Friday, 30th April 2004
On Cycling
People in Philadelphia do not cycle; people in Philadelphia lazily coast along on 2 wheels, enjoying the feeling of motion without real effort. There are, as always, some exceptions to this rule. People in Philadelphia do cycle if one of the following scenarios is true for them:
- They ride to and from Manyunk or Germantown several times a day.
- They ride the Wissahickon trails several times a day.
- There is a force 9 gale blowing.
People in London sometimes ride their bikes. Mostly they ride them for the sheer size of London, but also, London has it moments of rock walls of challenge.
When I left London for Philadelphia, I was definitely a cyclist. I was fit. I had thighs of steel and a great arse. When I left Philadelphia for Perigord, I was not a cyclist but luckily I had quit smoking and so was able to become a cyclist once more.
Philadelphia is flat and small hence none of you bastards actually having to ride with any exertion. London was huge and somewhat hilly hence the occasional cyclist. Perigord is hill after hill after rolling fatherfucking hill. They know no level ground here…
La Poste is in a town about 3km from where I live, which is about 1.5 miles. It’s not far at all in distance, but the challenge it entails in getting up that last hill to make it into the town to post my letters, is one that makes my legs feel as though they are made of a flambé jelly by the end of it. I know I am getting fitter though because, aside from the rapid visual improvement of my arse in the bathroom mirror, I no longer have to shift down to the lowest gear to get there.
Some of these hills make you want to get off you bike and huffily declare that you give in, that walk you shall, but so far, my absolutely stubborn self hasn’t given up. I might have to stop when I get to the top of the hill to “survey the landscape” and pat myself on the back for the feat I have just achieved, but I always get there. I always make my point, achieve my objective. One thing I have observed is that each of these hills have their own personality. Some seem to aid you in getting to their summits and some hinder your every thrust of thigh, calf and foot. The hill right before home, on the way back from La Poste, hates me and I hate it. I even hate going down it because it feels like it is trying to throw me off Banana Baby. Conversely, there is a much steeper and longer hill going in the direction of the boulangerie with the pretty lady that I am able to climb and descend with ease.
So I am either going uphill or downhill. I am either screaming weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee into the wind and the pieces of my hair that get in my way, or I am grunting and wheezing, red faced and determined. It’s fun! There has been a rapid improvement in my health and I find myself taking more and more hills in my stride. The other day I did a long ride - 26km - and managed it with ease. I came home only because it was a Monday and I was out of water and knew I was highly unlikely to find an open shop. God I was impressed with myself though! I have brought 3 maps of the area, (of course the hamlet I live in falls in the bottom left corner of a map!), and I take them out with me so I don’t get lost. France is, however, amazingly signposted and so getting lost is actually quite a difficult thing to do. However, sometimes it seems as though I have come so far and since there are no big buildings or street names to indicate where I am, I like to have my maps to be safe. Anyway, I love the action of sitting on the grass verge, mindful of the ditch and spreading the paper out before me, seeing all the places it is possible to go, imagining what might happen to me there…
The French are wonderfully respectful of cyclists too. They have such a reputation for being mad drivers “with an unfailing belief in their own immortality” and whilst they do go incredibly fast they do also give you a wide berth. If there are two sides to the road, they will actually go on the other side until they are safely in front of you. A lot of the roads I am on don’t have two sides, as they are no more than lanes, but even then, they will drive on the verge to keep you safe. The only thing that does scare me however, is that the cars here are MUCH quieter than the ones in the States. When a car passes me I often get a fright because I didn’t hear them coming. I relied on my hearing so much in Philly to keep me safe and unclipped, so the presence of a car without me hearing it quite often causes a through back to times when I was hit. I just need to untrain my mind is all. “Here I am respected”, repeated 23 times daily.
I plan on riding to the Drônne next week, which is one of the rivers that flow though this part of the world, and the nearest point would be about 35km there and back. I am looking forward to it and shall take plenty of water and fuel to keep me invigorated. Talking of invigoration, my heart did do a little skip on the last long ride when I stopped to take a picture of some cows. They were either attention whores or angry at the camera as they all started moving rather quickly toward me. Being as the “fence” was two pieces of wire strung up by the occasional stick of wood, I hightailed it out of there…
In other news, are you watching Venus and the Moon play? Venus reaches her period of maximal brilliance as the Evening Star next week and after that, in June, you can watch her transit across the sun. This will only happen once during your life. Use it for something sacred.
Monday, 26th April 2004
Zen and the Orchid Massacre
I am, as ever, reminded of a scene in Harold and Maude, where Maude tells about watching glorious birds ride against the sunset. Later, she said, she found out they were only seagulls, but to her they would always be glorious birds. I love everything about that movie, but today I am reminded of that scene because the flowers I had previously thought were orchids were, in fact, simply violets. To me though, they will always be that delicate, precious thing…
I have been mowing the lawn for the last 2 days; I am hoping I will finally finish tomorrow. I could have done this much quicker were I to have used the tractor mower, (and which much less calorie exertion too!), but then I would have to rake up all the grass I cut, as it is an old fashioned one without a grass catcher. After raking up all the grass my uncle cut and thoroughly hating every minute of it, I decided to use the new, but small, little mower with the grass catcher. I would rather spend 3 days mowing the lawn than ever have to rake up any bloody thing again. Let’s not talk about autumn.
So I am mowing and that’s when I see all the real orchids, or rather the leaves of what will be the orchids and shortly after realising that they are in fact the real orchids, I notice that I have massacred at least 30 of them already. Is it a crime, I wonder, to mow over orchids, being that they are a protected species? Either way, some part of me says that it serves the contrary bastards right for growing wild in the middle of the orchard. Edges anyone..?
However, being that they really are orchids and being that I am not sure if I have ever really seen an orchid before, I then set about actively trying to not chop the delicate things to shreds. I kept failing, badly. Even when I knew that a patch of them was coming up, I would still somehow manage to massacre some of them until I started to become really frustrated with myself…
I have been practising zazen for about a week now in my quest for this elusive little faerie, Zen. I’m not really looking for a satori per se, although that would be, for lack of a better word, nice. I am looking for a way to stop the fucking drone in my head. I am looking to kill the Dictaphone. I am looking to exist now, here because the more I have read about Zen, the more I realise that I am the most un-Zen person alive. I am the Anti-Zen if you like, even though a duality like that is an inappropriate description for Zen.
When I was throwing away my American life, I muttered to myself, “my life is an allergic reaction to myself.” I didn’t, as usual, know exactly what I meant by that except that it had something to do with knocking myself off my centre in a good way. It meant that I was somehow doing everything I could to not get stuck in a comfort zone at the expense of adventure or life. It had something to do with my belief that we are only every truly living when we are afraid and that all the rest is just reflection…
Today I realised that my interest in Zen, being that I am the Anti-Zen, is actually a product of my allergic reaction to self. Practising Zen is the hardest thing that I can ever remember doing. I can’t remember the last time I was challenged, if indeed I ever really have been. But Zen, god, Zen is the most frustratingly difficult thing I have ever tried being / doing. It makes me want to throw myself down upon the grass and rip out the insides of my head. Dig my hands into holes just above each ear and scrape out every fucking thing that is inside of me. It is the most irritatingly enrapturing, aggravatingly beautiful thing I have ever encountered. I say encountered, but of course I simply mean those few seconds I got today when I suddenly experienced everything that was going on and found my body to be beautiful and light. I mean that mouthful of banana on the train on my way out to California. I mean those few, tiny little glimpses that almost make me panic because there is so much going on…
So, to come full circle, I realised that my massacre of the orchids today was a product of my Anti-Zen self. I was mowing over the flowers because I wasn’t in my body. I was so absorbed in whatever imaginary conversation I was having, that I could not and did not pay attention to what was before me. I suddenly understood that what I needed was more Zen and less murder. I suddenly understood the reality of Zen outside of zazen in a way that I could practise incorporating into my life. And so I tried, I really did, I tried to practise Zen and whilst I only managed to do it for a few seconds at a time, and then only barely, I did stop the massacre, or at least I slowed it right down…