Monday, February 1, 2016

force.



the clouds warped sunrise light into faint elephants of pink and mauve, while the big kid talked on and on beside me, and my cleats punched sidewalk salt to dust in the dark. it was the first time i had walked her to school in nearly a year. it was the third time i rode a bike to school this new year. it was a perfect start to a day.

i spent so many days cruising up and down the roadways of this city that i forgot the rhythms of a two-wheeled commute. i forgot about breathing and timing starts with lights and lights with buses and buses with efforts and efforts with breathing. today was ridden on a geared bike with two brakes  and one fender and clipless pedals and a saddle that has a hard spot on the left side. there was more flow in the never-ending effort of riding a fixed gear. no gears and one brake and two fenders and a pedal stroke for every movement in every direction. i was faster than the fixie today. slower than the car. happier than a commuter.

although i may not come to it for some time, i fantasize about being a force to reckon with. those rocks that get buried by the spring run-off, and then poke their heads through the current just enough to make an eddy, they don't know that there's a river coursing by. or maybe they do, but they're so damn heavy, they just sit there and only move for really big deals, like earthquakes and glaciers, or really soft touches, like a thousand-year-old streams. it would be nice to be so unbothered, so sure of mass, so full of gravity, as to sit, content, in the flow, looked for, looked to for support and relief, becoming only more beautiful with the wearing-down of time. i rode today all baffled by wind and air walls pushed along by the blunt-nosed buses full of staring commuters. i held my line. i wondered aloud at the lack of anywhere safe to cross the 401. i gave one person the finger and was yelled at by another. it was not a day of flow. there need not be any explanations to any of these things. i have not explained the line i chose through the most cracked-up intersection in the city. there is no reasoning behind a car full of kids just trying to get to dance practice. there is no rationale for that buttery-smooth pavement interrupted by a single steel grate. i don't know why i noticed a thousand things and remembered the ones that ruin them all. tomorrow will be another ride. tomorrow we try again.

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