Wednesday, January 12, 2011

the rollers.


the rollers are blue and black and under the couch.

she got them in a moment of passionate loneliness, post-holiday, happy-to-be-home, dedicated to a new year of two-wheeled fury.

the fury has since become five-wheeled and non-stop.

rollers, like rivers, are perfect objects of metaphor. to that end, they are supremely cliche, yet caché aussi, due to their retro origins, and completely unforgiving nature. you fuck up, you fall.

this is like...everything.

i love rollers. i wish i could spin smoothly on them for hours on end, getting lost in a picture of eddy merckx or the pavé like michael barry, on a custom mariposa, after hockey practice, anticipating my dad coming home and putting the kettle on for tea. instead, i jerk along, next to the kitchen stove and unscrewed kitchen counter, vying constantly for rhythm that i achieve only sporadically. this is hubris. naturally, i take stock of the situation and begin to itemize the blame: the bike is a 'cross bike not made for such smooth pedaling on smooth, microscopic cylinders of death; i'm in the kitchen and its floor hasn't been level since the turn of the 19th century; the front cylinder keeps creeping back on the band-turning side; i'm distracted by my lack of chamois butt'r and the fact that i feel like i'm falling backwards.

in the words of my dad: "oh, wah..."

balance, in life and on rollers, is often only earned. we can be born with it, but usually, we have to find it, whether serendipitously, or by complete accident. either way, it is sublime. and probably like life, finding balance on the rollers, Balance, is beautiful, and like the only beauty we know: fleeting. the other night, after going through my litany of blame and sweating my way through about ten minutes of terror and bliss, i calmly put the rollers away and called it a day. no blame. no dissatisfaction. just yearning. yearning for more chances at more moments when i get to achieve something and realize that my achievement is great and wonderful, however fleeting, and that it is great and wonderful because at my side, opposite the counter that is slippery and unhinged and dangerous, is the lady that put those rollers in our house, is reading the poor installation instructions, and holds me up, catches me, each time i fall.

sure, she's the reason i'm kinda falling in the first place, but she has been since i fell all those years ago.

i love the rollers.