Fields of Rain

Twenty eight years ago I rode my bicycle out of Kasane with my new wife and crossed the border into Zimbabwe. I remember that day pretty clearly, just after Christmas in my home village of Nata, two weeks with our friend Trevor and his family, even a colonial send off by Trevor complete with tent and food and British pomp, all in good fun and very Pythonesque. The day we crossed I remember seeing an awfully large herd of cattle just inside the treeline, dark shapes looking up at us and a herd that stretched for a half a mile inside the forest. I looked closer and recognized the unique horn of Africa's most dangerous animal, the cape buffalo. We quickly moved to the other side of the road.

On our way to Victoria Falls that day, I didn't realize that it would be twenty eight years until I'd return. I was only 26 and there was so much life in front of me. Botswana had been my home for nearly three years and I really couldn't have understood why I would be away for so long. I'm here for just three days this week, but as I think about some words or stories to tell to guests of my university's reception tomorrow, and there are many tried and true stories of elephants and crocodiles, life in a small village and life in a large village. And then, crystallizing in my memory is one that I haven't touched in nearly three decades.

Tshimoyapula. That was the name of the village I was headed to after two weeks of Peace Corps language training in Setswana. I didn't know it at the time, but Tshimo ya Pula means Fields of Rain in Setswana; the irony of that name for a village squarely in the Kalahari wasn't lost on any of the ten or so volunteers after six weeks living with our families.

So many memories now. My family was a compilation of two. I never found out where the fathers were, but the two women, one of them my host mother, made me feel welcome. And the children, well there were enough to field two nearly complete football teams after dinner each evening. My bag of food supplied for the duration of my stay by the Peace Corps, cabbage, dried soup, beef, chicken, etc, lasted a few days. After that, I ate the traditional diet of bhopi jwa mabelle (sorghum meal) prepared with goat milk for breakfast, prepared with cream of tartar and goat milk for lunch and prepared with oxbow soup mix as gravy and cabbage for dinner.

My host mother would wake early and cut wood for the fire to cook the porridge in a black, three-legged pot. The smoke would drift throughout the compound and mix with the rooster banter and the first rays of light. We would eat sorghum porridge, with some goat milk, adults first and then the children, and I would ply them with my broken Setswana. Laughter, learning, some headaches and struggle, but that's the way learning works.

My mother was a shebeen queen, which meant she was the village brewer of chibuku, a barely fermented distillation of, of course, sorghum. As far as I could tell, it would take about three days to brew in an open 55 gallon drum. Flies would land and meet their demise and then need to be scooped off the surface in great globs of fly and foam. I don't think the Peace Corps knew that my mother was a brewer, but it made my compound the center of village life. After hours of studying Setswana verb declinations and noun classes, I would stumble home with a headache, eat, play with the kids and then sit under the tree on a small stump of wood and pass the gigantic copi of chibuku around the circle of increasingly talkative men.

A few days into my second week, my mother was alone with me. We were chopping the marble-like wood she used for cooking. Her serious eyes looked at me, "When are you coming home?" At first I thought I'd confused coming and going in Setswana. "Oh, it'll be at least two years." "No," she said in English and pointing to the ground, "When are you coming home here?"

Twenty eight years, my mother. Twenty eight years.

rumination in the dark at fifty three

in the end
at last
in the simple dark
between closing my eyes
and sleep's release
is all i am
what i've done
the sum total of one

the only fear i've had
was losing something i didn't have
a worry that wasn't real
isn't that what love is
needing what we don't have
seeking what isn't
in places that aren't

in the dark, i see
and smile
at what i am
when the fear is gone.

vin chaud

a night's wind in montmartre

pushes past the doors, the patrons

squeeze hip to shoulder 

gripping mulled wine

letting songs roll off

in french I don't always understand

there's a vague beauty

a monet would understand

seen through memory

and eyes half wide.

Remembering Sappho

To find a tree in the forest

One must have an old dog

To sniff every bush

And look over each rock

And not walk in a straight line

Or with a map

Or even with a straight memory

The time to spend all day

Is what's needed.

new years wishes

are like a breeze on a January morning
pushing brown oak and faded red maple leaves
in circles sliding on the snow:

clarity
when the wind stops and reveals the silence
behind the clutter of action and forms

beauty
as the sun clears the morning cloud
and not from without, but inside it comes

love
of all varieties as the wind warms in months
and buds the trees with new life.

June 18th

'I need to tell you, the US State Department doesn't allow its employees to undergo general anesthesia without specific permission.'
'I understand,' and she drove the needle into my arm.

I was in Johannesburg, South Africa, a few days into a two week visit to the city, all expenses paid by the US government, to find out why I was sick. It was March and I'd already dropped fifty pounds off of a fit twenty five year old body and I was sleeping most of every day, too exhausted to pedal to my teaching post on the edge of the village. My Peace Corps doctors, a pediatrician and a cancer researcher, were overmatched and gave up after a few months of blood tests and hitchhiking forays from my village in the north of Botswana to the capitol of Gaborone in the south. The last visit was the clincher.

'Chris, how is your marriage going?'
'My marriage?' I saw over his left shoulder a framed picture of him with one of his patients, a research monkey at the University of Florida.
'Fine. Do you think my high white cell count, anemia and severe weight loss are psychosomatic?'
Pause. 'I think we need to send you to a specialist in South Africa.'

I woke up in a hallway. Dim lights and dull beige painted walls. I was looking at the ceiling and the last thing I remembered was the nurse giving me a shot. My throat was sore. What time was it? I had joked about them doing the proctoscopy and colonoscopy in the correct order. Now I was worried that they hadn't. One has to be careful about what one jokes about in Africa.

I told this story to my colleagues in the office earlier this week. I had turned fifty back in January and I had been delaying the required colonoscopy for months, mainly because of the last colonoscopy I'd had twenty five years earlier in Africa. I knew it would be better, easier, more prepared, but the memory of waking up disoriented in a hallway a few hours later, with a sore butt and sore throat, lingered.

And the doctor's office suggested June 19th for the procedure, meaning that June 18th was going to be a day of fasting and awful purging with the 'kit' they'd assembled for me. This June 18th was the fortieth anniversary of my afternoon spent making time stop back in 1974 and for some reason I figured that time would slow down again, perhaps for different reasons, and this seemed to fit the day very well.

For the last forty years, this day has been for stopping and thinking of important things. And, except for one occasion, in a German philosophy class when we were discussing Nietzsche and existentialism, I've spoken about it only to a very few people. As an older adult looking back at that ten year old in the bedroom staring at the ceiling, coming to grips with mortality before life had really begun yet, I smile at his earnestness, his need to think and talk about important things, his desire to live as much as he could in such a short time. In six years he would fall in love for the first time. In fourteen he would travel to Botswana. In fifteen he would get married and in twenty three and twenty five years he would have his children.

Somewhere during that time he figured out that life wasn't about the number of years (or the number of breaths, if you are a yogi) that one received. That was a random number, factored by genetics, dumb luck and a few life choices. What was important was being awake for the ride and conscious of the beauty flying by in every moment of joy and pain. What is important is seeing the colors and understanding how the light of the morning is different than the light of the late afternoon. What is important is that one embrace all of it, that one loves.

Last post San Diego

The road meanders with the shoreline, past sailing ships and a museum devoted to their history. I try to remember the difference between a sloop and a schooner; is it the number of masts? The slant of the sails? Sean's father used to remember with us when we were young, his days racing sloops on Lake Michigan with only sail power and the magical skills of docking a sailing ship without a motor.

This is the way I ride. Memories churn into my quadriceps, pumped into my blood, thoughts move from synapse to muscle twitch and the memories tied to a place, or smell or the feel of a cool breeze, or the rot of fish in the morning, seep into my consciousness.

A seagull and I think of reading my mother's copy of Jonathan Seagull for the first time when I was ten, the year Christopher crystalized into the essence of who he is now. 1974, the month of June, on the 18th, the year, month and day I first became aware of my mortality and all its ramifications. I suppose the seagull was a part of that, a questioning of 'going along' with the flow of time and expectations. I closed the door of  our room, my brother absent somewhere, and stared at the ceiling.

Why was it that time seemed sometimes to move fast and sometimes slow?

It wasn't linear after all. I thought about that. Then a fearful thought grabbed me: I was ten and I'd already lived a seventh of my life. What had I accomplished?  A seventh of an ice cream cone was a significant thing; my life was being consumed unconsciously, without intention or purpose. I was being wasteful!

What if I could slow down time and make my life last longer? I knew how it worked in Sr. Rhodilia's math class at St. Mathias; those 45 minutes lasted at least as long as an entire trip to my grandmother's on the west coast. For an hour I made time move slowly and then decided that a life like that might be indefinitely long but not actually worth living. At ten years of age, I decided the best thing to do was to remember how quickly time was passing and, with that awareness, decide to live as fully as possible.

What I knew then as a ten year old was that I was still needing to learn what living fully meant and those milestones came later and much later. Experiments with love and pain, commitment and betrayal, sin and goodness; each step in my life, each friend met along the way, further helped me develop the idea of what it meant to live fully in the few moments that we have.

These thoughts course through my veins and find their expression in the wheels turning. I feel them when I grip the handlebars with my hand and the exquisite pressure in my legs as I lean into the pedals and gain speed.

Harbor Drive South-San Diego

Everyone needs to get lost occasionally. This thought occurs to me as I've lost track of the west coast of the United States and have turned full tilt towards the Mexican border while intending to head north back to my hotel. I know I'm not terribly lost, but just pleasantly so. The clouded morning sky offers a sameness of light in all directions. Street names and numbers are generally unhelpful since each town seems to rejoice in naming their streets with the same names in different grids.

I've bounced from Boston to Lawrence to San Diego and, in a bit, to Miami. Waking up in various rooms offers a sense of disorder, chaos to the surface of my life, but talking to people I love offers a deeper sense of the logos lying just beneath.

Important stuff. My old friend said that was one thing she loved about me, my insistence on wondering about the things that deserve our time and consciousness. I laughed when she remembered me at sixteen talking like I do now at fifty. What are the important things that need to be spoken of now. Two pop to mind.

South of San Diego's convention area and the adjoining Gas Lamp district, is the Naval Yard. I ride down this road for the third time, now fully expecting the long stop light at each entrance to the base. Lines of cars from every direction and my bike and I weaving between the cars left with their butts in the intersection. The temperature says 66 degrees and I roll by, pushing down my arm warmers and breathing the ocean air. The tall gray bodies of naval warships rise from the fence line on my right.

I told another friend yesterday about a story I'd read many years ago, the Conversion of the Jews by Phillip Roth. In the story, a boy at a rabbinical school in New York asks the rabbi about his Catholic friend's belief that Mary had a virgin birth. When the rabbi said it was impossible, the boy ended up on the roof threatening to jump unless the rabbi said it was possible. God, the boy said, can do anything.

 

The buildings fall away and I'm on a bike path threading between bridges and short trees. Small bunches of grass cling to the side of the trail and occasionally a cyclist or runner is heading the other way and I interrupt my reveries with a smile.

When I hear the word 'faith' I first think of theology, dogma and that quickly degenerates into the bizarre sides of my Catholic upbringing. But this morning, rolling into the wind between sand and grass, I think of the other, more important faiths to be thought of: faith in oneself, in someone else, in love and hope, in the future. Even someone with a Spaghetti Monster emblem on the back of his car understands that this faith overshadows the peculiar faith that often separates us into groups of same-believing people.

After my coffee in the morning, I walked back to my hotel wondering why I'd mentioned that story, why had it bubbled into my head as something appropriate to talk about, important enough to take some precious time with someone I hadn't seen in a half of a year. The point clarifies; I wanted to her to understand that I am not defined by the narrowness of the words I say or write. There is something else that overshadows the mean definitions we create of ourselves and, when confronted with a tremendous awfulness, as it was with my friend's cancer, all of those words burn away and one is left with a singular prayer.

Forty five minutes in and it's time to curl around and head back. I leave the path and take a left, wait a few miles and then take another left, that is how to make a loop, I think. This is how one wanders to Mexico.

There is another faith that we seldom consider. Faith in our narratives. We create stories of our lives continuously. The narratives help us make sense of our experience, give meaning and help define who we are, or think we are. I continually make stories to absolve myself of wrongs, redefine my purpose, explain my feelings. Maybe the last is the most crucial as these narratives bridge the divide between our hearts and our heads.

I am lost. I have a gps on my bike and now that I actually look at it, it tells me I'm headed south instead of north. I pull over and start futzing. There's no rush, no imperative of time. A horn beeps. Ok, there are imperatives, just not mine. I roll forward and let the truck park where I was stopped.

The wind is behind me, when I make the turn onto Harbor Way, I can feel it passing me; there's a sudden coolness as the sweat is lifted by the breeze. I'm in a familiar place now. Aware now that I am writing a narrative and feeling much more in control of the story.

for my friend

the hummingbird　
rests,　
iridescence,　
grace
and wounded wing

in sunlight　
filtered
by branches
and the jade leaves
of spring

heals
her like a prayer
heard
from the mouths　
of friends.

 

cleaning up

A close encounter from this past week.

'Sir, sir. Come here.' My friends had come to a stop briefly in front of a cosmetics shop on a corner in South Beach's Lincoln Mall. A small latina grabs my hand. I smile, Kam makes a little hoot, and I'm guided into a chair just inside the entrance.

She is beautiful, dark with jet black hair and what happens next is somewhere between that old dishwashing soap commercial with Madge ('It's ok, it's Palmolive'), a home visit from the Jehovah Witnesses and a lap dance. In retrospect, I realize this is an awesome metaphor for South Beach.

'Here.' She scoops out a tiny spoonful of what looks like salmon roe and puts it on my wrist. Then she gently rubs back and forth. Kam and his son look on, his son slightly dumbfounded that this is happening; Kam, my friend who loves Krishnamurti, Proust and cigars, just takes in the amazing funkiness of the universe. Rubbing complete, she  spritzes my arm and dries it with a towel. My arms are two different colors.

'See?'
I'm not sure whether she's critiquing my general cleanliness or there's some other point to be made. One arm is brown and one arm is almost white. The difference is noticeable.

'This exfoliator paste is very effective.' I'm now sure that she isn't critiquing my bathing and feel much better. 'It only takes a small amount. See?' I think, yes, that's true if one just wants to have a whiter forearm. Then she takes another container and puts a small dab of gel and the erotic rubbing commences again. Kam and his son have now seated themselves in chairs just across from me, both increasingly open to having this experience themselves. I wonder why she pulled me out of the stream of people in front of the shop. Does my greying hair make me a mark?

'Ok, now watch. Is this something that you normally use for moisturizing? I nod. She rubs some on both arms. The browner one is obviously greasy while my new white one absorbs the oil and feels nice. She channels her inner used car salesman.

'This exfoliator costs 179.00 and is a very good deal. It's a three month supply. That works out to only two dollars a day. You spend that on coffee, no?'

I nod. 'But I'm going to buy that coffee even if I exfoliate.' Kam snorts, but I don't think she understands what I mean.

'Now, if you take this cream and this facial massage product,' she slides the three together on the counter and I notice how well they are packaged, how beautiful she is and how her black dress clings enough to keep us all focused, 'I can include these also for that price.'

She picks up a bit too quickly on my unwillingness to commit. The equivalent is handing the books back to the Jehovah Witnesses after you've held them.

'But I can do a little better tonight.' She moves closer, making her statement seem ambiguous; are we still talking about the exfoliation crème? 'For all three, you can have them for 99 dollars.' She bats her eyes and holds me in her gaze. They must have a rigorous training program.

'Honestly, I can't see parting with 100 dollars for facial cremes tonight. I would really have to think about it and come back. What is your name? May, I really think you did a wonderful job selling and explaining your products.' She attempts one more breakdown of costs, competing products and overall benefits, standing well inside my privacy zone. When she finished, I had the distinct impression that I would actually be making money by purchasing her products and would also have a more vibrant sex life as well.

I stand up. 'Thank you so much, May. I will come back to you if I decide I need your products.' She smiles and we return to the milieu of the outdoor mall. Now we're looking for the son of David Gilmour, who may or may not be playing jazz guitar at the Van Dyke.

dialogues

I have several friends who are using dating services to locate possible partners; I'm still trying to figure out how using a computer to find love works.

........

 

Three men are sitting under the partial cover of an umbrella. Palm trees line the beach in front of them and crowds of beautiful, vagrant, transvestite, European, Midwestern, Jewish, Muslim, white, black, brown, augmented and natural people walk! by. The men are sipping drinks and two of them are intently scanning the passing of humanity.

 

Mario: I just want to find a woman that I can love and have a family with.

Gene: That’s great! Are you seeing anyone now?

M: I was seeing a woman for the last six years, but we ended it in July. We were fighting all of the time and when she suggested that we break up, I let it happen.

Christopher: I’m sorry to hear that, Mario.

M: I still love her but we spent so much time after the first year caught up in school that we couldn’t go back to how it was.

G: So are you dating?

M: I want to but I want to commit and I can’t commit when I don’t know the person.

G: Commit to the dating?

M: Yeah, I just need to find someone so that I can have a family. I’m 42 you know.

G: Dude, you don’t commit to someone when you’re just dating. How do you know if they’re what you’re looking for? You need to have specific things you’re looking for and, you know, watch out for red flags.

C: What red flags do you look for, Gene?

Gene’s been looking at his cell phone and texting so Chris repeats himself.

G: What? Oh, well, there’s some things that are just absolute deal killers with the whole dating thing. Probably five or so.

M: Ok, what’s the first one?

G: Dude, the chick’s got to have friends.

Mario scratches his head and looks puzzled.

G: If she doesn't have close, long term friends, she doesn’t know how to maintain relationships.

M: I gave up all of my friends for her.

G: Male and female?

M: Yes, I wanted to commit to her. Besides, I’m a one woman guy.

G: And look where you are now. The friend network comes with the relationship and it tells you a lot about the person you’re dating. If she has no friends and doesn’t want you to have any, I’d give you a 99.9 percent chance of not making it.

Everyone sips their drinks, a frozen marguerita with salt, a mango mojito and a pomegranate mojito. While Gene and Mario talk, their eyes continue scanning the crowds.

C: Ok, what is another red flag? I figure you should have about five of them for your book on electronic dating. Five would work better for the promotional workshops you’d be doing.

G: Ha! Here’s another important red flag: watch out when they mention jealousy in their description. If someone want to avoid jealous lovers it’s almost a guarantee that they are jealous as hell themselves. That, my friends, is a deal killer. Jealousy kills all of the other things in a relationship.

M: But why shouldn’t I be jealous of her friends?

G: Dude, you can’t possess her! And you want her to have healthy relationships with other people, men and women. Think about it; you want your relationship to be healthy and positive not focused on imaginary bullshit.

Gene’s eyes latch onto a Peruvian woman with breast peaking out from the sides of a backless sheer white shirt. Mario follows suit and Christopher embarrassedly looks at the ground, the sky anywhere but the Peruvian.

G: You need to have a list of qualities that you want in the other person and then prioritize them.

C: Like a shopping list?

G: I suppose, you need a list and then cross out the women that don’t fit.

C: I’m not buying it. How do I know what qualities I’m looking for in a lover?

G: Well, I suppose you’d want someone that could listen to you, right? Someone that was awesome in the sack? Smart, beautiful…

C: I think it’s too mathematical, Gene. Too purposeful. And I’m sure there are some qualities that we need that we don’t know about in advance.

 

They all think about this for a bit. Gene taps away on his phone.

 

C: Isn't there something called 'love at first sight'?

M: Sure.

G: Yes, I haven't experienced it but it happens. But it must be just a purely physical attraction.

C: Really? Why do you think so?

G: Because it's only what you see that attracts you. You haven't heard her say a word; you don't know what she's thinking or interested in or how she is in bed. Nothing, just how she looks.

M: Yeah, Gene's right. Purely physical attraction.

C: Ok, are you both in love with that Peruvian woman that just walked by? The one with the large, unnatural breasts and perfect skin, long hair and beautiful eyes?

G: Um, she's hot but I wouldn't say I was in love.

C: Why not? Are there any physical attributes missing that you are looking for?

M: No.

C: Would you like her to have some gray hairs, wrinkles or a wart on her foot or something like that?

G: No, no she was a perfect 10.

C: But you're not in love with her. So there must be something else, something that isn't physical, perhaps something that can't be seen.

G: Yes, but that doesn't make any sense.

 

On the boardwalk, another woman walks by in stiletto heals and a sheer blue silk dress. Gene and Mario don't seem to notice. She casts a side long glance, frowns and continues walking.

 

C: So love at first sight exists, but it isn't completely based on how someone looks, or what they're interested in, what their voice sounds like, or how they behave in bed. But we agree you must see the other person, correct?

M: Yes, the sight part is important.

C: Wouldn't you agree that the experience is a kind of recognition, like when you first see someone you know again? Or even a kind of remembering, like deja vu?

G: Yes, that fits with what I've heard about it.

C: What is doing the recognizing?

G: The brain.

C: Really? Is the brain actually remembering something that it has seen before?

G: No, that doesn't make sense.

C: So it's something else then. Look at your hand; what is seeing it?

M: My eyes. (laughing)

C: So your eyes and your hand are different, right? If you see something, you and that something are two different things. Here it's your eyes and your hand. And not only that, it's 'your' hand.

G: Ok, that makes sense.

C: Are you thinking right now. Do you notice yourself thinking about love?

M: Yes.

C: If the thinking is happening in 'your' brain, what is doing the noticing?

G: Something like the soul or spirit maybe.

C: So this 'soul' exists independently of the brain, perceives things that aren't physical and is somehow involved in love.

G: Yes, that's right.

C: So love at first sight and perhaps love itself is a recognition by a soul or spirit, perhaps even a recognition of someone else's soul or spirit. How does your dating service account for that?

G: Chris, you are such a romantic.
C: I suppose so.

 

 



flats

'It smells like urine.'

Changing a tube, in the rain, just past our turn onto NE 2nd Street in downtown Miami. We are on our way to Brickell and loop through Coconut Grove when a small piece of glass (the remnants of someone's windshield from an accident years ago? or a shard from a bum's smashed bottle of Mad Dog 20/20?), lubricated by the warm rain, sliced through the Vittoria Pave's layers of rubber and cords.

'Yep, smells like quite a few people took a piss here.'

The wind shifted and the combination of getting wet again under the overhang and the image of previous tenants relieving themselves where I was sprawled, thumbs probing for the glass lodged in my tire, got me working a bit faster.

Before the flat, we had warmed up by crossing the Venetian Way between South Beach and the downtown. Riding in the moist air, temps around seventy five, sky gray, the wind behind our backs leaving us riding in a vacuum, I thought this must be what a sensory deprivation tank feels like. Warm, pleasant, womb-like. Our stop to fix the flat brought me back to the world.

Flat fixed, my friend and I roll south and promptly take a 'wrong' turn. 'Go straight' at the turn to Key Biscayne, we were told and we jumped on the bike path under the metro line. This, it turns out, does not go straight, but rather zigs and zags its way along Highway 1 until it peters completely out at Coconut Grove. Later, as I relayed our route to my local friend, he rolls his eyes. Instead of rolling past million dollar homes and the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, we were exploring one of the concentrated ghettos ringing Miami's downtown. 'Coconut Grove is the oldest modern continuously-inhabited neighborhood of Miami' says Wikipedia and we grip the handlebars a tad tighter as we look for Grand Avenue and the grand tree-lined streets of Bayshore Drive.

The dilapidated storefronts remind Gene and I of the time we spend working in the 'core' of Milwaukee's ghetto at King's Cyclery on 23rd and Fond du Lac. I'd found the job on the bulletin board across from the counselling center. 'Wanted: bicycle mechanic. Must be 16. Will train. Contact Jim King.' A week later I announced at supper that I'd gotten a job. Terrific, my dad said, always proud of his son's dedication to finding employment. Where is it? Both mom and dad went a shade pale when I told them, but to their credit, neither tried to dissuade me.

One of the other fellows that saw that ad on the board was Steven and he came to mind as Gene and I rounded onto Grand Avenue heading north.
'Remember the lead pipe he painted orange and carried with him on the bike?'
I don't think he ever had to use it, but Steven didn't last long at the shop. I would spend the next nine years working there.

There is a crossroads of sorts, the road splits into a fork and there are tourists wandering the sidewalks now. This represents safety, I suppose, no more thoughts of orange lead pipes. Ridiculous mansions sprout on the left of the road and the pavement is suddenly smooth. We glide back to the north.

Biscayne

Yesterday I rolled down to the lighthouse at Key Biscayne with my oldest friend. Gene and I met in the fall of third grade. We were both new kids in the third grade at St. Matthias grade school and in the early fall, during one of the neighborhood pickup games in the field at the nearby public school field, we argued about a ball hit over the fence into a neighbor's yard. Gene was pitching and had the ball and I got a fastball in my back as I turned away. From the ensuing fight all I remember is the Pittsburgh Steelers hat Gene wore. Soon we were fast friends.

We talk and reminisce a bit. He turns me on to some of his new music. Twenty five years ago were listening to Floyd and Zepplin. 'Chris, have you heard this one?' and now he shares a song from Passenger that speaks to me.

The last time I spent more than an evening or a day with him was a trip we took to the Smokey Mountains before I went off to the Peace Corps. We piled our backpacks and food into a friend's Duster and froze our tushies off during the rain and snow of a cold January in Tennessee. A disaster of a trip. John, a weight lifter and general tough guy, was reduced to shivering in his sleeping bag for an entire day, refusing to continue. And here's the part where I wonder at the synchronicity in the world.

There is a Tesla dealership in the Lincoln Mall in South Beach. Tesla's are very cool cars but a couple of hours of wandering through shops left me feeling like every place was a Minnesota Fabrics store. I found a stool to sit on and an older woman asked if she could share the table.

'Indiana?'
She smiles and says, 'Yes, how did you know?'
'North of Indianapolis?' and here I didn't use sociolinguistics, but made a leap back across two and a half decades to the night Gene and John and I were driving back from Tennessee, 'I would bet Lebanon, Indiana.'
She looks at me and I know I'm right. I told her the story of the first time I was in a car that broke down in Lebanon on a section of road that the state troopers never patrolled and about the Lebanon Hotel.

We didn't have enough money and no credit card for the Holiday Inn that glowed in the distance off of the interstate, so we walked from the car to the old motel. The room smelled of trucker sweat and John found a dead mouse under the bed. Gene and John walked out to a local bar and didn't get beat up. I slept in a dry place for the first time in a week. Three months later, while my friend Sean was driving my VW van, he punched me awake in the passenger seat.
'Chris, wake up, the van's losing speed.'
'What? Where are we?'
'We just passed Indianapolis.'
'You have to be shittin' me. Are we in Lebanon?'

The woman laughed and her husband came over after looking over the new S models. They were both retired and we chatted about engineering and nursing a bit before they went off to their hotel on 5th Street. Gene had his fill of horsepower and acceleration and we wandered over to the art museum across the street. A friend from Dubuque texted.
'Chris, check out the Tesla dealership in the Lincoln Mall.'

Check that. And I will see you all in Lebanon.

miami beach

I first rode my bicycle in Florida about eight years ago. I was attending a conference in Tampa, renting a room in St. Pete's and rode with a local group called the Mad Dogs. I met a former Olympian from 1932 who was able to hang in the rocking chair of the A group. He was 92 and loved talking about his tomatoes and was a true ancien coureur. The other stand out memory was the A ride itself. We averaged 27 mph down to the state park at the tip of the peninsula and back and often cruised at 30+. It was completely flat. There were about seven or eight of us on the front participating in the pace line and another thirty or so sitting in the rocking chair, it was a big chair, being whisked along in the draft.

When you ride in a group, the idea is to maintain the effort, the pressure on the pedals until you are the one on the front, then the idea is keep a constant speed that the group can tolerate. This forces the lead to work harder and, after a number of turns on the crank, to pull off and rest in the back of the pace line. That morning, has we headed south, our safety against the blue-haired drivers aided by our numbers, we would hit causeways where the road would rise to cross the water. In Iowa, this would be considered a small roller, a tiny hill that wouldn't require even a downshift, just a muscle-through. In Florida, because of the relentlessly flat terrain, those causeways caused a dramatic reaction in the group. The first time we hit one, I was on the front, feeling good and excited to be in the paceline. I powered over the bridge and, at the top, signaled with my elbow to let the next guy come through. There wasn't one. Muscling through the small climb had dropped the group and they were about twenty yards behind me.

I was embarrassed. Dropping the group was a huge faux pas in riding culture. In Europe it might get you uninvited to the next group ride. I apologized as I soft pedaled back through the group and was very aware when the next rise came up. Again, the group downshifted, riders started breathing hard and everyone slowed. I did the same and marveled at the feeling of being a better climber than the others. Me, the too-large oaf who would get dropped on climbs in Iowa and France, was like a visitor from Krypton here. I didn't let it get to my head.

So yesterday, eight years later, I rode north in Miami Beach, past hotels, the strip I wandered with an old friend the night before. Palm trees, passing views of the ocean on my right and then the intercoastal canal on my left. Somewhere past thirtieth street I noticed the Jewish influences more and the trendy seediness of the South Beach area was behind me. Then island narrowed and the road tilted up into a causeway. I smiled and remembered my ride in St. Petes and then considered what an apt metaphor this was about life.

I turned at the Welcome to Sunny Isles sign and rode back to the condo on the other side of the island, spinning circular metaphors the whole way.

suspending disbelief

The holidays are sometimes like a river gauge, that calibrated stick jammed into the river bottom, or sketched onto the piling of a bridge. Folks used to floating down river see them on a regular basis in the course of a day's float and they often back up the sense data of the paddle hitting the bottom when the river's shallower then normal, or give reason to that more-excited-than-usual feeling in that last rapid that was kind of boring last time. If one looked at the river more often than a weekly or monthly paddle, the changes might not be noticeable.

Relatives are my river gauges.

There are new jobs, new relationships, 'big news', and the like that often must be sketched out during the early parts of the holiday get together. People have heard things, things have happened, things need to be shared in order to re-invigorate the relationship. This is repeated over and over, sometimes over a glass of wine or beer, then over the weenie winks and artichoke dip, then over dinner and the following slice of pie, then over coffee. Sometimes this comprises the totality of the sharing; everyone is getting up to speed until then next gathering. But I've been lucky with different sides of my family, to have a spaces when real sharing happens, that connection that cements deeper friendship when one realizes that this is someone that I'd choose to befriend even without a blood tie. As one of my Colorado teammates would say about us, 'brothas from anotha motha.'

Last night my nephew Alex gave a Tarot card reading to my son Karl. These things happen at family get-togethers. Later, after the pie, Alex and I were talking.

'So, what do you believe happens when Karl picks the cards from the deck?'
'Well, the Karl's intention affects which card he chooses.'
'Something magical happens?'
'Yes.'

We go on to talk about the importance of the narrative created by the two people, but Alex takes it a step further and says there is an actual affect on the cards by Karl's energy.

'Why do you think that?'
'Because I've seen it different times; I've done thousands of readings and sometimes the other person doesn't like the card and we do it again. You know what? They will draw that same card again. It's happened like five times. They'll pull it two or three times in a row out of a deck of 70 cards. What are the odds of that?'
'Has it happened that a person didn't draw the same card again?'
'Sure.'
'How many times has that happened?'

My surface role is skeptical uncle, but I'm more interested in an idea that is simmering just below the surface that might connect Alex and I instead of leaving both of us in our stereotypical roles.

'What if the important thing isn't whether a belief is true or not? What if the important thing is that there are two people building a narrative together of their perception of what's important in their lives?'

And this is what we talked about the rest of the evening together until the party ended with his dad's fireworks outside. This is what I thought about on the drive home and what I left off with as I fell asleep. It's easy to be critical of magical thinking, whether it's in a deck of Tarot cards or in an elaborate presentation of a mass or rabbinical service or (put your favorite belief here). However, like erotic love in Plato's Symposium or my sister-in-law's holiday party, it is a conversation starter; it can set the table.

For what... for maybe the less amazing and more magical things in our lives, the rivers rising and falling imperceptibly: the magic of drawing a quiet breath, the silence of the night air cushioned by snow under the cedars outside the house, the simple awareness of it. The feeling of flow when I ride a bicycle, air, sweat, breath, pain, joy, seeing over a hill, noticing a detail, these are miracles of being. Alex's soon to be brother-in-law had joined us and participated in the dialogue. Alex's mother came by, uncomfortable, I think, with the earnestness in our voices. 'Mom, I get to talk with my uncle once a year; let us be!'

Later, just before the fireworks, I heard his father say to his soon-to-be-son-in-law, 'Chris is the only liberal that doesn't get angry with me when we talk politics. I love that about him.'

And that makes the party, the over indulgence in sweets and meats, so worth it.

heraclitus

where water was born

a poem comes to mind

in glimpses

everything is green

hot and cold

the same, a common sense

of being with you and apart

both here and there

the river between us is one.

sighting Alcatraz

Thinking about later, I could understand the disconnect.  Here I was, a tanned, fairly fit looking bloke with a nice bike who even knew what arm warmers were; who wouldn’t think that a climby ride around and up Mt. Tamalpais wouldn’t be a walk in the park?  Watching Andy come into view around one of the bends ahead of me, five hundred feet above the surf, an apt metaphor popped into my head.  It was kind of like saying enchanter at a dinner party in Paris, a bit well-practiced and native-like, and then fending off the the passe composer for the next two hours as the other guests slowly change their initial assessment of your language skills.

So it is this morning.  I could have guessed as much.  The pollen is out big time; I’d just spent the better part of two days driving from Colorado to California; and we landed at my sister-in-law’s home in the midst of a party that lasted until past midnight.  Why wouldn’t I feel amazing on a early morning ride?

All that said, it is beautiful.  As the grade evens out to a less leg numbing five percent grade, I close the gap on Andy and we talk.  As I’ve aged, one issue that’s come to the fore is my need for a longer and longer warm-up before ramping up the effort.  This morning the air is damp and thick and the pretty yellow flowers on the sides of the road emit something that feels like sandpaper in my lungs.  For today’s warm-up, I coasted downhill for three minutes, greeted Andy and then started a twenty five minute climb.

‘We’ll need to slow it up for a bit, until I warm up.’  He looks surprised; who’d he think he was riding with, Eddy Merckx?  ‘My lungs will start to spasm if we don’t.’  He’s polite but probably disappointed.  I hate explaining all of the nagging shit that I work through to avoid an inhaler; it makes me feel old.  ‘Go ahead and I’ll catch you on the downhill.’

‘Nah, it’ll be a social ride.’ 

So we ride, me wheezing up the first climb like an tubercular patient in a wheelchair.  Andy explains that we need to keep an eye out for packs of motorcyclists.  They have a habit of using cyclists as the apex of their turns.  In a few minutes we hear the muffler tone of the first group of twenty or so riders, hitting the hairpins, coming up behind us fast.  Each slices by a foot or so from my shoulder, confident in fat smooth tires on a damp road.  Andy slides forward and I meet him again at the top, talking to one of the bikers.  The guy’s dusting himself off.  The fat tire let him down.  Literally.

We descend through the Muir Woods and I soon realize that Andy is far behind me.  At one hundred kilos, descending is one of my super powers on a bike.  I quickly hit fifty and start leaning into the hairpins, the coast a whole lane away off my left shoulder.  It’s exhilarating, like hang gliding on wheels.  Andy I reconnect on the rollers that come next.  Hard effort, descent, hard effort, descent. 

On the next descent I follow him and notice he’s getting thrown off his line by a too-upright position.

‘Did you ever ride a bike?’  We move between the two denotations: bicycle and motorcycle without much context.  He talks about buying two CBR’s fifteen years ago after his wife rode on the back of a Harley.  A month into their ownership, they decided it wasn’t for them and they got a race car instead.

‘You gotta counter steer in the turns in order to hold the right line.’  He tries it on the descent from Mt. Tamalpais and has a big smile on his face at the bottom.

brothers

I never know how things will go on the Acacia Park ride.  Today, a smallish group showed up, twenty riders or so, and we rolled up Boulder and onto Platte under sunny skies with a brisk south west wind coming from the backside of Cheyenne Mountain.  It was beautiful.  I don’t mind the wind; it keeps the little guys in check most of the time.  With no mass, they don’t last long pushing against a headwind at 30 miles an hour. 

Chatting with the other riders, lately more regular than myself, I catch up on who has a new bike, why they went with regular Dura Ace rather than Di2, what kind of deal so and so got at this shop.  A little guy sitting next to me, maybe fifteen years old and racing for a pro shop in town, is talking about the rigors of racing Cat 1 and Cat 2 men.  He works really hard in our group, but I wonder how the heck he gets to race Cat 1.

Brian, the owner of Devinci bikes, gets a flat just past our turn onto Platte.  ‘You OK, Brian?’  ‘Sure go on without me.’ And we do.

I’m on the front or near the front as we go down Platte. There are two small hills, not much really, but enough to test folks in the group.  Who is breathing hard?  Who is pedaling squares or standing up a bit too early on the climb?  I feel great and coast up the hill to scrub some speed so I’m not sticking my nose into the wind.  Looks like a good riding day for Chris.

Things happen in our peripheral consciousness all of the time without us really noticing.  A psych prof once said that three million stimuli are registered by the brain every minute and we are only conscious of a small fraction.  Somewhere on the three mile stretch of Platte, part of me noticed that my rear tire was squishy, but the part running my conscious self didn’t get the message.  I wish it had. 

A sign for Peterson Air Force Base points right, off of Platte and we follow it.  There’s a light and the group comes to a stop.  In one half mile the hard riding begins when we turn right on Marksheffel road.  Position is important and I let myself drift to the outside and take the front.  I have a clear view of Marksheffel traffic coming from the north; I’m positioned to come through the corner at full speed on my own line and lead up the hill into the wind.  I plan to make everyone suffer for the next ten miles.

At the apex of the turn, my rear wheels slides about two feet.  At last my conscious brain realizes I have a flat and I remember the squishiness from a few miles back.  I’m on the outside of the turn, so I just raise the right hand and slow to a stop.  A one inch finishing nail is stuck through the tread of the tire.  This is a first.  I know Brian is coming up and look forward to talking with him as we roll into the wind.  Instead of just one, slightly portly, rider coming up the hill, there are three. All had nails in their tires.

We make a compact group of four and begin our hard pulls into the wind.

Saying rosaries

I’m cycling with friends, two guys I’ve spent a lot of time with on the road, pushing limits in races and just putting saddle time in during six hour rides.  These two, Mike and Byron, are pretty much the only guys I know here in the Springs who will say ‘Sure, why not?’ when I ask if they want to do a 120 mile loop up to Sedalia and over to the Platte River.  We’re riding from Woodland Park and down to Deckers.  They’re continuing on to Pine Grove which adds about 5000 feet of climbing to the ride.  I did a couple of months ago with Mike, and we both bonked, or met the ‘man with the hammer’ about ten miles out of Woodland Park.  I would love to do it as well today, but I’m still recovering from a cold and 60 miles and 3000 feet of climbing will have to do.

Riders give up about 1500 feet in elevation on the way to Deckers, but it doesn’t happen in a consistent way.  After ten miles of descending, we climb three miles to Trout Creek Road.  The healthy ponderosa forest has given way to the Hayman fire burn, a fire that burned so hot in 2002, that nothing has grown since; the ground was scorched.  Blackened logs still lie on the ground, charred stumps dot a tree line where there are no trees. 

It has been a week since I’ve had a good ride, one that made me sweat.  Today I feel like a teammate, indeed Mike is a teammate and we’re sporting matching jerseys, so I pull into the wind for twenty five miles.  I set the pace at a comfortable effort on the edge of my 60 minute threshold, my power meter numbers moving back and forth over 275 watts.  Mike and Byron line out behind me, taking the big draft and not really making an effort to pull.  And that’s fine, they’ll be doing another twenty miles then I, climbing out of Deckers on a six mile climb averaging 7 percent on a mind-numbingly straight road.  I’ll have a bar in Deckers and then toddle back to Manitou Springs at my own pace, so I can lay down an effort here and help them save themselves for later.  Teammates.

We run the downhill to Deckers.  Twelve miles of downhill, steeper at the beginning.  I’ll be doing the inverse in about an hour, so I enjoy the speed as the numbers run up to 55 miles an hour.  The first corner is a hairpin and the rubber on the rear wheel distorts and I feel the wheel moving to the outside of the turn, fucking clinchers.  I move my weight forward and tap the front brake to push weight forward and normality returns.  A straight through the burnt timber, and then two turns in sequence.  I don’t scrub any speed and counter steer a bit to lower myself into the turns.  It feels wonderful, like hang-gliding on wheels.  The sides of the road are a blur, but I’ll get to ponder them in slower detail soon.  I don’t hear any cassette noise behind me and glance back under the arm; Mike is about two hundred meters behind, catching up now and Byron is not to be seen.  Mike and I stop and I hope Byron is not laying against a rock with a handlebar in his gut.  He isn’t; he rolls up in a minute.

‘Chris, when’s your next race?’  ‘I don’t know, I have to figure out my heart.’  I then explain my tachycardia ‘event’ at the Haystack TTT; I’m not sure what feels worse, the racing heartrate at 250bpm and days of fatigue that followed, or letting my three teammates down.  Instead of finishing first, they came in last, minus one large ttt rider with plenty of draft. 

Deckers comes up and we slow into the parking lot.  Bikers, motorized, line the parking area, watching us as they sip beers and lattes in the shade of the patio.  I really want to continue on with these blokes.  ‘Have a good ride, guys.’  And off they go.

My legs feel the strain of the first twenty five miles; the road moves up first as a faux plat.  I can feel nerve ending burning in the quads and hips.  The pedals turn on their own now and my mind works in the Colorado sun.

‘Road cycling is boring.’  Often I have conversations with myself or others as a I ride.  Probably too much of the aforementioned sun, or maybe this is initial onset psychosis, but I often talk to folks for periods of time, not out loud, or write things that never end up on the page.  I’m thinking of what a friend said the other day on a nighttime walk in Vancouver.  Outside of the stunning scenery around me, this would be the boring part of the ride.  Clomping along at ten miles an hour up a twelve mile climb, why do I not find it so? 

I think of religious metaphors, for the benefit of my friend?, and compare where I am to a church, granite spire, evergreen windows and a baptismal font on my left called the South Platte River.  If there is a God and he does have an interest in hanging out with us, this place would be a fine one to do so.  Prayer.  What is it but an inner conversation between the self and Self, atman and Atman, person and God.  I move higher.  My body is rhythmic, each turn of the crank another bead on the rosary.  What is the purpose?  What is the purpose of prayer but to move closer to the Source of what and who we are.  My mind is emptying.  Thought is consumed by the effort of climbing.  Passion is funneled into the muscles of the legs and shoulders, body swaying, hands gripping; love is burned in the firing synapses, the effort of muscle and thought.  At the top, I’m empty, pure, a vessel waiting to be filled.

A downhill run and I’m climbing again.

Going coastal

After a week of riding circles in Stanley Park, the road went straight, up and over the Lionsgate bridge and north to Horseshoe Bay.

After a week of someone else's food, a few too many latte's and sitting listening to the particulars of AAIEP versus UCIEP membership and the vaguaries of the new SEVIS process, I just wanted to hurt myself on some hills.  Reductio ad absurdum.  My vision is reduced to a patch of road in front of me and the strain of my body against gravity.  There are hundreds of cyclists on the roads, but I'm polite and nod and move one.  I want to think and then I want to stop thinking and just exist in a suspended moment.

A fellow on a tri bike, shirtless and reeking of bravado, storms past me as I munch a muffin.  Fine, he can join my effort.  I swallow, shift and move into his slipstream, shift again and ease past up the climb.  I do the racer's head fuck and slow my breathing and smile and say a cheerful "hello!"  I shouldn't have, but I did, and he rolls another fifty feet off my right shoulder and then is completly demoralized.  Maybe it will help him learn not to pound his chest with cyclists he doesn't know.  Probably not.

I roll on to Horseshoe Bay and talk to an older woman and her husband on the climb to the Sea and Sky Highway.  I have no problem easing up and having another muffin.  Thirty miles in.  At the turn back towards Vancouver, an older fellow comes up from behind.  I slide into the draft and then we talk a bit.  He invites me up Cyprus Mountain and we suffer the 12km to the top in a huffing silence.  I feel weak now.  Sweat stings my eyes.  The bars feel hard in my grip and a slow rolling motion comes into my shoulders as I rocke back and forth on the climb.  Snow shows up on the roadside and I realize we're part of a long procession of cyclists making a pilgrimage to the top. 

What is it we believe in?