{76}

There is more Soul in hitch-hiking than in Pope John Paul II.  His attitude is just so bad it makes Freddie look like Mary's little lamb.  The Pope reckons

“God is paying for the great gift bestowed upon a being he created 'in his image, after his likeness'.  Before this gift he remains consistent and places Himself before the judgement of man”.

The Pope’s poep.  He perverts the message of humbleness that Christ personifies.  May the weight of his ruby rings squeeze his fingers until they swell like pork sausages, and then pop.  Maybe the Pope should try hitch-hiking.

            Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb.
            Mary had a little lamb, that followed her to school.           

            It followed her to school one day, school one day,
            It followed her to school one day, but that was against the rules.

           
            So the teacher shot it dead one day, dead one day, So teacher
           shot it dead one day, because we all know rules iss rules.           

            Now it follows her to school each day, school each day,

            Now it follows her to school each day
            between two slices of bread.

{76}

One can only wonder at what wonder, makes a wanderer wander.  (Travelling light... is the only way to fly).  Hitch-hiking is more than a religion, or a philosophy.  It is something that evokes those energies that lie deep within the early origins of the soul.

It would be wrong to say that either you have it, or you don't, because hitch-hiking is within all of us.  After all, we are all essentially just cosmic hitch-hikers on the great Universal highway, protruding our symbol upwards;  waiting for someone to give us a lift of some sort or other.

But it does take a real leap of faith, to simply throw oneself into the main-stream, and take whichever currents come your way.  You have to have moral confidence in your fellow human being:  the random unknown stranger.  Its surprising how sometimes it can feel like 99% of the human race are stingy self-centred assholes when the currents are flowing against you.  So one can't simply just hitch-hike.  Somehow one has to acclimatise to it and blend in;  become part of the scenery, intertwined within the plot and the adventure.  But not all of it is necessarily spiritually romantic:

{77}

Thumb raised towards the horizon.  Tires.  Dust.  Despair.

Marvin hitch-hiked from an early age.  As it was mostly on the Southern bit of Africa, he did not come into contact with those real legends:  Sissy Hankshaw, Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Ken Kesey.  However, he was acquainted with Koos Kombuis, Robin Greenaway, and he once thought he saw Larry Diamond, but couldn't be entirely sure.

Sissy Hankshaw was blessed with a God-given gift in her abnormally large thumbs;  Arthur and Ford had many groovy space-age contraptions such as the

electronic thumb;  and Koos could sing as blue as any Autumn Sky.  But the chief tool of Marvin's trade was his two good feet.  He took the hiking bit of hitch-hiking quite seriously;  and, it was rumoured that he could even catch a quick snooze, with his thumb slung over one shoulder, his rucksack over the other, while his feet carried on plodding - so long as the road was fairly straight. 

Marvin was thus a relatively slow hitch-hiker, as when his feet took control he walked for hours on end, his thumb often hanging forgotten by his side.  This was until Marvin became aware of the more subtle nuances of hitch-hiking and how to get a lift:

1:        Never wear sunglasses unless you think somebody will give you a lift to ask you for drugs.  If its the Narcotics officers that give you a lift, then they will probably try to sell you drugs.  This is entirely a normal practice, but be careful because they normally only have low quality drugs for sale (having sold or used the good quality themselves).  And they do have this nasty tendency to throw the younger, poorer, weaker or feminine types into dark dingy dungeons.

2:        Try and wear light clothing.  (It took Marvin a while to work this one out).  Everybody knows that murderers, Satanists and rapists wear dark clothes because they are sinister people.

3:        Have a visible excuse.  A sign with your destination on it, A guitar, a backpack or a female companion, are the surest ways to reflect the stereotypical understanding most people have of what a hitch-hiker should be.  For best results choose any two of the above visible excuses.  (Three is a crowd).

4:        Don't put your hands in your pockets.  What is it you are hiding in there?  A gun?  A knife?  A Penis?

5:        Don't look upset or desperate if you haven't had a lift for 2 days, its just bound to make people suspicious.  Remain cool and relaxed at all times, as if you have been standing only a short while.

6:        Don't throw stones at empty vehicles that pass you by.  Surely they must have a good reason to not pick you up.

7:        If by the third evening, you still have not gotten a lift then ignore all the above comments and try extremely weird behaviour.  You just may have blended so much into the environment that people are ignoring you.  Try getting down on your hands and knees and begging.  Hope that it rains so that people will feel sorry for you (but not that you get so wet that they don't want you making their seats wet).  Try thumb-gesturing with great swoops of the arm.  If you are in favour with your relevant Deity, try Praying.  If all this fails, hail a taxi;  if there are no taxi's and you thought you were in Africa then you may start getting worried that you have been hitch-hiking in your sleep, and have probably managed to slip off the edge of the continent, and ended up in Antarctica.  If the weather is still hot, and you see a whole bunch of man-size hoppy rat-like thingies with long tails and built in moon-bags, then you're probably in Australia.

{78}

Africa has a unique species of dust, that accumulates when it hasn't rained for a few months or years.  The dust is rust-red;  nasal-nostalgic.  It hangs to anyone who has felt its rich flavour and dry ancient sorrow.  Earthen like lust - it seeps into the folds in your eyes and your face, and gorges out lines and wrinkles.  The dust can make an old face beautiful, if that face is the emanation of a smiling soul;  like the face of a bushman, or the face of Nelson Mandela.

The Earth is surely at its widest in the Karoo desert.  It is unnaturally flat with just the occasional mesa to break the routine.  The clouds are enormous here, they seem magnified because you can see them on the far horizon, and the visibility is so clear that you think you can see forever.  It is surely the perfect place to start a flat-earth society.

Once you've slept under the brightest stars of Africa in the free bushland, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city;  seen the decorations of the most exquisite ceiling on the planet, speckled with sparkles of immortality;  then the dust has possessed you, and you'll always be a part of the Earth.

Marvin felt his throat stick with the dry Karoo air, hot in the whitened sky.  Cicada's screamed their mid-day orgy of protest-song in the semi-desert scrubland.  The vastness of the flat landscape was split in half by the impossible straightness of the dirt road that stretched out of sight in both directions.

A red dust cloud billowed up on the horizon from the direction Marvin had arrived the day before.  He noticed the small farm-truck-speck, churning up a mighty brown-orange cloud behind it.  Its approach ballooning towards him. 

Marvin closed his eyes as the dust-cloud passed him by, tires spinning viciously on the road, throwing stones out at a furious pace.  He squinted in the storm of particles that enveloped him once the truck passed his unmoving silhouette.  As it vanished and the cloud subsided, his thumb dropped to his side.  Turning his head he looked to where the torrent of orange excitement moved away from him.  He gestured obscenely in its general direction.

The African wilderness can make you feel insignificant.  A speck of dust on the pathway of the world.  So easily discarded, plucked and thrown carelessly to the wind, to flick and twist and twirl you, at its seemingless whim.

Life is a mystery.  Mystery is about not knowing something.  So life is about ignorance.  But ignorance alone is fine until it gets lost in insignificance;  then all that is left behind is dust.

And darkness.  Somewhere between dust and darkness was sunset:  ripples of lava-like red-orange-yellow-sun-drops, glowing on the edge of an enormous black cloud that entirely obscures the sun itself.  Black-purple expands the swarthy volume, looming ominous - majestic with fiery lining.  The darkness growing like a massive being of ignorance, and the edge of its gold halo, dimmed to a slight sliver of silver.

The clouds seem low, and the sudden blindness that enshrouds him makes Marvin worry about where the road is.  So claustrophobic aches the nothingness.

The only sanity in this hole of emptiness are the crickets, and other insects, which seem to fill the void with their shrill early evening orchestrations.  Slowly the stars emerge from the other side of the horizon, flicking on, one by one; effortlessly and gently illuminating each other.  Monstrous the dark cloud

diminishes in the direction where the sun has already set.  And the ever-feint miracle of starlight extracts shadows from the landscape as night awakens.

Darkness... Headlights... Darkness... Darkness... Much Darkness... Headlights... More Darkness... More Headlights... Long moments of solemn Darkness... Headlights... Darkness... Darkness... Blackness... Night... Emptiness... Loneliness... Fear... Panic... Outrage... Obscurity... Emptiness... Darkness... Nothingness... Night... Starlight... Midnight... Galaxies... Eternity... The Universe... Stars like diamond dust... The Multi-verse... Satin night, sheets of black... Forever... Sparkles trust...

{79}

Headlights?  Volkswagen van, yellow.  It stops!  For a euphoric moment Marvin basks in the rays that strike out intently from the burning filaments in the front of the mud-caked van.  Immediately hundreds of insects fling themselves with absolute drunken reverie into the light-beams.

He moves to its side - his nostrils welcome the carbon monoxide spitting and fuming out the rear-end of the metallic beast.  The purring engine pleasantly rumbles.  Opening the sliding door, the warmth of electricity glows, revealing a haven from the extremities that he has left behind.  As the soft luxury of weariness sinks within him, and his legs buckle for an instant, it crosses his mind how the Volkswagen, or people’s car, was supposed to have been commissioned by Adolph Hitler.  Well right now, Marvin could have kissed Adolph Hitler on his ugly white ass, because from out the open door of this Volkswagen, a familiar sweet aroma wafted alluringly in the dark evening air, seducing him by his nostrils.

The van has five people in it;  as Marvin seats himself next to a thin dark-skinned girl with fierce eyes that look about 15 years or 1015 years old, depending on whether or not she is human, Marvin is quite unsure.  Across from him directly, sits a youngish middle-aged woman, with a butterfly tattoo on her cheek, and an excessive amount of jewellery, feathers, beads, and rings.  She watches Marvin from under an eyebrow; her long dark grey-streaked hair hanging half across one shoulder.  She wears three simple circular gold earrings in one ear;  the other ear is a virgin.  Alongside the driver a dreadlocked and ebony grinning face peers over the seat and bids Marvin: 'Irie'.  'Jah guide' the

response as Marvin and the Rasta show each other a hand-clenched fist;  then both fists clash in greeting:  “I be Nekos”.

The driver focuses on the slowly winding dirt road; not turning around at all for some time;  except to take and drag deeply on the cone-shape of the rather large joint offered to him by the Rastaman.  The van-travellers are called 'Halfling' and her mother Jo, Nekos and the driver Wolfgang, who is bearded and heavy-set, and has large amounts of beads and chains around his neck and waist.  Beads of sweat roll off his concentrated forehead.

Thankfully the marijuana is free from tobacco.  Marvin takes several long tokes and his mind eases, no longer tired, but racing through the days events, fantasies, perplexities and complexities, with little conversation except to affirm that they have the same destination:  An oasis-type jungle-valley, nestled between mountains surrounded by dry scrubland and harsh Ciskei bushland, more than half the night's journey away.  This common destiny is a pregnant valley of luscious life:  The Hogsback;  the mountain valley that inspired J.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.  The Garden of Eden from which was borne the Whole of Middle-Earth.  A mountainous valley of land that emanates Magic and mystery, merely by mentioning its name.  The Hog itself as a symbol, is the standard of the great Celtic Knight, Arthur.  The night is long, and Marvin sleeps an energetic sleep as the tires of the van spin their way across the Southern African sub-continent.