Target Fixation

Target Fixation

by Lewis Gillham aka "The Harley Dude"

I sleep better at night on a day that I’ve ridden.At one time, I might have attributed that to the afterglow of intense concentration, or to simple exhaustion, I now think it has to do with where I look.As Robert Frost has “been acquainted with the night,” and as J Alfred Prufrock knows the restless, etherized, hotel nights after teacups and coffee spoons and novels, I’m well aware of how the hours pass between midnight and formal morning: the facades of fun at closing time and after-hours clubs – or, less appealingly - the talk-shows on screen and in my head – the shelves of books I’ve searched through looking sometimes for answers and sometimes just for sleep. The existentialist night-owl is one who, according to Camus himself, simply cannot sleep because he’s caught “The Plague” of modern displaced man, whose world-view is caught between the rationality of scientific dialectical materialism and the sub-rational drives of the atavistic unconscious.A motorcycle is nothing if not rational – a product of engineering, powered by geology, governed by the absolute laws of physics. And yet, as far beyond thought as the Zen satori or the yogic trance.After my first few rides, I found I was sleeping better than I had in years. And those first few rides, if you can even call them that, were no  paeans to freedom, exhilaration, or fun. Having had no instruction, I barely knew where the controls were, when to shift, and definitely not how to corner – or even, really, to steer. I had what I’m tempted to call terminal “target fixation,” although “terminal” would be hyperbole. And I’d heard about the concept, along with the geometry of balance, and the importance of searching and evaluating. But that kind of knowledge was worse than none at all.“Don’t fixate on what you want to avoid???” OK, fixate on not fixating, then, right? Like notthinking about the things you’re thinking about at 3 AM when you’re trying to get some sleep, because sleep is what you need for then next day, when you have to concentrate on all the things you mustn’t think about tonight. Not to think, perchance to sleep. There’s the rub.In whatever it is we glibly call “daily life,” which is, I suppose, the life in which both feet are more or less literally on the ground – that is to say, on the concrete floors of offices, classrooms, boardrooms – wherever we earn our daily loaf – the habit if fixing on problems  is part of the bread itself. At least it has been for me, for many years: the underachieving student, the justly disgruntled colleague, the unbalanced budget. Or, loser to home and heart, the uncompleted project, the distressed companion, the sick or dying loved one. But none of these problems are addressed, let alone solved, or even avoided, by thinking about them – or by looking at them.The magic spell, if there is one, is to look beyond them. Not from absence of feeling, or shallowness of perspective, but because the mind magnifies the things to which its vision attends – for good or for ill.Now, to say that “we create our own reality” is both a New Age cliché and an the most untenable solipsism – as asphalt’s undeniable reality will undeniably attest. But, just as undeniably, we go where we look. Toward the threat, or around and beyond it.As I learned that on a motorcycle, I learned it off one. And, as with the actual practice of Yoga or Zen – or , or that matter, brushing one’s teeth – only through daily application. One long ride on a weekend is illuminating, but it is no substitute for the daily trip around town, with its van-loads of soccer kids and cell-phone daydreamers; blind alleys of the mind, and parked cars of the soul.All of which are just to be looked past, and leaned around.Nothing to lose sleep over.