotation of the planets, the stamping sound of an ant on the ground, or the evaporation of water from a puddle in a slum alleyway somewhere. that omniscient, yet personal G-d of your childhood...for whom nothing is too big or too small, who is everywhere and nowhere at once. you want Him to protect you and help you ride 5:15 and run 3:30 or better...

you pass other, less fortunate riders, who are repairing flat tires, and experience an angst that highlights the essential tension between realities: either all of this is random and you are floating anxiously, without a remedy other than to say yes to whatever happens (there we are: spinoza again), OR, there goes that inner voice again: "G-d take care of me, don't let me flat"....(this seems emotionally preferable in some ways, but more confining at the same time)

human experience is but a drop of water in an ocean that constitutes existence. ahhh. join the ocean. just keep riding. breathing. floating on a machine through air under your own power. see the others in their bright coloured race kits with grimacing faces, hear the cowbells, smell the gel...you exist within the continuum that is experience itself...you are close to it. casi uno. almost one.