Bikes: December 2009 Archives

Okay, okay, yes. I'm having difficulty posting. I've taken pictures for posting, I've written drafts and then been unaccountably dissatisfied with them. I've tried for holiday spirit, charming curmudgeonry, and several other tones. None of them work. It's all just a big jumble of flat-colored jellybeans here, and I don't know how to make an amusing anecdote out of it for you. A friend asked me today what I've been up to, and I had absolutely nothing to tell him, other than that I've been sick.

Sometimes I just don't feel like talking, or writing, or sometimes my head is just not a place I am able to discuss. And when one has little money one tends not to go out and do fancy things, so there isn't much to describe.

I've watched a bunch of movies on TV, including some enjoyable old ones that I hadn't seen before. I acquired a new crush on a TV actor, one which will make no sense to anyone but me, I expect. Which is fine. That way I can have him (imaginarily) to myself.

I received some cycling gear as gifts, and I'm glad to have it. I knitted some gifts from stash (plus one trip to the LYS because I had a dearth of "manly yarn"). Dad liked his Fair-Isle hat, which was nice, because I wasn't sure he would (not manly enough).

It's getting cold out, serious cold, the cold that separates the men from the boys and all that jazz, except that if last year is anything to go by, a lot of those selfsame men will be riding the subway to work, leaving me the little lone solitary cyclist slugging it out in the wind and snow.

That's fine with me. I like the quiet. I had company for the ride home tonight, and we went slow and easy, my preferred winter speed. I tend to ride at sunset this time of year, so I look west and see a lot of pink striped sky draped around the Statue of Liberty. Then I look east and there's the low sun blazing on the metalclad tops of the famous buildings: Empire, Chrysler.

Things are rough and beautiful these days, which seems fitting for winter.

This turned out to be a real old-fashioned stinker of a Monday. I often feel like I shouldn't complain when other people have it so much worse than I do, but then there is the fact that my experience is my experience, and life is not graded on a bell curve.

I have those longings that are so hard to describe, or even to put my finger on, where they reside, carving out that hollow space in my chest. I miss homes I haven't lived in, people I haven't ever met or have any hope of meeting. I miss abilities I don't possess and never will, except in dreams and stories.

My cat yowls a lot, almost like a wolf sometimes. I've never really known why, except now it occurs to me that maybe she is a bit my familiar. Maybe she, too, pines for things she can't express, other than in a nameless, plaintive howling.

Me, I get on my bike and ride aimlessly. Slowly, in some cases, and that apparently gets me yelled at by obnoxious teeny boppers on the bridge. God, that girl made me mad. At the time I just wanted her to go away, so I pulled on the brake to slow down even more so she'd be forced to go around me.

But later, I wanted to go back in time and throw her off her bike.

Instead, I watched Mary Poppins.

That Dick Van Dyke sure can leap about like a panther. I am not sure whether he's the model guy for me, or whether I simply want to be that character myself. I do a certain amount of leaping about when I have room to, on a given dance floor. I'm right good at it, too. Another one of those callings I've missed.

While I was eating this dinner, I had a strong knifelike pang, the kind that tells you this is a metaphor for something. This simple dinner - just pasta, olive oil, a clove of the world's most beautiful garlic from the winter farmer's market (itself a miracle - local garlic is generally three-quarters dead by this time of year) and some Tuscano kale (or "dinosaur kale" as the guy working the farm table called it). And just a very few leaves of fresh rosemary.

Honestly, you could make this in your sleep, and it was the best thing I ate today.

Something so pure about it - it just was what it was. It was like a tree. Trees are never anything but themselves; they don't take orders and they make no apologies for the bends in their branches, for their knotty trunks, their gnarls, their fine woody smell.

I've often wished for that certainty, that simple knowledge that up is up, and one's path is one's path, and one can and should simply sing one's own song and make no bones about it.

That girl on the bridge hurt me - it was like being in middle school, or even earlier, when words were weapons. I don't like people very much at all, some days.

Post, unpost, post, unpost. Or rather, start writing something, lose steam, start writing something else, decide I'd rather be knitting, cycling, collecting vegetables from chilly farmers, etc.

Maybe I can get through a simple list.

a) Have realized I like winter cycling better than summer cycling. Reasons: fewer people out, bracing weather, object is to stay warm rather than avoid melting under sweltering sun, whole experience is both mellow and challenging.

b) Winter knitting proceeds apace. Have vowed to make all holiday gifts from stash yarn. Not sure I have enough "manly" colors in stock.

c) Cat asleep on couch.

d) Jeremiah Johnson on TV. Hard to decide which is more glorious - open, beautiful western landscape or young Redford. I also like the fact that there's barely a single page of dialogue in the whole movie.

e) Bulgarian disco music is fun. Just in case you were wondering. Oh c'mon, you know you were.

f) I really need to get over my fear of shrink wrapping my windows with a blow dryer. It's cold in here, and I can't find one of my fingerless mittens.

g) Have been scratching my head wondering what people who don't knit do for clothing all winter. I find myself wearing at least two or three handmade objects every day. I suppose that is some kind of knitter's fashion don't, but the fashion police can bite me. My knits are beautiful, and they keep me warm. And by beautiful, I do not mean perfect. My favorite things are often full of mistakes. Yes, there's a metaphor in there.