03 April 2013

A Serene Life On My Bike

One day, I was talking with someone I admired as an artist and took as a kind of spiritual adviser.  (I was young then.)  I asked her what she wanted most.  

I was expecting something deep and profound--or, at least, something that would have sounded deep and profound to me back then. (I think it was around the time I read Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Siddhartha.)  Here's what she said:

A simple life and innocent times.

Now, at the time I thought neither was possible--and, that, in fact, they were marketing tropes.  Yep, you can live the simple life if you can afford it, and you can have innocent times if your world is, well, a simple place.  The truth is, of course, that I never could have had innocent times because I wasn't so innocent and times were never simple because I was simpler than I was willing to acknowledge.

But I digress.  For the first time in decades, I thought of that encounter when I stumbled across this photo:





I can just imagine unrolling what's strapped to the saddle and unfurling myself on it, in a field where I might fill the basket on the front of the bike:



I guess there are actually people who live that way.  Goddess bless 'em.  (Hey, changing genders turned me into a feminist!)

Both photos come from the lovely blog A Serene Life For Me.

2 comments:

  1. Simple life and innocent times...If only...

    I manage a fairly simple life but times are far from innocent and getting less so by the day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Coline---I am finding ways to simplify my life. As for innocence...well, that's another story!

    ReplyDelete