September 2009 Archives

Bear with me a moment; I've had this whole essay going in my head while I was getting ready for bed, and at last it became clear that I was going to have to write it down or face listening to it whirl while I tried to sleep.

The trouble is, I've the urge to start with where I ended up, rather than begin at the beginning.

It began with a conversation I had over IM this afternoon. It wasn't all that different from hundreds or thousands of conversations taking place all over the world, I imagine. Two women were talking about feeling self-conscious about aspects of their bodies.

In this case, it happened to be two rather strong-minded, unsuperficial, relatively confident, self-assured, fully adult women who on the whole like themselves quite well.

But we'd both been having moments lately where we look in the mirror and are not pleased. In my own case, I think it stems from external circumstances that have caused me to feel a bit like I did when I was a very unself-confident teen. The kinds of things one likes to think one has grown out of at the ripe old age of my ripe old age.

Anyway, I find myself missing being told nice things about my physical self. Boywich used to tell me I was beautiful - or at least I think he did. In any case, he managed to make me feel that he felt I was.

I know in some sense that it came from him loving me. That when he looked at me, he wasn't just seeing my packaging but also the person in there, whom he found beautiful and worthy of love. So it was easy for him to say it. Or to bring me lots of roses. Or both.

You can't have that with someone who doesn't know you, and doesn't really want to know you any better than they do. I guess it's the latter part that does more than simply not make me feel beautiful - it makes me feel unbeautiful. Not wanting to know me, not wanting, in point of fact, to admit to being involved with me, made me feel quite ugly. (Not to mention angry)

And no matter how much I tell myself it doesn't matter, and that I can consider myself beautiful anyway, I've lost a little bit of my shine. Just for a little while, I think. But it's definitely there, the dull spot.

That scar on my stomach looks more noticeable than it used to. I feel like I look pregnant about half of the month. My face looks heavy and old. I bet no one sees this but me. I bet most of it isn't true (I do in fact bloat to an amazing degree of late, and there's no getting around that. The clingy dresses are taking some time off).

It's a curse that someone else's opinion should matter more than my own. It's a curse I've fought extremely hard against, and will probably have to keep fighting forever.

His name is Seymour. He's going to be made into soup, so don't get too attached.

But you want to, don't you? Don't you just want to establish the Seymour Fan Club? Go around wearing buttons with his picture on them? Such is the life of the fall vegetable. So charming, so photogenic. So...delicious.

Big farmer's market day, even though I'd only planned to get a few things. Rode home with a giant juicy bunch of leeks hanging out the top of the bag. Kitwich went leek-crazy. Managed to tear off a green stalk and chased it around the house. I found it on the bedroom rug.

Last fall it was all about the apples. She'd climb right onto the kitchen table for them. Now she doesn't seem to give a hoot about apples. When she was little she used to chew on bits of kale or collard green that had fallen to the floor. I don't know what she's thinking. When she opens her mouth all you see is fangs - she has no teeth for eating these things.

I thought about my own teeth a few moments ago, how there are, in fact, a couple of stray canines there, which suggest a naturally omnivorous diet, but how I seem to only want to eat vegetable matter. The older I get, the less animal products appeal to me.

It came up last night because I was at a party, and the restaurant had nothing I could eat. I managed to cobble together a few side dishes, and the chef sent out a little bowl of mixed beans in a warm vinagrette as a sort of apology for having removed the only vegan item from the menu. But it was awkward, and wildly overpriced, and I thought some about the social prejudice against people who don't eat meat or dairy.

It's not one of those things that's intentional; it's just ingrained, as if there is a Normal way of eating, and it means meat, with side dishes of vegetables (usually cooked in butter). It isn't that way worldwide, of course, and this city is a lot easier to find vegan food in than most other places in the US. But it's weirdly polarized.

For the most part, there are vegan restaurants and there are meat restaurants. The meat restaurants will often have one vegetarian item on the menu, but it's always full of cheese.

I'm not militant in any way about food choices; I can happily dine with my steak-eating girls without batting an eyelash, and I'd never try and tell someone what they should or shouldn't eat. But last night was frustrating. In all honesty, it made me angry. I didn't have any say in where we were going because it wasn't my party, and I did check the menu online beforehand, and I was nervous about the fact that they had only one thing on the menu I could eat. And that's before we even get into the fact that this was an expensive restaurant, and I am scrambling for rent and grocery money, and then the people who chose the place wanted to split the bill evenly, essentially expecting me to help pay for their appetizers and wine and desserts. Ugh.

I was starving, having ridden a fair amount that day and only having had a snack before dinner, and dinner not being until 9pm. Anyway, blah blah blah, complain complain. But I have to say, if I were asking a friend to join me for dinner at a restaurant where no meat was served, I'd warn them of that in advance, and I'd ask how they felt about it. I don't like being thrust into the role of high-maintenance dinner guest, who's being "difficult."

One of the many things I'm worried about, with bicycle touring, is being able to find food in the wilds of upstate. And last night made me realize I'd better make a lot of room in my panniers for peanut butter.

I'd say that this is going to be the saddest news in the world, but honestly, given the state of things, it's not even close to the bottom of the heap. I mean, I have three bicycles, an adorable cat, and friends who love me - what more could a girl want?

I don't think I can ride to Rhinebeck this year. What's more, I don't think I can even go to Rhinebeck this year. I sat down and did the math, and poked around on the Internets and found, as Juno had warned me, that the hotels in and near Rhinebeck are already brimful of knitters who planned earlier out than a month. (side note: holy shit, in what weird world is a month ahead of time not enough advance planning for a weekend excursion?)

Any way I crunched the numbers, I came to the same conclusion: too expensive. If I could ride the whole way in one day, MAYBE. But I can't. My bike isn't even ready yet. I haven't trained on it. I haven't tested my legs on the big big hills of upstate NY. I haven't re-learned how to ride a geared road bike, and I've never used the kind of shifting/braking setup I am having made.

The long and the short of it is, I don't think I can go. I thought about taking the train up, riding from the station to the festival and back, but that's a big chunk of riding, and would take almost half the day, and then what's the point?

So I guess I am bagging it. I thought I'd be really really sad and let-down, and I find that I am not.

I will ride the road bike on some long hilly rides into the country, and I might even do an overnight here and there, and I will manage to see some leaves before they all fall to the ground and get snowed on. But the grand adventure will have to be put off for another, more solvent year. Plus, of course, there's the fact that if I went to Rhinebeck, I'd drop at least $100 on wool. I mean, ya have to. It's there.

So, y'all have fun, ya hear? I'm gonna knit from my very nice stash for a while. And maybe ride to the beach and look at the terns and gulls. The beach is nice in the fall. Quiet. Windy. Mmmm.

I lay on the couch and watched V is for Vendetta. I watched the spurts of blood fill the screen. I watched the flames rise around V's upraised arms. I watched and thought about how much that feels like riding in the city.

An idea can't be killed with bullets, he said. Hmn.

Some of my friends ride slowly, and some ride fast, and some suit their speed to the occasion or mood.

One rides likes it's a war, always. Chases down cars and spits into their windows when they've behaved horribly.

Some wear carbon knuckles. One got attacked by a driver wielding a baseball bat. The result: he ended up holding the bat, the driver panicked and leapt back into his car, the friend threw the bat into his window.

You think I am making this shit up, you people who live in the suburbs?

I sometimes think of this language I read on the website of Transportation Alternatives: "It shouldn't require this degree of pluck to ride in the city."

Oh yeah?

It requires a fairly high degree of pluck to live in the city, much less ride in it.

Some days I really just want to go for a pleasant ride. To get on a path, a smooth, paved, quiet path, and ride between green trees.

But you know, those don't even exist in the countryside. I remember riding in the country. It was all about feeling the onrush of air as a car approached at 75 or more mph, and you prayed, desperately prayed that they: a) saw you, b) gave a crap about not hitting you, and c) weren't about to throw a glass bottle at you at those speeds.

You think I am making that up, too? It happened to a friend of ours, Boywich's and mine. Not just one bottle but several. He gave up and began riding only on mountain trails.

Why am I telling you this? Most of the time I never complain about it to anyone who doesn't ride the same streets. I never even discuss it. They say, You must be crazy to ride on these streets, and I shake my head and smile and downplay it and change the subject, usually to ask where we're eating.

The truth is, there's a part of it that's delicious. It's not the danger, I don't think. It's the fire. It's the fire that runs through my veins. It's always there. It needs an outlet.

When I was shopping for yarn to make a birthday hat for a friend, I mock-looked at other colours in the shop, but there was really only one choice. Don't you hear Hugo Weaving's voice as I say that?

1. I cannot for the life of me get enough apples. I bought a bunch at the Saturday farmer's market, and today I had to go and buy a bunch more at the Wednesday one.
2. My bag contains, in addition to its usual complement of snacks and H2O and tools, 1 rain jacket, 1 merino wool sweater, 1 pair legwarmers, and 1 neckwarmer (tight-fitting cowl). Oh, and a change of (wool) socks.
3. I am knitting again(!) Every year I worry that I've simply lost the urge, and every year it comes right back with the first breath of cool air. I've made one hat and am two-thirds of the way done with another.
4. I have cut off two pairs of jeans in the last week. I know, that sounds like a sign of summer, but for me, making new cutoffs is paradoxically a sign of fall, because it means I am in need of heavyweight short pants for cool-weather cycling (see note about legwarmers, above).
5. The boys all look adorable to me again. Well, okay, that may have more to do with having given the one I was non-dating the boot recently, but I also think cool weather makes boy sports more appealing.

I suppose hats are my way of getting the knitting muscles warmed up. What I really need to manage to knit is a fine-gauge sweater to wear on the bike. I had one on needles somewhere, if only I could find it. Much of my knitting is still languishing in cardboard boxes, since I moved during warm weather and can't, as mentioned on many previous occasions, get it up for knitting in warm weather.

The cat would appreciate some knitted toys, I believe. Especially since I killed that very large insect she'd been playing with the other day.

Rice and beans and sauteed greens, that's what little girls are made of.

Well, this one anyway. Then of course, I had to have a second dinner a few hours later, which consisted of oatmeal and apples. Before you get on your aghast horse about the apparent healthyness of all that, know this:

a) I had a little dark chocolate, too. (Green & Black's 85%)

b) If you ever want to improve your eating habits, just become a serious (or even quasi-serious) athlete. You'll have no trouble at all, because your body will be constantly crying out for high-quality fuel, not junk.

It's been quite a week or two hereabouts. I have had bad days and good days, and bad hours and good hours. On the whole, I think things are fine.

A friend who's in a position to know remarked to me today that it was a neat trick of mine to only date men who are past masters in the art of mixed messages, since it helps ensure that I won't be trapped in a relationship that makes serious demands of me.

I laughed and laughed. Genius, ain't it?

And I instantly had an image of Thomas Crown raising a glass to his female toxic bachelor counterpart, Catherine Banning, saying, "Here's to the fear of being trapped." Oh yes, my darling, oh yes.

I rode brilliantly, smiling all the way, in bright sunshine and hefty headwind, and stopped and ate an apple (thank the gods it's apple season once again), and ran into two handsome fellows of my acquaintance (no wait, three), and generally enjoyed my beautiful bachelorhood. Sometimes it's fun to know what you're doing, under all that uncertainty.

It's Boywich's and my anniversary today. Not the kind you think.

We were together that day, but only after several hours of panicked inability to reach one another. During those hours I learned a few things, about him, and about me.

I learned why people stand on a street corner in a crisis, just bawling without any apparent awareness of being observed.

I learned that my first priority in a disaster is to get myself and my loved ones somewhere safe. If there is anywhere safe.

I learned that I am offended by people who run towards danger with a videocamera.

I learned that I don't understand people who run to the nearest bar.

I learned that New Yorkers are very, very friendly and down-to-earth and kind to one another when they are under threat from some outside force.

I learned that people view firefighters as guardian angels, and perhaps rightly so.

I learned that war has a smell.

I learned that Boywich is not stronger than me.

I learned that I make rapid calculations during a crisis. Kind of similar to how my brain operates when I am in traffic, actually. It's a very, very swift and logical and clear-thinking engine, operating in a surrounding stream of fear and dread. That is a strange combination, and unfortunately, a familiar one. I grew up using that tool, and I've had to use it a lot in my adult life.

I learned that no matter how young and strong we are, we have very little control over when and where we will die, and that that is a hard part about being human.

I learned never to be without a bike, and never to wear shoes that you can't run for your life in.

I learned that words are important, that ideas are important, and that people need words and ideas when they are frightened and don't know what to do.

I learned that a story can be the size of a Xeroxed sheet of paper with a single photograph and a few heart-breaking captions on it.

I learned that peanut butter is an important thing to have on hand.

I learned to carry a toothbrush.

I love you Boywich, hang in there. This post is for you, as it always is.

I do not like endings. Maybe it's because I'm a natural-born storyteller, and maybe it's because, all my life, when I was reading a good book, I never, ever wanted it to end. Whatever it is, I don't like saying goodbye. I don't like changing seasons, and I don't like crossing borders. I want everyone and everything to keep spinning on its pleasant, familiar little axis. And unfortunately, that sometimes extends to keeping things spinning on their unpleasant familiar little axes, too.

I find, since I began dating again after a long absence, that I get more emotional than I expect to about the breakups of even small relationships - even the ones where you've really only seen the person a few times. Or the longer ones that are casual in name, but feel like they went a little deeper than the other person (and sometimes me) wants to admit.

I had a good day yesterday, and a mostly good day today. And despite that, or just next to it, I am a little sad tonight, on the couch with the knitting and the little pieces of memory from last week.

My head swims with this or that image, and I am unsure what to do with it. Chase it away, or watch it flutter by like falling leaves?

It was cold today, the kind of cold that tells me winter really is coming back, even though it felt all summer like it had only just left. I wanted my legwarmers. I knitted a hat last night, and I am starting another.

I miss him. He hurt my feelings on a number of occasions, and for various reasons I decided I needed Out, but I think about tangling up with him, all awkward limbs on the couch, and I'm sad again. I wish for him and I don't wish for him. I had a really nice series of kisses with the other boy to keep me company yesterday, to leave me feeling like sunshine on my face (he always reminds me of the sun, that one. It's his smile). And those thoughts came to me tonight on the couch, too, and I mechanically swatted them away before I realized he's no longer the one who's vaguely off-limits in my thoughts. It's the other one, the boy I spent all summer with.

Every week, we rode somewhere together - errands or the beach or the ice cream parlor. Someplace that could have been romantic and was never quite allowed to be, because we weren't doing that.

That part was a bit of a lie. At least for me. Despite myself, I knew I was getting a little attached. I tried to explain it not once but a number of times, tried to explain about sex and all its tendrils that tangle you together in ways and places you're half unaware of.

He didn't get it. I think because he's young - younger even than his age. When I mentioned that to Boywich, I could hear him nodding on the phone. Of course, he said. Sex is different. It's different than fooling around. It just IS. It changes things. It changes things and it's hard to come back from and resume where you left off. I don't think it'll ever be the same with this boy. Paradoxically, I think it'll be worse precisely because he doesn't know or won't admit that it made things different.

If he understood, if he were experiencing the same thing, we might, after a time, return to just being friends.

I don't know why I think that's less likely to succeed with someone I un-dated for four months than it was with someone I was in love with for nearly a decade.

I love and adore Boywich and always will, but I was able to become his friend, and not to want anything different. We had this conversation not too long ago, in which I remember telling him that he's my person. He's my guy. He's the one I would call in what Tolkien referred to as the utmost hour of need. And he knew that, already.

I am rambling, I suppose, and I want to watch Harold and Maude again. There's a commercial on lately that uses the Cat Stevens song that fits Harold and Maude so well, and it's completely out of place in the ad, but it keeps prodding me to re-watch the movie.

The movie is like a compass for me; it resets my direction when I start to feel lost. I can't even tell you why. Maybe it's the scene with the daisies. You know, where she asks him what kind of flower he'd like to be, and he points to the daisies, and says because they're all alike. And she says, no, they're not. Look closer, and you'll see that each one is unique (I am paraphrasing). And then she says something like, "I think a lot of the pain in this world comes from people who are this (holding up an individual daisy) but who allow themselves to be treated like that (sweeping her arm across the same-seeming field of daisies)."

My next tattoo will be of flowers, you know.

You know, there are times when I'd really like to blog and just can't muster it up. I'm afraid there have been a lot of those lately.

It's usually because there's too much going on that's personal, that I don't want to talk about because it will be too much like prodding a bruise.

It's times like those when a list of random thoughts or observations is a girl's best friend.

1. I'd like to get a new nose-ring. I've looked and don't see any I like yet.
2. I broke up with that boy I wasn't dating.
3. As a gift to myself, I then went to see (flirt with) the other boy I also wasn't dating. It was nice to see him, but it didn't help much.
4. I feel sad about breaking up with the boy I wasn't dating.
5. I don't necessarily feel like it's the wrong decision, but it is not so easy. I mean, one clever little text does not really solve anything. There are still a tangle of raggedy edges in my chest with his name all over them.
6. Also, there is the lust, which will no doubt be a problem the next time I see him.
7. Oy.
8. See? Even when I set out to make a random list, it is anything but, and the true thing that's occupying my thoughts comes right out front. I might as well stop this list right now and lapse into paragraphy.
9. Though if I do that, I might be tempted into other lapses as well.
10. Consciousness. Employment. Judgment.

Also, I am thirsty, which seems like a metaphor somehow.

The funny thing is, as soon as I decide to lapse into paragraphy, I get all pithy and listlike.

I am a perverse creature. In more ways than (the obvious) one.

It seems to be setting out to be a week of making prudent decisions which I rapidly regret and then pine about. I had also decided not to spend some additional money on a bicycle I can't afford. And now I am sad about that, too.

I think I am still not ready to relinquish my extended adolescent funfest. Despite summer being patently on its way out. Appropriately enough, I am also nervous because my period is a little late. Dudes, that is taking teenage verisimilitude a little too far. Cramps and blood, please. Stat.

Note: Photo courtesy of cell phone cam.

"If it comes down to you or them, send flowers." - Robert Redford, as Nathan Muir

Oh goody, it's....still not Friday.

What a weird week this has been. Every day I think it's Friday - not just think, but am convinced, utterly and completely. And then I'm very frustrated.

I want Friday!

I want to play!

I want to ride to the beach!

I want! I want! I want!

I want to have not spent $4 on a single heirloom organic tomato at the damn grocery store, which then turns out to be all mushy and disgusting.

I want to ride my bike every day for hours, with no ill effects on knees or any other part of me.

I want something delicious. Preferably fruit or this dark chocolate.

I want that mouse under the stove to stay where it is and never come out. No wait. I want it to go away, far away.

I want pineapple.

I want some snuggling, with a cute boy, please. Nowish would be good. Or at least Friday.

I want all my bikes to be done and ready to ride soon soon soon yippeeeee.

I want to tell you a secret:

I am riding my bicycle to Rhinebeck this year. Yessiree. And ye shall know her by her wobbly legs and chain grease.