Category: Writings

I descend and transcend – and marvel at how the two can intertwine so freely. I can be at the lowest ebb and also running along the exalted heights. I can be so low that I want to die and so close to ecstasy that I am beyond death. In short, I live like the…

I feel like I have wandered for years in her streets. When I stumbled, she picked me up; when I was in danger, she guided my step to safety; when I was at my wits end, she sent me a sign. She has been my comfort, my destiny and my provocation. It is here that…

I set out on my bike at first light but there wasn’t much since it was raining. The sky was dark and the streets were wet but today was the day of my 100-mile ride and months before I had committed myself to doing those hundred miles today –- and I was going to do…

My friend Brian Day (“Big guy with earring,” 30 March 2003) committed suicide just before Christmas. In true biker fashion, he did it with nitrous oxide – which his girlfriend told me was a good thing. “At least it’s painless,” she said. In a fathomless situation, you take solace in small things like that. I…

The stories came one after the other. In each he was accompanied by a different exquisite girlfriend: Prague, the 210 motorcycles, the lecherous rock ‘n roll photographer, the train trip across a continent in search of absinthe. He was, among many other things, a collector – not only of girlfriends but of antiques, of motorcycles,…