JP and Susan have always struck me as ascetics.
I should back up.
JP runs a Salon—a monthly intellectual gathering—on Tech & Myth at CU Boulder. I have attended it for three years now. Tech & Myth started with the question “what myths do we tell about technology,” and proceeded into a speaker series, then a graduate course, and now a three-day symposium. Throughout, JP has led boldly, experimentally, urging us to dive into disciplinary questions outside of our own fields, to create stories and artworks on the fly, and to tap into our own creativity to explain our relationship to larger cultural stories that surround us.
It has been thrilling. As a teacher JP is able to generate tremendous creative energy in a room.
Somewhere along the way JP sat in on my D&D game (the one about Trump in 2028 and a giant supercomputer attempting to assert physical autonomy into the world), and before long he and Susan, his spouse, had joined it. Susan has stayed on in that game, and joined the other, more fantasy-oriented game that I wrote about last week.
All this is to say, I know JP and Susan as a couple but also in different contexts, JP as an Intellectual interlocutor and Susan as an enthusiastic fellow player.
I would say I know them fairly well. We spend a good deal of time in video chat together, and I’ve met them in person before. My sense is of them is that they aren’t really interested in material things as much as ideas, prioritize learning over status symbols, and enjoy practice—Susan paints and JP teaches Tai Chi—over spectacle.
I guess you never really know someone until you visit their house.
The front two rooms of the house are converted into large artist workspaces. JP is in the midst of creating a graphic novel, Tom Zoom and the Space Pirates of Portolan Prime, each page a painted collage.
Susan is developing a monster character through a layered drawing effect.
The garage is refitted as a martial arts studio for video teaching, with the flooring from the kwoon JP originally attended.
Throughout the house walls are hung with arts of all media—kites, puzzles, sculpture, and, photography, and paintings—and the shelves and tables are filled with toys, three-dimensional puzzles, and stuffed bears.
Far from asceticism, the house’s feeling a powerful combination of creative energy, meaningful materiality, and above all, warmth—simultaneously a home, a studio, a gallery, and a collection of life’s curios.
The experience was, intellectually and quite literally, a shift in my perspective on them, as if I had seen them only through one camera perspective, and now got to see the whole room, so to speak, and in doing so saw greater parts of my friends.
Thank you, Susan and JP, for having me over, sharing your home, and letting me think about it. It’s a very special place. It was truly a joy to visit.
Sitting with JP and Susan had me thinking about my question from last night: Why ride, and why ride so furiously—some 1,400 miles in the past three days, another 1,200 in two days the week before that, and another 1,400 miles by Monday.
In fact, walking over to JP’s and Susan’s from the hotel, I realized that my body feels entirely pummeled, because, well, it is. Even with all the gloves, my throttle hand is covered in blisters and bruises.
There’s something obviously a little intense going on here, if not a little crazy.
I have always loved motorcycling because the challenge is little more severe than, say, riding in a car. Motorcycling is deeply metaphoric—it creates a world in which you don a visored helm, mount a powerful steed, and take on whatever lies ahead. It is even more profoundly literal: Motorcycling does not tolerate hesitation or lack of focus. The highs and lows are intense. Trust me when I say the fog over Big Lagoon was surprisingly cold and the sea-side vista was a special reward.
I love my friends, and I think about them quite a lot, but on a deep level I am a loaner. I need time in my head. Motorcycling demands that the time in my head is spent concentrating but not necessarily thinking. Being on the road paradoxically gets me further into my head but also out of my mind.
JP and Susan’s house reminded me that getting out of my mind—by which I mean out of my articulate headspace—allows me to tap into creativity.
Case in point, dear readers, this very blog. No doubt you have all taken note that after a year of silence this trip has inspired an outpouring of words from your humble author.
It is if having to shut up and just be—be in the face of challenge, be with concentration and intention—for twelve hours a day in the cold hail and hot sun winds me up to write my stories later.
It is late and time for bed. The day started with game of catch with Howdy!—he can catch a direct throw, and it makes a sound like a hardball hitting a catcher’s mit—and that is how it should end.
Onwards! 
A very beautifully written satisfying read! ❤
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