Some people say thinking is bad. Overthinking, being intelligent, having too much thought on one issue, it all can be negative, or so it seems.

I don’t know if I agree with that, I haven’t thought about it enough yet.

I’m a very logical person. I think above everything, and when I say everything I mean EVERYTHING. I choose to mull things over. I consider all possible outcomes and I always come up with the best possible solution, or so I think. Anyway, that’s what this trip is all about, isn’t it? Thinking? I’m giving myself time to think, am I not? I’m doing different things, and I’m thinking about them.

Well, if doing something different is the goal and I think all the time.. then I guess I’m supposed to try not thinking? However I’m perfectly happy, and I think all the time. I am regularly annoyed by those around me and I have trouble understanding people I deem un-intelligent, but other than that I’m happy.

When I think about it though, that sounds un-intelligent and not very logical. Hmmm.

I wrote about the motorcyclist Yogi in Bellingham in a previous blog. Something I didn’t wrire about was his profession. Besides being a Yogi, and a transient he was also a dance teacher and a balloonist. The balloons were fascinating. He twisted and he turned those things into bears with flowers, cats with pointy ears, and people on crotch rockets. He had a knack for such things and it was one of the ways that sustained his transient lifestyle. It was cooler than cool to watch him, and as I said before (multiple times now) he was also a Yogi. So there he would be, twisting and turning the balloons right before my eyes, and just so my ears didn’t feel left out he would twist up some pretty words too. He gave me a lot to think about.

One of the things he left me thinking about was how useless thought could be. Thought, it is what we all live in. It is what forms our own perceptions, and perceptions form the reality we perceive. The jumble of never-ending thought is in our brain making of the universe what it will, and we let it. Yogi Kai was of the opinion that one should harness this thought. It was our thought after all so why did we let it run rampant? Why do we humans let it occur even when we don’t want it to?

I have to say, being a thinker, I had a hard time conceiving of what he meant. I am now only trying to repeat it the way he told me. The only thing I have managed to deduce from these thoughts is that I should meditate more. Meditating slows the mind and allows one to gain the upper hand on over-active thought processes.

When I’m on my motorcycle, inside my helmet, I do meditate. Those thoughts become something that I can control. I tell my brain where to start and when to stop, or atleast that’s how it works on a good day. It is a different story once I get off the bike though. All those thoughts do their own thing at that point.

The mechanics of my bike is logic. Little Wing is a machine that performs function without emotion and is maintained through a series of scientific procedures. Motorcycle maintenance is logical, I know this because Rober Persig tells me so. This is why mechanics and myself get along so well. “How do you do mechanics? My name is Diamond I will be working with you today.”

“Oh, I’m running sort of rough today unfortunately.”

“That’s just fine, open up, say ahh. Oh yes, I hear it, lets take a look at you.”

Humans are not mechanical though. We all have our own set of odd things and they often are labeled with rules don’t apply stickers. Human emotion is mainly undefinable, however, I feel that I am good at that too. Logic is not just a mechanical thing. Being a scientific type of thought it can also be used in the human sciences as well. I am able to get human emotions, I understand them and I have them, and I consider them logically. They don’t get past this brain of mine without being ‘worried to death.’

Worried to death is a phrase that I have picked up from some of my engineer pals. One of them is in Minnesota and the other is in Oregon. 6000 miles away, by Little Wings calculations (that is an exaggerated number if one were to Google it, just so we all know that I know that), and these two engineers have the same phrase. I’m not entirely sure if they teach that at engineer school, but my Minnesotan friend did not attend such a program I don’t think so it doesn’t matter regardless. I find it interesting that two such logical people use such a phrase that seems so emotionally fraught.

For logical reasons I dislike the word ‘worry,’ but in this context, and when said worried, it works for me. It defines the action that I take part in. I worried all those silly human problems to a logical place where they can then be easily fixed and assuaged with simple answers.

No need for a self help book, Spock is here.

These thoughts, which I actually have learned to like a whole lot (one might even say love if it didn’t mean I should marry them), still pose a problem. They don’t stop. They don’t pause. They don’t tone it down. They just keep partying day and night til my brain is a muddle of loud obnoxious thoughts. Some thoughts that have passed the logic test continuing to make friends with those who have not. All of them dancing around to loud music, while a few over-thought thoughts are passed out on my minds floor, empties scattered alongside them.

Over thought imagery ^ right there.

When one is constantly worrying problems to death they are still in a state of worry. Yes, with mechanics, something that can be worried into a better state, that makes sense. With non-machines the worry is not as effective, though. Worrying about humans does not change the so-called ‘problem,’ and even if it did one can not change another human. We are all living in our own perceptions, and perceptions form the reality we perceive, so therefore unless one can manage to change someones perceptions that someone is probably not going to change their own reality. Being worried for someone doesn’t change a thing. Over thinking something that wasn’t overthunk to begin with — like a human intereaction — only causes distress to the overthinker. Taking these interactions at face value is generally the better solution. For someone like me, though, that means changing my perceived reality, because my reality is all about thinking.

If, instead of ‘worrying things to death’ in daily life, I were just to take it as it comes, roll with the punches, go with the flow, I would be met with a bit more positivity. Maybe not positivity from the situation, but positivity from my own brain. And being that the brain forms perceptions, which form the reality we perceive, the reality would be a better situation, or atleast I would think so.

Less thinking, more meditating.

Some people say thinking is bad, and I guess I could agree. It isn’t the thought itself that is bad, it is the over-thought. For even Robert Persig calls it Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Something else to think about.

A miniature thing of sorts is seen to be bouncing, maybe even frolicking (possibly skipping), through a windy, dull, monochromatic tunnel. As this elusive thing makes its way along it bumps into the sides of the tunnel, for it is to hyper for such a small path. As the thing knocks the side walls a shower of color appears. The color looks much like sparks, but as they fall on the thing they become part of him, much like the dye that one might see in a ‘color run’ except more brilliant. This brilliant little thing continues to gambol along, seemingly unaware of the ruckus it is causing in this monotonous environment. The gray matter around this brightly colored thing appears unflappable to the prancing thing running through it, but the thing continues, cavorting without a care.

Meanwhile, in a land far far away, a human sits alone in a room, staring off into a distance that is not truly as distant as the eyes appear to be making it. This human might be thought to be ‘day dreaming’ or ‘lost in thought,’ whatever the term one might use the fact of the matter is that this person is hanging about in there own head.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the thing has left the grey tunnel and entered a larger grey cavern of sorts. As this thing rounded the corner from its tunnel another thing entered from a another tunnel. The thing, unable to slow its speed in such a short space, romps right into this new thing causing a flurry of sparks and bright color. A whirlwind of sparks and dye. Like a storm or a twister these colors dominate and cause a ruckus larger than the single thing could ever achieve. The unfalteringly monochrome world is now being changed at a feverish rate. The color attaches itself to the cavern and then spreads like a fire. It lights up the tunnels and changes the grey matter into colors that matter. The firing of synapses is a thing of intense beauty, not easily stopped once started.

Back in the land of the living the human comes alive and starts writing so frenzied that one might wonder how the human is still attached to its fingers, or maybe the human is typing. In fact, the human maybe painting or drawing. They could be drafting or chopping. Carving, sculpting, or fixing fiber. Whatever it is that human is doing it is clear that they have been struck by inspiration, and those mysterious things called thoughts, have been struck by eachother, allowing the enormous pallet of inspiration to become available to this human.

I am not sure if that is really how these things works, inspiration and all, but sometimes when I sit alone with myself and there seems nothing left to think about I toss this thought around. It always seems very profound at the time, but really it is just a bunch of thoughts. Probably uninspired thoughts at that. Ah well, uninspired thoughts are okay with me as long as they’re colorful.

Typing away in Portland. Doop doop doop.