Hah. Rode my bike the scant four miles to Tom's, and back!
No doubt I look very silly, trudging up the Mt Tabor switchback, pushing my bike, with my rolled up trouser legs; and sillier still swooshing down the eastern side, my pale hairy calves glaring at the sky, and my white beard floating in the wind. The native priests are invoking their Lord: from the white calves of the northmen, dear God, deliver us! Soon enough He will, O Walesas! But not yet, not yet.
A white-sky day with faintly perceptible drizzle, not enough to wet a bicycle seat. September, a day early.
Full of love for you all. Good morning!
It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.
------------ Kenneth Grahame
Showing posts with label Bicycle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bicycle. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Beyond My Karmic Means
With cars parked on either side, Salmon becomes effectively a one-lane street. I was riding to the right, far closer to the line of cars than I usually do, out of a vague sense that to ride smack in the middle of the street and claim both lanes would be overbearing, when a car door flashed open, right in front of me.
I had time to brake, though not to swerve: I skidded into it, and was suddenly airborne. The next thing I remember is thinking, “time to do a somersault,” and I did. My helmet tapped the street lightly. Then I was standing up. Time, which had accelerated, was now molasses-slow. In slow motion I walked back to my bike, set it upright, and walked it to the sidewalk. I gravely examined it. Remarkably, it looked undamaged.
“Never mind the bike! Are you OK?” The driver, a young woman, had come out of her car. She was agitated.
“I'm fine,” I said. I could have told her that I was moving slowly precisely because I didn't know: I was waiting for all the reports to come in. But that was more complicated than I cared to try to put into words.
“I don't know what to do. I've never hurt a bicyclist before. Are you OK?”
A teachable moment, I thought. I could say something about looking out for bicycles before flinging open your door. But if the experience didn't teach her, I didn't reckon any words of mine would, and besides, she was young and distressed. “I'm fine, really.” I went on checking the bike; the wheels and the brakes and gearing were all in good order.
I rolled my shoulders, stood on one leg and then the other, swayed my hips. I ran my hands over my arms. Rolled my head in a cautious circle. Nothing. No scrapes, no abrasions. I hadn't landed on my hands, my knees, or my elbows. What on earth had I landed on? My upper arm was going to bruise up nicely, between the elbow and the swell of the triceps, but you don't fall on your upper arm.
“That was pretty spectacular,” said a passer-by, holding a baby in her arm. “Are you really all right?”
“I really am,” I said. The driver apologized again, and this time I grinned reassuringly at her. She looked doubtful. I fetched my pack from the street and put it back in the basket I have mounted behind the seat, got back on the bike, and rode on downtown to work.
And today, three days later, I'm still fine. The bruise on my arm is the only mark on me: the only place that hurts is an abdominal muscle – whether I snagged a handlebar with it, or pulled it at some point during my gymnastics, I can't say. It objects to me doing sit-ups, and I reckon it's likely to be forming trigger points soon – muscles usually do, a couple days after trauma: often that's all that “whiplash” consists of. The check-rein muscles of my neck, especially the SCM, are a little sore, of course. But overall my lack of injury is a little mysterious. Something must have taken the impact. I'm inclined to think I must have flipped over the door, landed on my feet, and gone into my somersault from there. Extraordinarily lucky.
But I have always had uncanny luck. It used to make me uneasy, to make me feel that I was living beyond my karmic means: but now I just accept it. Landing on my feet just seems to be what I do.
With cars parked on either side, Salmon becomes effectively a one-lane street. I was riding to the right, far closer to the line of cars than I usually do, out of a vague sense that to ride smack in the middle of the street and claim both lanes would be overbearing, when a car door flashed open, right in front of me.
I had time to brake, though not to swerve: I skidded into it, and was suddenly airborne. The next thing I remember is thinking, “time to do a somersault,” and I did. My helmet tapped the street lightly. Then I was standing up. Time, which had accelerated, was now molasses-slow. In slow motion I walked back to my bike, set it upright, and walked it to the sidewalk. I gravely examined it. Remarkably, it looked undamaged.
“Never mind the bike! Are you OK?” The driver, a young woman, had come out of her car. She was agitated.
“I'm fine,” I said. I could have told her that I was moving slowly precisely because I didn't know: I was waiting for all the reports to come in. But that was more complicated than I cared to try to put into words.
“I don't know what to do. I've never hurt a bicyclist before. Are you OK?”
A teachable moment, I thought. I could say something about looking out for bicycles before flinging open your door. But if the experience didn't teach her, I didn't reckon any words of mine would, and besides, she was young and distressed. “I'm fine, really.” I went on checking the bike; the wheels and the brakes and gearing were all in good order.
I rolled my shoulders, stood on one leg and then the other, swayed my hips. I ran my hands over my arms. Rolled my head in a cautious circle. Nothing. No scrapes, no abrasions. I hadn't landed on my hands, my knees, or my elbows. What on earth had I landed on? My upper arm was going to bruise up nicely, between the elbow and the swell of the triceps, but you don't fall on your upper arm.
“That was pretty spectacular,” said a passer-by, holding a baby in her arm. “Are you really all right?”
“I really am,” I said. The driver apologized again, and this time I grinned reassuringly at her. She looked doubtful. I fetched my pack from the street and put it back in the basket I have mounted behind the seat, got back on the bike, and rode on downtown to work.
And today, three days later, I'm still fine. The bruise on my arm is the only mark on me: the only place that hurts is an abdominal muscle – whether I snagged a handlebar with it, or pulled it at some point during my gymnastics, I can't say. It objects to me doing sit-ups, and I reckon it's likely to be forming trigger points soon – muscles usually do, a couple days after trauma: often that's all that “whiplash” consists of. The check-rein muscles of my neck, especially the SCM, are a little sore, of course. But overall my lack of injury is a little mysterious. Something must have taken the impact. I'm inclined to think I must have flipped over the door, landed on my feet, and gone into my somersault from there. Extraordinarily lucky.
But I have always had uncanny luck. It used to make me uneasy, to make me feel that I was living beyond my karmic means: but now I just accept it. Landing on my feet just seems to be what I do.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Scattered Showers
Each sparse drop of the rain gathers itself up high,
fattens, and begins to slip --
no longer air, not yet earth --
soars for a time, catches updrafts, is bumped sideways
by ripples of wind, and finally --
the last terrifying fall --
kisses my flushed face and lingers a moment
before becoming air again.
Another aeronaut finds cool green grass to land in
goes to earth like
a glistening transparent fox;
loses himself in the soil, waiting for the fine grassroots
to pull his children upward
in the slow cold tender
circulation of the soil: a foreign paratrooper
gone native, forgetful of the war.
And a third, in those last moments sees below
something waver and gleam
like his natal air,
but more, more like, like what? -- no time to think.
Bubbles spin away;
but his landing kicks
a brother drop inch-high, and vanishing, he knows --
more like himself.
Each sparse drop of the rain gathers itself up high,
fattens, and begins to slip --
no longer air, not yet earth --
soars for a time, catches updrafts, is bumped sideways
by ripples of wind, and finally --
the last terrifying fall --
kisses my flushed face and lingers a moment
before becoming air again.
Another aeronaut finds cool green grass to land in
goes to earth like
a glistening transparent fox;
loses himself in the soil, waiting for the fine grassroots
to pull his children upward
in the slow cold tender
circulation of the soil: a foreign paratrooper
gone native, forgetful of the war.
And a third, in those last moments sees below
something waver and gleam
like his natal air,
but more, more like, like what? -- no time to think.
Bubbles spin away;
but his landing kicks
a brother drop inch-high, and vanishing, he knows --
more like himself.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Quick, Slow
One of the things I like about bicycling is that you don't have to be a fast, rangy ectomorph to do it. I'm an endomorph – stocky, slow, heavily muscled. When we were running in Phys Ed, at school, I always straggled in with the last few guys, half a lap behind. I was hopeless as a baseball and basketball player: but I surprised people by being able to swarm up ropes or pegboards with ease. I had plenty of slow-twitch muscle, even if I couldn't run or hit a ball to save my soul.
When riding a bicycle, I can use all that muscle. I have a twenty-one gear bike, 3 by 7, and I just never use the bottom 14 gears. Other people will be pumping rapidly away, while I grind slowly along in the highest gears, keeping pace even though my legs are moving much more slowly. I will never be fast at anything, but I can make a bike go fast.
Part of what has made this phase of my life so rewarding is that I am no longer trying to be things I'm not, physically, as well as mentally. I will never be rangy and quick. Stocky and slow is what I am, for better or worse. I have never thought well on my feet. I'm easily flustered by dealing with more than one thing: no one will ever call me a good multitasker. I am cautious, slow, and meticulous. I hate hurrying, and for good reason: when I hurry I make mistakes, ludicrous mistakes, mistakes that quicker-witted people would never make no matter what the rush.
The only thing I've ever been quick at is written tests and pattern-matching games. I've always been the sort of person who aces tests; I'm usually done before anyone else, and can't imagine what they're lingering over. This is immensely useful in the modern world, which depends so heavily on testing and certification, but I've always been a little embarrassed by it. People who are far more capable than I, and who study much harder than I do, come out worse on tests. I'm unhappily aware of the unfairness of that.
I've been thinking about quickness and slowness because I secretly lost my temper last night. I was riding home from work, and came to a four way stop. A car came to the intersection from the left, and arrived a little before me. I came to a full stop, and waited for it, but the driver waved for me to go on through, so I did.
This infuriated me. I arrived home in a bad temper, and it took me half an hour to recover my equanimity.
I know: I can see the blank look on your faces. What's there to be angry about? She was just being nice, right?
Yes, I know that. But you're thinking like a quick person, not a slow person. Imagine what this is like for me. I'm operating at the far end of my comfort zone already, dealing with more than one moving object. I have a set of rules for evaluating whether things are safe, and for what I do next. This is not easy for me. I have to do a lot of my processing ahead of time. And suddenly, for no reason, somebody plunges me into a hasty re-evaluation of the whole situation, and demands a quick decision of me. This is what I am worst at. This is the sort of situation in which I make disastrous mistakes. I rushed into the intersection, my feet slipping on the pedals, just hoping that her evaluation was correct, and that it was actually safe for me to go. I didn't know whether it was or not. It would have taken me twenty seconds to figure that out and verify it. I don't think fast on my feet. I mean that. I'm not making it up or exaggerating it.
There were a couple subsidiary responses. I felt infantilized by her waving me through. Just because I'm on a bicycle, that doesn't make me a six year old. I don't need any favors: I just need people to follow the rules of the road. And since I knew I'd travel through the intersection more slowly than she would, it was simply stupid, objectively, to send us through in that order: the total time expended by us both would end up being greater. But of course that's just the kind of ideation that being angry sparks: I could have come up twenty other justifications for being angry. What really made me angry was being made to hurry, being made aware of my incompetence, being forced to do something I was bad at, and at her bland assumption that I ought to be happy to use her judgment rather than my own. I know, my judgment is slow and ponderous; but I prefer to use it anyway. What do I know about a stranger's judgment? For all I knew, she could be waving me into the path of of a truck.
I don't think she was wrong to wave me through. I don't think she should have done otherwise. I just want all of you quick people out there to understand that we slow people may not respond the way you expect us to. In another mood, I might have stubbornly stayed put, and motioned you to go first. Not because you're wrong, but just because my capacities are different from yours: and I need to use mine, not yours.
One of the things I like about bicycling is that you don't have to be a fast, rangy ectomorph to do it. I'm an endomorph – stocky, slow, heavily muscled. When we were running in Phys Ed, at school, I always straggled in with the last few guys, half a lap behind. I was hopeless as a baseball and basketball player: but I surprised people by being able to swarm up ropes or pegboards with ease. I had plenty of slow-twitch muscle, even if I couldn't run or hit a ball to save my soul.
When riding a bicycle, I can use all that muscle. I have a twenty-one gear bike, 3 by 7, and I just never use the bottom 14 gears. Other people will be pumping rapidly away, while I grind slowly along in the highest gears, keeping pace even though my legs are moving much more slowly. I will never be fast at anything, but I can make a bike go fast.
Part of what has made this phase of my life so rewarding is that I am no longer trying to be things I'm not, physically, as well as mentally. I will never be rangy and quick. Stocky and slow is what I am, for better or worse. I have never thought well on my feet. I'm easily flustered by dealing with more than one thing: no one will ever call me a good multitasker. I am cautious, slow, and meticulous. I hate hurrying, and for good reason: when I hurry I make mistakes, ludicrous mistakes, mistakes that quicker-witted people would never make no matter what the rush.
The only thing I've ever been quick at is written tests and pattern-matching games. I've always been the sort of person who aces tests; I'm usually done before anyone else, and can't imagine what they're lingering over. This is immensely useful in the modern world, which depends so heavily on testing and certification, but I've always been a little embarrassed by it. People who are far more capable than I, and who study much harder than I do, come out worse on tests. I'm unhappily aware of the unfairness of that.
I've been thinking about quickness and slowness because I secretly lost my temper last night. I was riding home from work, and came to a four way stop. A car came to the intersection from the left, and arrived a little before me. I came to a full stop, and waited for it, but the driver waved for me to go on through, so I did.
This infuriated me. I arrived home in a bad temper, and it took me half an hour to recover my equanimity.
I know: I can see the blank look on your faces. What's there to be angry about? She was just being nice, right?
Yes, I know that. But you're thinking like a quick person, not a slow person. Imagine what this is like for me. I'm operating at the far end of my comfort zone already, dealing with more than one moving object. I have a set of rules for evaluating whether things are safe, and for what I do next. This is not easy for me. I have to do a lot of my processing ahead of time. And suddenly, for no reason, somebody plunges me into a hasty re-evaluation of the whole situation, and demands a quick decision of me. This is what I am worst at. This is the sort of situation in which I make disastrous mistakes. I rushed into the intersection, my feet slipping on the pedals, just hoping that her evaluation was correct, and that it was actually safe for me to go. I didn't know whether it was or not. It would have taken me twenty seconds to figure that out and verify it. I don't think fast on my feet. I mean that. I'm not making it up or exaggerating it.
There were a couple subsidiary responses. I felt infantilized by her waving me through. Just because I'm on a bicycle, that doesn't make me a six year old. I don't need any favors: I just need people to follow the rules of the road. And since I knew I'd travel through the intersection more slowly than she would, it was simply stupid, objectively, to send us through in that order: the total time expended by us both would end up being greater. But of course that's just the kind of ideation that being angry sparks: I could have come up twenty other justifications for being angry. What really made me angry was being made to hurry, being made aware of my incompetence, being forced to do something I was bad at, and at her bland assumption that I ought to be happy to use her judgment rather than my own. I know, my judgment is slow and ponderous; but I prefer to use it anyway. What do I know about a stranger's judgment? For all I knew, she could be waving me into the path of of a truck.
I don't think she was wrong to wave me through. I don't think she should have done otherwise. I just want all of you quick people out there to understand that we slow people may not respond the way you expect us to. In another mood, I might have stubbornly stayed put, and motioned you to go first. Not because you're wrong, but just because my capacities are different from yours: and I need to use mine, not yours.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Sails
Why is it the people who are most obviously out of control who most shrilly assert that they have free will? John Adams's metaphor (not original with him, I'd guess; his was a keen but not an original mind) is the one I like best: the passions are the wind, and reason sets the sails. A skillful sailor can usually get where he wants to go, but seldom directly, and not on a strict schedule. In a severe emotional gale sometimes all you can do is heave to, drop a sea anchor, and wait it out.
No wonder Americans won't put his head on a nickel. They prefer that prodigal slaveholder, the politically hysterical Jefferson. "The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots." Screw that. I'll take Adams, every time. Build your weakness into the system. Make your weaknesses part of your strength. And
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
Ten things I've learned in six months of commuting by bicycle:
1) Most drivers are extraordinarily kind and accommodating if they see you.
2) They see you about half the time.
3) They have no idea that the raised left hand signal means a right turn. You need to signal by pointing left with your left hand or right with your right hand. Extending your whole arm, extravagantly.
4) Riding close in to a line of parked cars, where you'll plow straight into a door if someone suddenly opens it, is an excellent way to court death. You need to ride a few feet out. It feels more dangerous but it's actually much safer. It's where drivers look for vehicles, where they expect them. And they're not so tempted to try to squeeze past you if there really isn't room.
5) In the mild maritime Northwest, at any rate, cold isn't so troublesome as rain, and rain isn't so troublesome as wind.
6) It's your hands and feet that you need to keep warm and dry. The rest doesn't really matter. You generate plenty of body heat for that.
7) Except that blue jeans, once truly wet, will stay wet for a whole workday. You need to keep them dry, not for the ride, but for the sequel.
8) You must always assume they don't see you. Drivers, pedestrians, other bicyclists. (Bicyclists are no better than anyone else at being aware of bikes.)
9) It's just as fun as when you were a kid. You go zoom! and whoosh! You're a sky creature, not a miserable earth-crawler. And you get to the end of your commute feeling invigorated and intensely alive.
10) There's always a parking space. Always.
It takes me 20 or 25 minutes to drive to work; 30 to 35 minutes to bike. If I drove to work and went to the gym to get my daily cardio, the total drive-and-exercise time would exceed my total bike time by at least fifteen minutes. Maybe even half an hour. I'm saving time by riding my bike. Not to mention the $10 parking every day. (Yes, parking in downtown Portland is exorbitant.) $10 every working day, by the way, comes out to some $2,500 per year. In other words, enough to offset my whole breakfast-out addiction.
Why is it the people who are most obviously out of control who most shrilly assert that they have free will? John Adams's metaphor (not original with him, I'd guess; his was a keen but not an original mind) is the one I like best: the passions are the wind, and reason sets the sails. A skillful sailor can usually get where he wants to go, but seldom directly, and not on a strict schedule. In a severe emotional gale sometimes all you can do is heave to, drop a sea anchor, and wait it out.
No wonder Americans won't put his head on a nickel. They prefer that prodigal slaveholder, the politically hysterical Jefferson. "The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots." Screw that. I'll take Adams, every time. Build your weakness into the system. Make your weaknesses part of your strength. And
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
Ten things I've learned in six months of commuting by bicycle:
1) Most drivers are extraordinarily kind and accommodating if they see you.
2) They see you about half the time.
3) They have no idea that the raised left hand signal means a right turn. You need to signal by pointing left with your left hand or right with your right hand. Extending your whole arm, extravagantly.
4) Riding close in to a line of parked cars, where you'll plow straight into a door if someone suddenly opens it, is an excellent way to court death. You need to ride a few feet out. It feels more dangerous but it's actually much safer. It's where drivers look for vehicles, where they expect them. And they're not so tempted to try to squeeze past you if there really isn't room.
5) In the mild maritime Northwest, at any rate, cold isn't so troublesome as rain, and rain isn't so troublesome as wind.
6) It's your hands and feet that you need to keep warm and dry. The rest doesn't really matter. You generate plenty of body heat for that.
7) Except that blue jeans, once truly wet, will stay wet for a whole workday. You need to keep them dry, not for the ride, but for the sequel.
8) You must always assume they don't see you. Drivers, pedestrians, other bicyclists. (Bicyclists are no better than anyone else at being aware of bikes.)
9) It's just as fun as when you were a kid. You go zoom! and whoosh! You're a sky creature, not a miserable earth-crawler. And you get to the end of your commute feeling invigorated and intensely alive.
10) There's always a parking space. Always.
It takes me 20 or 25 minutes to drive to work; 30 to 35 minutes to bike. If I drove to work and went to the gym to get my daily cardio, the total drive-and-exercise time would exceed my total bike time by at least fifteen minutes. Maybe even half an hour. I'm saving time by riding my bike. Not to mention the $10 parking every day. (Yes, parking in downtown Portland is exorbitant.) $10 every working day, by the way, comes out to some $2,500 per year. In other words, enough to offset my whole breakfast-out addiction.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Friday Quotidiana
The romance is back.
Yesterday I got my bike back from the shop. Maybe you remember me complaining about it a month or two ago? With the vague idea in my mind that it was a year, maybe two years, old, I was unhappy about how many things seemed to be going wrong with it. A new bike shouldn't have only half its gear range viable, a chain that slips, brakes that won't hold tension.
Searching back here, I found that it was actually three and half years old, with no maintenance beyond my clumsy attempts to adjust the brakes. So I took it into the nearby bike shop -- the Bicycle Repair Collective -- for a tune-up. And my miraculous flying machine is back. My noiseless, weightless brother of the wind.
Yes, I know bicycle maintenance is not rocket science. I know I could learn to do it properly myself. I also know I'm not going to. For the price of one of my massages (the basic unit of exchange, in my mental economic picture) I got my wings back. Walked to the shop, picked up the bike, and flew downtown to work. It's true that coming back up home from the river is not quite flying, even on my little blue Trek, but it still beats riding the bus by a wide, wide margin. And it takes about the same amount of time.
Actually it cost two massages, because I had managed to destroy the wheels by riding so long with bad brake pads. I will treat it lovingly from now on. The guys at the repair collective are going to be my best friends.
Still to figure out is how to ride in the rain, so I can keep doing it in the Fall. I suspect that the best solution, here in the maritime Northwest where it's so seldom really cold, is just to accept getting wet, and to bring dry clothes to have at the other end.
The blogroll. I really must do something about it. Blogrolling.com was taken over by pod people, who, after a long incubation, during which you couldn't update your blogroll at all, re-emerged and put ads on top of the blogs linked to, without consulting their subscribers. Not cool. They've completely forfeited my alliegance. So I need to fiddle with my template. Blogger has some kind of blogroll infrastructure now, I think, which I can probably use. I just need to get around to it. It's rather like fixing the bike. And after all, my template's been broken for ages. The corners of my border outlines went all funky years ago (no, it's not intended to look like that.) But this is probably like getting my bike fixed up: expect action in three or four years. Though I am anxious to get links up to some of my newer favorite blogs. Where There are no Chickadees. 20th Century Woman. Tejana Poet. Box Elder. (Box Elder isn't even new: she's been a favorite read forever. Why she's not on my blogroll is a mystery to me. I think the gremlins who get into bicycle brakes get into blogrolls, too.) Now that I use Google Reader, the blogroll has become a poor cousin, but it's still an important element of the blogosphere. I know that people sometimes click dead links over there. Sorry.
I have a backlog of five or six drafted posts which I hesitate to publish. This happens to me, every once in a while. The posts just seem wrong to me, and I can't figure out why. Is it that I'm afraid people won't like them? It is it because there's something genuinely wrong with them? Is it that my brain has gone the way of my bike and my blogroll, and I will never write good posts again? How could I know, and why should I care? It's none of my business.
The romance is back.
Yesterday I got my bike back from the shop. Maybe you remember me complaining about it a month or two ago? With the vague idea in my mind that it was a year, maybe two years, old, I was unhappy about how many things seemed to be going wrong with it. A new bike shouldn't have only half its gear range viable, a chain that slips, brakes that won't hold tension.
Searching back here, I found that it was actually three and half years old, with no maintenance beyond my clumsy attempts to adjust the brakes. So I took it into the nearby bike shop -- the Bicycle Repair Collective -- for a tune-up. And my miraculous flying machine is back. My noiseless, weightless brother of the wind.
Yes, I know bicycle maintenance is not rocket science. I know I could learn to do it properly myself. I also know I'm not going to. For the price of one of my massages (the basic unit of exchange, in my mental economic picture) I got my wings back. Walked to the shop, picked up the bike, and flew downtown to work. It's true that coming back up home from the river is not quite flying, even on my little blue Trek, but it still beats riding the bus by a wide, wide margin. And it takes about the same amount of time.
Actually it cost two massages, because I had managed to destroy the wheels by riding so long with bad brake pads. I will treat it lovingly from now on. The guys at the repair collective are going to be my best friends.
Still to figure out is how to ride in the rain, so I can keep doing it in the Fall. I suspect that the best solution, here in the maritime Northwest where it's so seldom really cold, is just to accept getting wet, and to bring dry clothes to have at the other end.
The blogroll. I really must do something about it. Blogrolling.com was taken over by pod people, who, after a long incubation, during which you couldn't update your blogroll at all, re-emerged and put ads on top of the blogs linked to, without consulting their subscribers. Not cool. They've completely forfeited my alliegance. So I need to fiddle with my template. Blogger has some kind of blogroll infrastructure now, I think, which I can probably use. I just need to get around to it. It's rather like fixing the bike. And after all, my template's been broken for ages. The corners of my border outlines went all funky years ago (no, it's not intended to look like that.) But this is probably like getting my bike fixed up: expect action in three or four years. Though I am anxious to get links up to some of my newer favorite blogs. Where There are no Chickadees. 20th Century Woman. Tejana Poet. Box Elder. (Box Elder isn't even new: she's been a favorite read forever. Why she's not on my blogroll is a mystery to me. I think the gremlins who get into bicycle brakes get into blogrolls, too.) Now that I use Google Reader, the blogroll has become a poor cousin, but it's still an important element of the blogosphere. I know that people sometimes click dead links over there. Sorry.
I have a backlog of five or six drafted posts which I hesitate to publish. This happens to me, every once in a while. The posts just seem wrong to me, and I can't figure out why. Is it that I'm afraid people won't like them? It is it because there's something genuinely wrong with them? Is it that my brain has gone the way of my bike and my blogroll, and I will never write good posts again? How could I know, and why should I care? It's none of my business.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Gorgeously Beshrifted
Tosi's. Rode my bike here for the first time since it broke down last fall. It's not right yet: the rear brakes don't grip, despite all my adjustments, and in the lowest gears the chain starts to slip, though it doesn't come off. I suppose I'll either have to learn to fix it properly or pay someone to do so. Both are larger expenditures of time than I'm happy with. But things do take time. At least it's on the road again. And I can always go around the north ridge of Mt Tabor, rather than over it.
Still, some of the shine has gone off the bike. It wasn't actually the right bicycle for me, though I had no way of knowing that, really, when I bought it. What I want now is one of those big Dutch cruisers that you sit up straight on. My wrists are valuable to me now, and the slight airfoil advantage (to a slow rider) of being bent over is not worth the ergonomic disaster of making the wrists serve as secondary ankles. I don't want to set speed records: I just want to get places.
But it will be a while before I have that sort of discretionary income again. So I'll make do.
Feeling haunted by a lack of time. It's good to have my life so full of good opportunities that I don't have time to do them all: but Not Having Enough Time is not a mental state I want to allow myself to settle into. It becomes habitual, and it does horrible things to body and mind if it's entrenched. I have clients I'm convinced are being incrementally poisoned by it. I can even tell you where it accumulates in the body: in the upper, inner thighs and in the fleshy back of the neck.
I'm embarked on this food project, which takes considerable time. And March was a remarkably busy massage month for me. I've had a lot to do at the Foundation: I've been working some on the weekends there. So I've been feeling short on this time: the time when I'm beholden to nobody, the time I use to write poetry or dull quotidian blog entries such as this: time to back off, slow down, take stock. Small additional commitments, such as writing a monthly column (more about that anon), start to loom and oppress.
So the only way I know to stop Not Having Enough Time is to stop playing by its rules. To deliberately squander some time. To stop trying to do more, and deliberately do less. I'm not writing a poem right now. I'm not writing a column. I'm not writing something inspiring and spiritual. I'm wasting my time, and yours, quite intentionally. This is proof: we have time to kick back and chat at Tosi's. The rest of the world will get by somehow without us.
Such lovely advice I got in comments about the 18th Century, and about music! I listened to the sarabande Jean linked to three times. It's lovely, lonely, poignant. I realized midway through the second time that I've heard cello music all my life and assumed I was listening to a string quartet: I had no idea one instrument could make all those sounds. (More anon, as I follow more of the delicious links given me!)
I think Lucy was right that denigrating the 18th Century thing is an anglophone disorder. I remember being surprised, in taking a history of German literature, to find how rich the 18th Century was and how seriously it was taken. And I note that Lucas (welcome!) refers to a lot of French music and writing. I've come late to an appreciation of France and things French. It's not surprising, I suppose, that we English speakers should revel in our Elizabethans and give short shrift to a century in which German and French music and literature were in their glory.
So what is shrift, I wonder? I guess you could say my aim at the moment is to give ample shrift to all things. To be prodigal in shrift. I'm picturing shrift as a sort of fancy fabric: let's wear long flowing ornate robes of it, slashed and decorated, layered and laced. Let's live gorgeously beshrifted. We have all the time in the world.
Tosi's. Rode my bike here for the first time since it broke down last fall. It's not right yet: the rear brakes don't grip, despite all my adjustments, and in the lowest gears the chain starts to slip, though it doesn't come off. I suppose I'll either have to learn to fix it properly or pay someone to do so. Both are larger expenditures of time than I'm happy with. But things do take time. At least it's on the road again. And I can always go around the north ridge of Mt Tabor, rather than over it.
Still, some of the shine has gone off the bike. It wasn't actually the right bicycle for me, though I had no way of knowing that, really, when I bought it. What I want now is one of those big Dutch cruisers that you sit up straight on. My wrists are valuable to me now, and the slight airfoil advantage (to a slow rider) of being bent over is not worth the ergonomic disaster of making the wrists serve as secondary ankles. I don't want to set speed records: I just want to get places.
But it will be a while before I have that sort of discretionary income again. So I'll make do.
Feeling haunted by a lack of time. It's good to have my life so full of good opportunities that I don't have time to do them all: but Not Having Enough Time is not a mental state I want to allow myself to settle into. It becomes habitual, and it does horrible things to body and mind if it's entrenched. I have clients I'm convinced are being incrementally poisoned by it. I can even tell you where it accumulates in the body: in the upper, inner thighs and in the fleshy back of the neck.
I'm embarked on this food project, which takes considerable time. And March was a remarkably busy massage month for me. I've had a lot to do at the Foundation: I've been working some on the weekends there. So I've been feeling short on this time: the time when I'm beholden to nobody, the time I use to write poetry or dull quotidian blog entries such as this: time to back off, slow down, take stock. Small additional commitments, such as writing a monthly column (more about that anon), start to loom and oppress.
So the only way I know to stop Not Having Enough Time is to stop playing by its rules. To deliberately squander some time. To stop trying to do more, and deliberately do less. I'm not writing a poem right now. I'm not writing a column. I'm not writing something inspiring and spiritual. I'm wasting my time, and yours, quite intentionally. This is proof: we have time to kick back and chat at Tosi's. The rest of the world will get by somehow without us.
Such lovely advice I got in comments about the 18th Century, and about music! I listened to the sarabande Jean linked to three times. It's lovely, lonely, poignant. I realized midway through the second time that I've heard cello music all my life and assumed I was listening to a string quartet: I had no idea one instrument could make all those sounds. (More anon, as I follow more of the delicious links given me!)
I think Lucy was right that denigrating the 18th Century thing is an anglophone disorder. I remember being surprised, in taking a history of German literature, to find how rich the 18th Century was and how seriously it was taken. And I note that Lucas (welcome!) refers to a lot of French music and writing. I've come late to an appreciation of France and things French. It's not surprising, I suppose, that we English speakers should revel in our Elizabethans and give short shrift to a century in which German and French music and literature were in their glory.
So what is shrift, I wonder? I guess you could say my aim at the moment is to give ample shrift to all things. To be prodigal in shrift. I'm picturing shrift as a sort of fancy fabric: let's wear long flowing ornate robes of it, slashed and decorated, layered and laced. Let's live gorgeously beshrifted. We have all the time in the world.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Juvenilia III
I don't remember why I didn't post this. Possibly because I backslid for a day or two before I fully recovered. It must have been written in July.
Sugar
So I knew I'd been gradually gaining weight back. But not that much, I thought. And I was feeling good, in my body, strong from massage, fit from bicycling. I don't have a great ambition to have the same waist I had when I was seventeen. I may not be svelte, but I'm in much better shape, at fifty, than I was at seventeen. I stand straighter and move easier and it takes a lot longer to tire me out. I take a malicious delight in the fact that a lot of the athletic jocks who made my life a misery in junior high school can barely waddle back and forth between the house and the SUV now; I float past them on my lovely blue and silver Trek in ungenerous exultation.
Then came the last couple weeks: all hell broke loose in a number of ways. Business mysteriously tanked. Was it the weather? High holiday season? All I know is that the phone went silent.
The weather was sultry. Some people have less of an urge to eat in that kind of weather: not me. Any discomfort makes me want to eat. And someone brought home a half-gallon of limeade.
I love limes, and limeade, with the sort of fervor that hobbits have for mushrooms. A tall glass full of ice, refilled with limeade, and refilled again. In no time the half-gallon was gone. I got some more. I haven't tried to reckon just how much sugar I consumed: I don't think I want to know.
It was interesting to watch, since I have a clue about the mechanics of it now. From that point on, I was riding the isulin roller-coaster. For years I've given up putting sugar in my coffee. Now, in some bemusement, I could watch my hands reach for the sugar in the morning. "I don't take sugar in my coffee any more," I would tell them. They would nod agreeably, and tilt a couple tablespoons into the cup.
And suddenly I was hungry all the time. All the time. Hungry even when I was stuffed, when no human being could possibly be hungry. Desperately hungry, the way you'd feel if you'd starved for days. At any idle moment I started thinking of what I would eat next. Nothing was going to stop me from eating. And meanwhile, a totally unexpected emotional bomb had burst beneath me, lofting me completely free of any self-control I might have tried to bring to bear on it.
Yesterday I was finally able to call a halt. I pulled out a measuring tape. 47 inches. Mein lieber Gott! At my most expansive I was still under 49. I must weigh something like 225, then.
Thank God for Atkins. There's only one way I know of to break the power of those blood-sugar swings, and that's to go completely cold turkey on the carbs for a couple days. Doesn't matter what the hell you eat, so long as it's not carbs. No sugar, no corn syrup, no flour, no rice, no potatos. No fruit. Eggs, bacon, butter, hamburger, hot dogs are fine. Just no ketchup, no barbeque sauce, no juice, no flavored-corn-syrup salad dressings: none of those thinly disguised mainline sugar hypodermics. We're not aiming at nutrition, the first couple of days. We're just aiming to stop the blood-sugar levels from swinging wildly.
I quit at noon yesterday. I ate a vast salad drenched in oil (the carbs in vegetables apparently metabolize so slowly they're not a problem) for lunch and some hot dogs for dinner. At breakfast today I find it hard even to remember the desperation of that urge to put sugar in my coffee. Here's my coffee, there's the sugar. "I don't have sugar with my coffee," I say. "All right!" say my hands brightly, demurely pretending they always do whatever I say.
I can't say what a relief it is to be free of that sugar-compulsion. It infects everything. There's a subtle current of desperation running under every other emotion, when it holds sway.
I don't remember why I didn't post this. Possibly because I backslid for a day or two before I fully recovered. It must have been written in July.
Sugar
So I knew I'd been gradually gaining weight back. But not that much, I thought. And I was feeling good, in my body, strong from massage, fit from bicycling. I don't have a great ambition to have the same waist I had when I was seventeen. I may not be svelte, but I'm in much better shape, at fifty, than I was at seventeen. I stand straighter and move easier and it takes a lot longer to tire me out. I take a malicious delight in the fact that a lot of the athletic jocks who made my life a misery in junior high school can barely waddle back and forth between the house and the SUV now; I float past them on my lovely blue and silver Trek in ungenerous exultation.
Then came the last couple weeks: all hell broke loose in a number of ways. Business mysteriously tanked. Was it the weather? High holiday season? All I know is that the phone went silent.
The weather was sultry. Some people have less of an urge to eat in that kind of weather: not me. Any discomfort makes me want to eat. And someone brought home a half-gallon of limeade.
I love limes, and limeade, with the sort of fervor that hobbits have for mushrooms. A tall glass full of ice, refilled with limeade, and refilled again. In no time the half-gallon was gone. I got some more. I haven't tried to reckon just how much sugar I consumed: I don't think I want to know.
It was interesting to watch, since I have a clue about the mechanics of it now. From that point on, I was riding the isulin roller-coaster. For years I've given up putting sugar in my coffee. Now, in some bemusement, I could watch my hands reach for the sugar in the morning. "I don't take sugar in my coffee any more," I would tell them. They would nod agreeably, and tilt a couple tablespoons into the cup.
And suddenly I was hungry all the time. All the time. Hungry even when I was stuffed, when no human being could possibly be hungry. Desperately hungry, the way you'd feel if you'd starved for days. At any idle moment I started thinking of what I would eat next. Nothing was going to stop me from eating. And meanwhile, a totally unexpected emotional bomb had burst beneath me, lofting me completely free of any self-control I might have tried to bring to bear on it.
Yesterday I was finally able to call a halt. I pulled out a measuring tape. 47 inches. Mein lieber Gott! At my most expansive I was still under 49. I must weigh something like 225, then.
Thank God for Atkins. There's only one way I know of to break the power of those blood-sugar swings, and that's to go completely cold turkey on the carbs for a couple days. Doesn't matter what the hell you eat, so long as it's not carbs. No sugar, no corn syrup, no flour, no rice, no potatos. No fruit. Eggs, bacon, butter, hamburger, hot dogs are fine. Just no ketchup, no barbeque sauce, no juice, no flavored-corn-syrup salad dressings: none of those thinly disguised mainline sugar hypodermics. We're not aiming at nutrition, the first couple of days. We're just aiming to stop the blood-sugar levels from swinging wildly.
I quit at noon yesterday. I ate a vast salad drenched in oil (the carbs in vegetables apparently metabolize so slowly they're not a problem) for lunch and some hot dogs for dinner. At breakfast today I find it hard even to remember the desperation of that urge to put sugar in my coffee. Here's my coffee, there's the sugar. "I don't have sugar with my coffee," I say. "All right!" say my hands brightly, demurely pretending they always do whatever I say.
I can't say what a relief it is to be free of that sugar-compulsion. It infects everything. There's a subtle current of desperation running under every other emotion, when it holds sway.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Feed Your Horse First
It's a delight too to work on a perfectly healthy body: I thrust my hands under her back and it was easy, everything ran so free; her spine rose like a dolphin; nothing was stuck, nothing was guarded. Oh, there was a bit to do in the pecs and the abdominals; sore hamstrings; but mostly it was a body in perfect working order: young, soft, strong, fluid and malleable.
I admire bodies in a new way, now. I ogle shoulder girdles: "lovely," I think, "all the room in the world between the clavicle and the ribs. No thoracic outlet syndrome for her!" A scapula with full range of motion entrances me. Someone looks gracefully back over his shoulder and I think, "If you knew, if you only knew, what a blessing it is to be able to do that, and how many people can't!"
Sunday was an exasperating day: I had to turn two prospective clients away because I was scheduled for the afternoon, and then my afternoon appointment cancelled. So I was grumpy, and it was lucky that I had yesterday's lovely massage to restore my spirits.
I was reading Polka Dot Witch's tuesday confession: she wrote that her back was killing her and she wouldn't go see a doctor. I was about to write a Dutch uncle comment, telling her to take care of it right away, when I realized that I myself was sitting there with a crick in my neck and stiffness in my back. Physician, heal thyself!
So I put down the laptop and went into the massage / shrine room and took out that most magnificent creation of modern civilization, the tennis ball.
Got down on the floor on my back and slipped the ball underneath, and gradually worked it up and down the paraspinals on both sides. Oh, my God, it was glorious. And then stood up and leaned against it to work the upper traps and lev scaps, the neck and shoulder muscles. Wonderful. Now I can go talk like a Dutch uncle to the Witch. I wouldn't go see a doctor about my back -- what do doctors know about backs? But I'd do something about it right now, right away.
I've had a rule of thumb for twenty years. It's like the cowboy's rule of "feed your horse first"; it's "take care of the body first." If my back and my emotional life and my work and my spiritual practice are all wrecks, my back is what I should attend to first. I've often regretted deviating from that rule, but I've never regretted following it.
You know what's wrong with 21st Century Americans? They won't do preparation, maintenance or repair. I had huge resistance to riding a bicycle rather than driving, and it wasn't anything to do with the extra time or the extra exposure to the weather. The resistance was to the few simple acts of preparation at the start -- putting on the helmet and the velcro doo-dad to keep my pants-leg out of the chain, putting on gloves if it was cold, settling my backpack in the rear basket and putting a waterproof cover over it. A total of two or three minutes, and it was, till I got used to it, almost unendurable to me. Because it made me feel stupid, a doofus, a loser, to prepare like that. And then I had to take the things off and lock up the bike when I got to my destination. I'm not sure where that sense of shame comes from, but I wouldn't underestimate its influence on what we choose to do. I have a similar resistance to adjusting the brakes on the bike. The tension gradually goes off them, and I have to adjust them. A slight nuisance, a few minutes' work every few weeks: but it looms ridiculously large, and I always wait until the brakes are dangerously soft before doing it. And my impulse is to want to buy a new bicycle rather than spend -- what? maybe half an hour a year? on maintenance. I'm tempted to spend $600 rather than do a half-hour's work.
Notice that the emotion here is shame. A sense that if preparation, maintenance, or repair is needed it means that I've been caught out, found wanting.
It's a delight too to work on a perfectly healthy body: I thrust my hands under her back and it was easy, everything ran so free; her spine rose like a dolphin; nothing was stuck, nothing was guarded. Oh, there was a bit to do in the pecs and the abdominals; sore hamstrings; but mostly it was a body in perfect working order: young, soft, strong, fluid and malleable.
I admire bodies in a new way, now. I ogle shoulder girdles: "lovely," I think, "all the room in the world between the clavicle and the ribs. No thoracic outlet syndrome for her!" A scapula with full range of motion entrances me. Someone looks gracefully back over his shoulder and I think, "If you knew, if you only knew, what a blessing it is to be able to do that, and how many people can't!"
Sunday was an exasperating day: I had to turn two prospective clients away because I was scheduled for the afternoon, and then my afternoon appointment cancelled. So I was grumpy, and it was lucky that I had yesterday's lovely massage to restore my spirits.
I was reading Polka Dot Witch's tuesday confession: she wrote that her back was killing her and she wouldn't go see a doctor. I was about to write a Dutch uncle comment, telling her to take care of it right away, when I realized that I myself was sitting there with a crick in my neck and stiffness in my back. Physician, heal thyself!
So I put down the laptop and went into the massage / shrine room and took out that most magnificent creation of modern civilization, the tennis ball.
Got down on the floor on my back and slipped the ball underneath, and gradually worked it up and down the paraspinals on both sides. Oh, my God, it was glorious. And then stood up and leaned against it to work the upper traps and lev scaps, the neck and shoulder muscles. Wonderful. Now I can go talk like a Dutch uncle to the Witch. I wouldn't go see a doctor about my back -- what do doctors know about backs? But I'd do something about it right now, right away.
I've had a rule of thumb for twenty years. It's like the cowboy's rule of "feed your horse first"; it's "take care of the body first." If my back and my emotional life and my work and my spiritual practice are all wrecks, my back is what I should attend to first. I've often regretted deviating from that rule, but I've never regretted following it.
You know what's wrong with 21st Century Americans? They won't do preparation, maintenance or repair. I had huge resistance to riding a bicycle rather than driving, and it wasn't anything to do with the extra time or the extra exposure to the weather. The resistance was to the few simple acts of preparation at the start -- putting on the helmet and the velcro doo-dad to keep my pants-leg out of the chain, putting on gloves if it was cold, settling my backpack in the rear basket and putting a waterproof cover over it. A total of two or three minutes, and it was, till I got used to it, almost unendurable to me. Because it made me feel stupid, a doofus, a loser, to prepare like that. And then I had to take the things off and lock up the bike when I got to my destination. I'm not sure where that sense of shame comes from, but I wouldn't underestimate its influence on what we choose to do. I have a similar resistance to adjusting the brakes on the bike. The tension gradually goes off them, and I have to adjust them. A slight nuisance, a few minutes' work every few weeks: but it looms ridiculously large, and I always wait until the brakes are dangerously soft before doing it. And my impulse is to want to buy a new bicycle rather than spend -- what? maybe half an hour a year? on maintenance. I'm tempted to spend $600 rather than do a half-hour's work.
Notice that the emotion here is shame. A sense that if preparation, maintenance, or repair is needed it means that I've been caught out, found wanting.
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