Every possession you acquire is one more thing to worry about. -- Japanese proverb

It is the morning of September 19, 2005. In celebration of Loris Capirossi's epic victory at the Japanese GP, I'm riding to the beach on my 1967 Ducati 350 Sebring. Named after the Ducati's win in the 1965 Sebring race, the 350 was, like Loris' Desmosedici, the biggest and most powerful Ducati of its time. Dr. T would later graft two of the Sebring's top ends onto a single crankcase to create Ducati's first 750 V-Twin.

Compared with modern motorcycles, which are expensive, heavy, hard to work on and complex, this aged thoroughbred is a paragon of virtue. Although, weighted down as it now is with so many levels of meta-meaning, the old Duc looks decidedly heavier than usual.

Saigyo would have appreciated the Ducati. Formerly known as Norikiyo Satoh, this 12th Century samurai was one of a long line a famous Japanese recluses. Tiring of the materialism of life in Kyoto, Japan's capital, he changed his name to Saigyo and left the worldly life to become a Buddhist priest. He commemorated this step with a poem:

This world so dear Cannot be cherished enough. I leave my life to save it.

Building a humble hut on the outskirts of Kyoto, he lived the simple life of a recluse, unfettered by society's demands. From time to time he would set out on pilgrimages, following in the footsteps of poets who had come before him. Saigyo would certainly have been sensitive to the Sebring's aesthetic appeal. He would have understood its wabi-sabi.

An important characteristic of the Japanese aesthetic is the intentional introduction of deformation. By destroying perfect shapes a form is revealed in which the beauty hidden behind the perfect, the beauty that cannot be approached through rational thought, is apparent. The old teacup, chipped and cracked from generations of use, and lovingly repaired over the years, is valued far more than shiny porcelain from a modern factory. No other people have elevated simplicity to so high an art form as the Japanese. Where else but on the isolated islands of Japan could the simple acts of arranging flowers or serving tea have evolved into a philosophy of aestheticism?

The term used to express this aesthetic is wabi-sabi. Almost untranslatable, wabi is the appreciation of simple, unadorned beauty, while sabi is the discovery of beauty in an old, well-used object.

So it is with our machines. Motorcycles, like people, are loved for their flaws; nothing is less interesting, or more inhuman, than perfection. How else to explain the junkyards filled with modern bikes? How else to explain my affection for this old and weathered Ducati? The great irony in all this that the modern motorcycle is another sad example of how possessions ostensibly designed to set us free only enslave us further. After all, if you can't change a tire or a drive chain without running shamefacedly, tail between legs, to your local service department (No Customers in the Repair Area) how can you be free? If you have to work like a slave for years to pay off all that wonderful technology, who owns whom? We flatter ourselves in imagining that we own our possessions when in fact they own us. Real freedom comes from maintaining and repairing your simple, inexpensive motorcycle yourself.

The waves were great!