Finding a way out

 It's not easy, leaving the maze, but one sure way is to get on the bike. Of course, the bike doesn't actually move - but that's no real impediment to finding a path that'll lead me back to solid ground. The path I chose led me through Great Cheverell, and up to, and out of Worton. The land of my youth, this is where I used to live, in the depths of the Wiltshire countryside. It's 1981 and I'm sat on a bright red, 10-speed falcon Eddy Merckx. I've probably got an army surplus knapsack on my back, filled with vinyl. Taking records over to my friend Tim's place, to sit and listen to Punk Rock. 

And here I am again, riding the same road - it's on Bkool. As I turned left at the Black Dog crossroads, and headed up the slight rise, towards Worton, I will freely admit I had tears in my eyes.  I was crying for every single one of those forty years. but the oddest thing was that I wasn't sad for a youth that had passed, a life that had slipped through my fingers. Instead, I was just so happy to still be here, still tooling around the Wiltshire countryside on a bike, even though it was virtual. Still grounded in where I'd come from, the person I had been back then, the things I'd learned, and listened to.

I've been reading a lot of Herman Hesse recently - specifically Siddartha - and it's been a hugely important process, to deal with the idea that there is no time, as the river is in all places at once. It's at the mouth, at the sea, and it's in the waters that pass by, as you watch them. That's what it felt like, on this ride: to know that time was surrounding me, enveloping me. All that was, and all that is. The same feeling I got crossing Waterloo Bridge, a few months ago.  That path with no end is the only way out of the maze.