Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

by Neil Peart

  The weather got kind of “bitchy” around eastern Colorado (though never “beastly,” as it had been in the Pacific Northwest; these are a couple of my new meteorological classifications for motorcycling weather), with clouds and wind and occasional rain, but it was never too serious. I avoided the Shmegmopolitan rat-warrens east of the Mississippi by riding up through Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, the upper peninsula of Michigan, and crossing Our Nation’s Border at Sault Ste. Marie, right past that old arena where, I recall, we did a show together in the long-ago time. [In the mid-’70s Joe opened for Rush on a few shows in northern Ontario, the audiences typically bemused by his quirky singing, guitar playing, and amplified boot-stomping.]

  Then across (ridiculously over-policed) Ontario, through Sudbury, North Bay, and Our Nation’s Capital, and back to my garage. The GS had covered 60,105 kilometres [37,566 miles] since leaving here last August, and its odometer now shows 117,312 [73,320 miles]. And it’s still running like a champ.

  Despite covering such a distance in that short a time, it was actually a very safe crossing (as much as there is such a thing, of course). Relative to suburban streets and meandering highways with sudden tractors and cows, cruising on the Interstate is what the Brits call a “dawdle.” Especially out West, where the traffic is so much lighter and you can often see around you for days. Even travelling through the American Memorial Day weekend, that was a pretty smooth route, and I made much better time than I’d expected. I’d allowed six or seven days for the crossing, but once I got into that Interstate-of-mind, I just kept cruising.

  Simply making “Big Speed” is not the way, of course. For one thing, you only invite the attentions of the Law, and who needs the hassle? Not me. The Western states all have limits of 70 or 75 mph anyway, so you can cruise safely in the low 80s, and that’s plenty fast enough to make time. Then I just try to keep the “two-second cushion” between me and surrounding traffic, keep out of their blind spots (while remembering that no matter what, I remain totally invisible to them), and ride on — one fuel stop or rest area/pee stop at a time. So pass the miles, and the days.

  For many excellent reasons, I don’t like riding at night (well, I like it, but I don’t think it’s a good thing). One big reason is that there’s certainly no point in riding through scenery you can’t see, but there are also all the other things you can’t see, like broken mufflers or strips of truck recap in your lane. And obviously I don’t want to get too tired and possibly make a dumb mistake, so I was off the road by 5:00 every day, and away again early, early in the morning. The last day, as I got close to home, I went longer — 1,300 kilometres [813 miles] in 14 hours, but even then I arrived before dark.

  And I can see now it was the right thing to do, back then: taking off during the change of season. I was “sinking” a little, day by day, and needed to make a change. Take my little baby soul for a ride.

  Plus, that Last Big Ride from L.A. homeward was special in another way, because now there’s gold at either end of that rainbow — my beautiful house at this end, and a beautiful girl at the other!

  [Recap of the Big Romance.]

  You can probably imagine what a huge transformation this has made in my life. Your most recent letter advised me to travel in this direction, so to speak, though I must say I had been giving it precious little thought myself. I just wanted to carry on in relative solitude, to be a hermit in the winter and summer, and a gypsy in the spring and fall. That was my little plan for life, and I certainly had no intention of becoming attached to anyone. To the contrary, I wanted to shut myself off from all that — “I touch no one and no one touches me.”

  But as I have been saying often lately, “You can’t tell yourself how to feel.”

  Certain electromagnetic and biochemical signals were exchanged — to take the unromantic view — and everything was suddenly different. It’s a hell of a thing. Another one of my current mottoes: “What a difference a dame makes.”

  All I know is that I saved a bundle on tire wear, because all the way from California to Quebec, my wheels never touched the ground.

  And that’s my little story for today, Joe. Definitely a lot brighter than most of my stories lately, and it just goes to show . . . well, something. There is always a dark side, of course, and now I sometimes find myself tormented by doubts and insecurities and fears and guilts of an entirely different order, but again — you can’t tell yourself how to feel.

  Another motto, from the French, that applies well to my current attitude about life-in-general: Ça vaut la peine. “It’s worth the trouble.”

  That also goes to show . . . something.

  Otherwise, I’m trying to get myself oriented for summer activities — already out rowing every day, and wanting to get into cycling — and also into doing something, I don’t know, maybe productive?

  Nothing like Romance to get a guy fired up about “doing something” (probably just a variation of “showing off ”), but we’ll see what, if anything, comes of that notion. For now, I’m just glad to have all those new sparks lighting up my little baby soul.

  Ain’t love grand? Sometimes it is . . . NEP

  [Letter to Brutus]

  le petit oiseau d’été

  June 11, ’99 Lac St. Brutus, Que.

  Hey Schnitzelgrüben!

  Good morning to you from a golden day of early summer, bright yellow sunshine, immaculate blue sky, ripples sparkling on the lake, curves of green all around, and even at 9:30 a.m. it’s around 75 of your quaint American degrees.

  Winds light from the southeast, barometer steady, humidity 80 per cent, and it looks as though we’re under the influence of a fairly stationary high-pressure zone. After a somewhat gloomy week, both exterior and interior (that would be me), the change is welcome.

  Easing into the summer groove-thang, this morning I was up before the sun cleared the trees, pressing the juice and making coffee, then standing at the kitchen window to watch the birds at my feeding station while I wash a few dishes. A little Sinatra playing quietly, so as not to disturb the guests (Steven and Shelly in the house; Deb and Rudy over in the guest house), while I do the morning clean-up chores.

  Imposing Bachelor’s Rules on the household, where the kitchen must be cleaned up the following morning and not right after dinner, has had the unintended effect that the earliest riser faces the task. That would be me. However, I’m sure you can imagine that it’s not so unpleasant dans une scène si belle comme ça ici.

  Yesterday morning I had a wonderful little set-piece: a bright yellow goldfinch perched opposite a bright red house finch, while a ruby-throated hummingbird sipped at the nectar right outside the window. Even in summer, Chef Ellwood’s Birdbrain Café is very popular in the neighborhood, and I get to see a lot of birds that would otherwise pass unnoticed.

  Slowly I’m getting adjusted to this latest change of seasons, trying to find the patterns of activity and a “mind-set,” I guess you’d call it, that will get me through the days and nights. This first week back I’ve been feeling kind of out of sync with everything, including the environment. It seems I’m still fairly confused and disoriented, from the inside out, and I’ve had trouble getting centered, or even motivated toward the ever-necessary activities. Basically, I’m just stirred up inside. Agitated, like.

  I’ve gone out for a row most days, but often I fail to “surrender to it” or something, and don’t get the lovely trance-state that makes all those kinds of motion so valuable to this little baby soul o’ mine. It seemed like I was hauling at those oars and driving down through my feet with a feeling more like agitation, frustration, and even anger — beat up that water!

  It’s hardly surprising that I’m finding it a little difficult to get settled down. I’ve got that old “caught in a whirlwind” feeling again, with so many emotions whipping through me, some of them big ones, that my poor brain can’t even keep up, let alone make sense of it all. Still, that inadequate little organ keeps trying, cranking away like the primitive comput
er it is, continually attempting to solve impossible questions and make impossible decisions. That would be me.

  The time of year is rough too, as June is another of the “cursed” months in my year these days. It occurs to me now that the whole season is cursed (“Cruel Summer”), as July and August will each bring their “days of doom and gloom” too. Man.

  The birthdays aren’t so bad, because at least you can still celebrate them. It’s the others, what I have come to call the “D-Days,” that are really tough.

  I had been hoping that this next one [June 20th, the anniversary of Jackie’s passing] could be “marked” by the completion of the memorial at Mount Pleasant, but that project has suffered setback after setback (nobody’s fault, really, except perhaps mine for not bugging them enough), and it’s not going to be finished on time. So that’s depressing.

  Wednesday I’m driving into Toronto (reluctantly) to take care of some medical, dental, business, and social obligations, and I had planned to spend Sunday, the dreaded 20th, at the memorial, and fly out that night to San Francisco. (A certain ugly irony there, I know, but it just worked out that way.) So now I don’t know what I’ll do that day, but it won’t be nice.

  Yesterday Deb and I were going through some of Selena’s things, and putting up her collections of key rings and shot glasses (how many of those you and I picked up on our travels!) in the Selena Memorial Library. At first it was okay, and we were laughing at different things and talking about Selena, but then, as Deb opened more boxes and I saw more and more different “souvenirs” of her — stuffed animals and little things from her room — it started to get really bad. I went downstairs and sat at the kitchen counter weeping uncontrollably, and it went on for a long time.

  I poured myself a large Macallan or two, and played all my saddest songs really loud (to try to kind of “wallow” in it) but I simply couldn’t stop crying and sobbing for about two hours. Eventually I went and lay down and passed out for awhile, then woke up exhausted, but calmer. That happened before too, a couple of weeks ago in L.A., when I was alone one afternoon and it just swept over me, like a wave of abject sorrow. Well, no surprise if I should be afflicted like that from time to time, I don’t imagine.

  Sunday, June 13

  The very next day after the very next day . . .

  All my guests are gone now, it’s a hot afternoon, and I’m presently wallowing in peace and nakedness. (“Don’t you look at me!”)

  Since yesterday morning, I’m pleased to report that the world is moderately transformed around here, and by one simple plunge: I went swimming. Now the lake is part of my world too, in a more tangible way — a more sensual way — and what a difference it makes. I think it’s fairly early in the season to be swimming, though I’ve seldom been here this time of year. Apparently it was pretty hot for a couple of weeks while I was gone, so maybe there’s global warming in my lake. In any case, I like it.

  It took a couple of “hangs off the ladder” to get up my nerve, but once I got in, it was fine. I swam way down the shore to what I still consider to be your little dock and back, for a preliminary “sea-test,” after a year of (I realize now) almost no swimming, save for a couple of brief dips down there in Loreto, in the Sea of Cortez. But right away, getting into that long-distance, three-strokes-per-breath rhythm was really good for soothing my brain.

  Better than rowing, somehow; more like the trance that comes from cross-country skiing. Don’t know why, but so it seems to be. Research into trance-states will continue.

  Last night I was telling Steven and Shelly how you had been “The Discoverer of This Land,” and as such you’ll remember how good this water tastes on your lips, and how good it feels on your skin. As I stroked along, steering by the shoreline, I couldn’t help thinking of another summer “Once Upon a Time” (one of my current fave sad Sinatra songs), and I remembered all those swims along that shore to the rock in front of your dock, calling out “Kee-ah-kee!,” and consulting on crossword clues and such before the swim back.

  But enough about that. I’ve had enough abject sorrow for one weekend, thank you.

  Today, on another immaculate morning, I went out early for a long row around the whole six-island loop, a route I call “all around the circle.” After Steven and Shelly drove off to the airport, and Deb (things are better between her and me, but not quite the same) and little Rudy for home, I dozed in my chair for a while in unalloyed silence, then went down to the dock, dumped my clothes, and swam the other way up the shore past Louie’s and Chalmers’s, all the way to Duddy’s rock. Then back in a perfect, unconscious trance.

  Since I started this letter, the combination of a little sun, a little water, and a little exercise has accomplished wonders. (A little peace and quiet doesn’t hurt either.) I feel better. Why, I bet I look better too. If that’s at all possible, for a Hollywood babe-magnet like me.

  Or at least, like Ellwood is. See, in my ever-splintering personality (way past schizophrenia now, through triphenia, and quadrophenia, and well into polyphenia), there are now a few different guys who are sort of . . . collaborating . . . on being the boss of my life. As the most righteous dude of us all, Ellwood has arisen to be the Hollywood facet of our personalities, the Romantic Superhero.

  He’s not like that old guy we used to be, that drummer-goof, the one with the weird name nobody could pronounce. For sure, Ellwood is not like whatever shreds of that old guy might remain in us now. And Ellwood is not at all the same as John Ellwood Taylor (“all blues, all the time”), or Chef Ellwood, nor even like the fabled Ghost Rider. And he’s certainly nothing like little Gaia, the adolescent girl who’s all weepy and sentimental over pop songs.

  Although, it has to be said, when Ellwood attains his most exalted state, it’s not too hyperbolic to say that Ellwood Embodies All.

  In a Walt Whitman sort of way, “I am large, I contain multitudes” and all that.

  In a more practical vein, I just hope my Sybilline filofax can accommodate the increasing activities of my “cast of thousands.” It was fine when we were just pieces of that other guy, along with John Ellwood Taylor, Chef Ellwood, and the Ghost Rider. But even adding the romantic superhero, Ellwood, to the plot has been a bit of a strain.

  I mean, really, dear boy! First we had to interrupt the Ghost Rider’s travels while Ellwood made us all ride back down to Los Angeles, just so he could tart himself up like some popinjay and pitch his agéd woo at some fair young damsel. And now, the road-weary Ghost Rider is barely back in the garage and trying to relax his way into summer (hangin’ with John Ellwood in the hammock), when our Romantic Superhero decides he wants to turn around and fly us all out to San Francisco to dress up and play El Romancero again.

  You see the problem.

  Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this topsy-turvy world of ours, it’s that it’s pointless to try to steer this crazy roller-coaster ride called Life, so you might as well just hold on.

  So saith the prophet, the Reverend L. Wood Hubbard.

  And speaking of inspirational writings, I’ll enclose a couple of prophetic quotations from Joseph Conrad’s Victory, which I happened to be reading throughout my crise de coeur a few weeks back, through Alturas, Grand Coulee Dam, Snoqualmie Falls, Vancouver, and back down to L.A. I think you’ll see the relevance. It was another one of those West Coast synchronistic experiences. Man.

  I hope you’re doing okay there. Be a darling boy and give us a call soon, will you? (We’d all love to hear from you!) When we get back from the coast — say the 25th or 26th. There’s a good chap.

  And say, when Reverend L. Wood finishes his book of stern-but-sensitive inspirational thoughts, we’ll send you a copy. You and your mates could be his first “flock.”

  Now, let us pray for redemption, brother.

  Blah, blah, blah . . . From “all of us” To all of you . . .

  So . . . the romantic superhero among us, Ellwood, hitched a ride to Toronto again, took care of some business, had dinner with Al
ex and his wife Charlene, and with Geddy and his wife Nancy (no doubt thrilling them all with tales of his romantic exploits), visited the cemetery plot for a tearful few hours, then flew off to San Francisco to meet Gabrielle.

  Once again Ellwood did his utmost to impress, booking a luxurious hotel suite on Nob Hill overlooking the beautiful city and out to San Francisco Bay, taking her on driving tours around the town, a boat trip to Alcatraz, a performance of the musical Rent, and a night of Stravinsky at the symphony, but it didn’t seem to be working. Perhaps he was coming on too strong, an inevitable conflict between his serious intentions and a young woman who now seemed to personify the song, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Or maybe it was his constant sighing and occasional tears. (Or was it time to consider the reverse of our “principle of serendipitous confluence” — maybe she was just the wrong person at the wrong time.) In any case, she had turned unaccountably “cool” toward him, and after four days he flew back to Montreal, crestfallen and confused.

  Now what do we do? If life were a Sinatra song, when you have “woman trouble” you simply get good and drunk. So I used that “temporary escape hatch” one more time, and went on a binge for a couple of days. (In Selena’s teenage years, I once tried to instruct her about such things with this motto, “Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.” She replied, “Alright Dad — I can live with that,” and I said, “Daughter, I have!”)

  I emerged with a crippling hangover, and as sometimes seems to happen, a fresh outlook of clarity.