so the goat and i had our first race saturday a week ago on a sunny morning in central park. while it wasn't quite a triumph, it wasn't a totally shaming experience, either.
as they say, the memory of the pain is the part of the experience that fades quickest. i know there was a lot of the race where i felt miserable and sick and full of despair, but the parts of the morning i remember the clearest are riding across the w-burg bridge in full darkness, sailing up there all alone with the twinkling lights below like wynken, blinken and nod, and the very beginning of the race when the sun had come out and we were working our way up to full speed, sizing each other up, and i felt like i was riding the crest of a wave and my sick fear turned into excitement.
this was before i fell behind on the big hill and watched them all steadily pull away from me. i spent the rest of the time fighting and gnashing and trying to catch up again, just falling short.
so it was with a spirit of hopeful determination that i set my alarm this morning for 5 to go riding before work, but i was woken instead by a spectacular booming thunderstorm and bucketing rain. i slept and woke and slept and woke, and it kept up until it was time to go to work.
we'll see what happens tomorrow morning!

new york is a rainforest this week. everything has been misty and steamy, sweaty weather but cool. i sleep under the lightest blanket clutching my down comforter, the inane blather of my neighbors on their patio drifting through my dreaminess.

the new roommate is practically absent. she comes home late at night from the bakery and i'll see her only occasionally in the kitchen, but she often leaves fresh flowers in a bottle on the table. before it was roses, but tonight it is fresh peonies. my mother had enormous peony plants in the yard. they smell like roses, and to me like summer.

work was slow slow slow until this week. i'd sit at my desk inventing and completing unimportant projects, reading art and publishing blogs, and thinking about sex. it reminds me of the picasso seminar i took sophomore year. halfway through the semester i stopped listening to the lectures. i'd watch the slides--his etchings of nubile women being gazed upon by minotaurs, paintings of women fractured into body parts--eyes, breasts, hands. i thought of it as some spell i was sending out, the best return you can get from the threefold rule. and there was a very bittersweet return. one wonders what will come of it this time. i'm desperately weary of sex for sex's sake.

maybe i wrote about it before. this obscure movie keeps coming up in one way or another called bell book and candle. jimmy stewart and kim novak, 1958. kim novak is a foxy witch and the owner of a successful gallery of african art, but what she really wants is a steady guy and a normal life. it's a very strange and contradictory film. from what i can see, novak's character gives up everything that makes her appealing to me--the art gallery, her magic, going to the spooky bohemian witch's nightclub, never wearing shoes indoors--to be the kind of woman she thinks jimmy stewart wants, even though he loved her already. but i still love the movie.

i don't worry like i used to that one day i'll wake up and be a normal boring person, doing things the way everyone else does because that's the way everyone else does them. i'm more worried now that i'll stay the same always, repeating the same mistakes and mulling over the same regrets.

feeling petulant tonight. it was a glorious beautiful friday and warm, perfect warm. i've been fighting the wind since i started riding to work again, and heading home in the warmth and sunlight it felt like swimming, pedaling in an easy rhythm among the cars.

but when i got home i couldn't muster any expedition party to head out, and i'm in the wrong mood to go out alone, so instead of enjoying the glorious spring-summer-y evening i'm sulking in front of the computer.

there will be other nights.

tuesday evening turned to a horrible cold dripping rain, and i slogged homewards leaning down so the drips from my helmet wouldn't go in my mouth, creeping slowly afraid of skidding, afraid of cars not looking out. when i came around to the manhattan bridge i saw great cranes lowering big lighting rigs, and those rental movie trailers parked everywhere. they had closed off one short narrow alley in chinatown to film, and the closely-packed building were strung from bottom to top with red globe lanterns, bridging the alley and all lit up and glowing against the misty grey sky. it was one of those outlandishly beautiful new york moments. they had the same setup still today, but it wasn't as magical in the sunny afternoon.

i only hate riding in the rain because it's excessively dangerous. there's something wonderful about getting 100% soaked and filthy to the point where you can't even worry about it anymore, and you stop wishing things were slightly different and instead see things that are really there and accept and enjoy them.

the windows are open, despite rain all day and promises of more rain. i got soaked again on friday morning, soaking sopping wet and filthy from all the grit thrown up by my tires. i was so wet it didn't matter anymore. the rain was warm and i let it drip in and out of my mouth, playing leapfrog with the buses.

i'm still probing out to find the limit. the long ride this weekend was hard. i fell behind the group, last but for the co-leader acting as sweep. getting father back, i struggled harder and got more scared and angry and frustrated and the pain became a barrier instead of a challenge. the sweep pulled in front and let me draft behind her till we caught up, and after that i fought like the devil not to fall off again. so now i know what it feels like to ride when i'm tired and hurting and still keep up for 60 miles.

we ate lunch at a harbor park in westchester. there were two huge swans. i watched one awkwardly lower itself into the water, clumsy, wiggling its butt for balance and pushing its belly forward until it was able to paddle, smooth and dancer-like again. juvenile seagulls tussled and screamed at each other and the swans went by worrying patches of muck with their bills. i ate my lunch savagely with both hands, picking up the lumps of egg salad that fell with my fingers. i kept apologising for my manners, but i couldn't seem to stop. the days i go out with the group are complete: morning, noon, afternoon. when i'm riding in the line my thoughts don't stray far from the moment, and when i make it home afterwards the hours that remain in the day are a gift.

this weekend: biked 60 miles, baked bread, made granola, entertained, was honest and clear.

i'm keeping an aikido grip on my springtime emotions--firm but flexible, trying to guide the energy rather than struggling with it. looking for a book to read on the subway i grabbed something tresler lent me so long ago i forget why. it's a book on the survival mindset. the author tells stories of people (often him) who have been in survival-or-death situations, what their brains did at the critical moment and how that led them to survive or not. it's unsentimental in a way that is comforting to me, and the text is sprinkled surprisingly with excerpts from the tao te ching and the i ching. so i'm contemplating how to apply the lessons from these outrageously extreme anecdotes to my own small activities. they're mostly old and familiar lessons that i pull out every now and then to hold up against myself and practice. don't panic. don't cut corners, especially when you're in a hurry. in any given situation you will see what you want to see before seeing what is actually there. be compassionate.

it's slow going, but reading about stories where people made the same stupid mistakes i do on a grander scale and died for it not only puts my personal drama in perspective but also allows me to feel grateful for the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them.

these lessons crystallize while i'm engaged in activities that require concentration and cannot be rushed--the hours making granola and mixing up the bread on sunday, or tonight, picking tiny chips of glass out of my tires with a knifepoint before they can work themselves the whole way through and pierce my tubes.

the pleasant light misting of the morning ride turned into a steady dripping rain for the way home. all the clothes i wore today are hanging here and there from beams sticking out of my bed, grit and gravel ticking off of them onto tax documents as they dry out. jon and i inadvertently got tipsy on the excellent mezcal ed gave me. it's as clear as water and has a gentle fiery kick that lifts you over to the other side of sobriety like a baby in a bassinet. i've only had mezcal a couple of times since i was in mexico because the only kind i've seen is the states is that crap monte alban. this stuff came in a woven basket, sealed with beeswax and a warning on the label: sip this. do not shoot. i've been sad this week, but it takes so much energy to be sad and not care for oneself and then climb out of the hole again. so i take myself in hand and turn away from that. as i've grown more used to the new bike i find more joy in cycling. my torso parallel with the frame, the messenger bag tucked into the small of my back, i scoot between waiting cars. time slows, i lean away from the first rear view mirror and then opposite for the other. i'm learning how to float through crowds in the crosswalk and hop the bike over bumps. sooner or later i'm going to miscalculate something, it's always a hairsbreadth away. i've never been a risk taker, and i'm certainly not as reckless as a lot of cyclists i see, but i'm trying to push closer to my limits. to this point i haven't found them; my whole life my mind and my will have limited me but in cycling i find myself free and open and without fear that i will fail. and not concerned with where i am going. so springtime will blossom and i will feel sad and wild and not know what i'm doing with myself but through it i'm going to keep my chain oiled and my tires filled and eat enough food and get enough sleep and not smoke cigarettes because i can't trust my heart but i'm learning to trust my will.

nicely chilly and listening to twinkly matmos. it has been unusually cold this week to the point of creeping into our normally snug (but actually poorly insulated) apartment. sitting in semi-dark in the quiet house with my hands going numb reminds me of all the nights home on vacation from college. the heat was set to go down after ten, but i'd be up until midnight or later chatting on aim with my boyfriend, wishing i was somewhere else, out somewhere with friends or watching cartoons with the boy on his computer, but now i'm surprisingly content. my work anxieties have largely equalized into acceptance of possibilities i can't control and a drive to do better work.
i'm sad that my friend is leaving for a long adventure, but there is so much pleasure in hearing about it and in the comfortable companionship of these last few days before he goes that real unhappiness doesn't enter in. and plenty of local adventures are before me to help make up the lack.

on sunday for the first time i tried that insane practice of fastening the feet to the pedals. wow. i didn't think it was possible for me to love cycling EVEN MORE, and especially after the disheartening experience of chugging in vain after the racers i was riding a little less joyfully. but that's all different now.

and tonight i took the goat up to the roof and cleaned off the caked on salt and dirt and unmentionable substances and greased the chain and just spun the wheel musing, listening to that comforting patient clicking sound the freewheel makes.

and i feel calmer and steadier and more satisfied than i've been since the weather grounded me, so i celebrated by signing up for the new york cycling club's ten-week training program. i am clipped in and locked on, baby! the goat and i are not stopping for nothing. riding laps around the park i started speaking to it, which i hope turns out to be more endearing than disturbing, but that and trying to outrun my cycling buddy were the only things keeping me up to speed, so that creepy habit is here to stay.

harumph.
well, vacay is over, and before it quite was i had a nightmare that work had laid me off while i was away, so it was a relief to be back despite the inhospitable change in climate. the feeling of being home hit me when i was getting on the train to leave the airport and the security guy asked me completely unselfconsciously "hey beautiful, where you headed?" and when i said nj transit, "all right, mama, it's that way." although the frustration of interminable waiting on the g platform was also very familiar.
in brief, cally is wonderful and exciting and lovely and pleasantly temperate and full of friendly people. my last full day in san francisco felt like spring, say late april in new york.
oh bother it. i'm determined to feel grouchy about it for some reason, as though the trip was so nice that i need to criticise it in some way. "that weather was too springlike. springtime always gets me down. the whole time i was longing for the near-freezing temperatures and wintry mixes of my home turf." "the people in san francisco are too gosh-darn friendly. i scarcely did any solitary tramping around because everywhere i turned someone was making conversation or otherwise providing good company." "the palm trees and quaint houses clustered on verdant rolling hills everywhere were just tacky, and oranges growing on trees? really?"
when i get my temper back i'll post some pictures, including the Scary Undersea Mushrooms and the Carnivorous Oranges. in fact, i think all of my photos are of vegetable matter in one form or another.
adios, space cowboy.

the new bike