Not The Description . Not The Theory.

 

So how does something I saw during today’s ride connect with a PhD I never finished (actually, just barely started) one of the most famous critiques of conceptual art—and why people hate (or at least claim to) AI summaries? 

While taking a spin around Randall’s Island, I noticed a fellow, built like a football linebacker and astride one of those bikes that looked like iridescent ice cream straight from the oven and probably cost more than a university-educated worker’s average salary in many African or Asian countries, staring at a screen on his handlebars.  When we passed each other again, halfway around the island (we were riding in opposite directions) he was still transfixed on it. And when we passed each other again. And again.

Oh, and just after I saw him the first time, I almost crashed into someone on a Citibike e-bike who, along with his girlfriend on another Citibike e-bike, made ir impossible for me or anyone else to pass because their wobbling and swerving cut off the whole lane—while he recorded himself on his phone, completely oblivious to anything else.  (Somehow I thought he was an actual or would-be “influencer.”) All the while, the girlfriend giggled.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time I saw behavior like his, or that of the fellow looking at the device on his handlebars. But I think I realized something about folks like them and the “phone zombies” we’ve all seen.

It seems that, at least for some people, whatever is in front of, or around, them is of no consequence:  Only the summarized, digitized version that is presented to them, or they can make from it, matters.The guy looking at his device on his racing bike was looking at whatever AI or some program told him about his ride along, possibly, with physiological data. And the video the other rider was making of himself seemed to matter more than his actual ride.

They got me to thinking about the museum- and gallery-goers who look at the plaque or placard next to a work of art and read the description without paying much attention to the work itself.  I am not talking only about tourists who go to the Met or the Louvre to check off a box on their New York or Paris itineraries. If I recall correctly, at least one critic said that a work of art matters only to the extent that it fits certain theories or narratives. 

Now, I realize that some people are more verbal than visual. (I may be one.) Still, I feel that one thing that makes a work worth seeing is that it offers something language and theory can’t, or at least don’t do well. As an example, I wrote something about the way I believe Van Gogh experienced color: as forms of energy, which is why he balanced them as he did. Even if my explanation was brilliant or simply lovely (which I doubt), I hope that no one reads it without looking at his Irises. 

So what does any of that, or the cyclists I saw today, have to do with my nipped in (or, more precisely, before) the bud doctoral program? Well, upon realizing that my MFA and creative work probably weren’t going to get me a full-time job in any school not in some “college town” island in a redneck sea, I figured I’d go for the next three letters in the academic alphabet. It didn’t take me long to see that students at that level, at least in the program I was in, weren’t actually studying Shakespeare or Blake or Yeats—or even contemporary (at the time) poets like Seamus Heaney or novelists like Toni Morrison. Rather, they were studying theory, which felt like the most abstract, even abstruse, areas of philosophy or social science. Those things can be interesting, but it seemed that discussion and writing in those classes were concerned entirely with the theories, with little or no mention of the work itself.

Sometimes people ask me how many miles I ride. i know the lengths, more or less, of some particular rides, but I don’t think about those numbers after I ride. I might recall the light or scent of a path or place, how my legs felt or how something changed along the way. I don’t try to reduce my pedaling to data point or a journey into a catalog —or Ai—description. There’s so much more, and better, to cycling—and life.

Something In The Water?

A midday ride to Randall’s Island. Came home. Looked for Marlee at the door. Not there. Not by the window or on my bed. Where could he be? My apartment isn’t that big.

I opened my closets.  Sometimes he sneaks in when I’m getting a jacket or pair of  shoes. Today he didn’t. Maybe he got out the door as I left. Checked the hallway, then all 12 flights of stairs. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I pushed through the doors, out to the sidewalk.  I hoped he hadn’t run out into the street or by the Metro North tracks. The thought of him under the 1:45 from Grand Central Station to Valhalla drove me to hysteria. That, or him wandering the streets—even though he’s a rescue cat, he’s spent practically no time outside in the 14 years since I adopted him.

Took the elevator up to my apartment. Maybe a drink, something to eat would jog my nonexistent psychic powers. There must be something in the water, Poland Spring to be exact: I heard mewling and saw him playing with a fish toy I bought him last week.

“This Is In The Bronx?!”

One of the wonderful things about cycling is that it connects you with wherever you are riding. Yet, sometimes, you can’t believe you are where you are.

That was how I felt on my first overseas bicycle tour, which took me to England and France.  I have also had that sensation any time I have experienced a new (to me) country, countryside, city or village—or, say, the ancient temples and shrines of Japan or Southeast Asia.

But, even as a jaded, crotchety woman in middle age, I don’t have to go far for that sense of wonder. I have experienced it without leaving my hometown of New York City or even the borough in which I live, whether it was Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens, or is the Bronx.

As for the latter, I took my neighbor Sam, who has lived all of his life in the Bronx, onto paths past sights he never knew existed in his home turf. Today I pedaled to one of those areas, a peninsula between the (misnamed) East River and Long Island Sound.

There I met Helen, who wasn’t on a bike but was photographing houses that look like no others in this city:  They are more like fin de siecle beachside cottages.  And they stood behind a tall fence. The street leading to and around them stretched behind a gate—which, seemingly ignorant of the “No Trespassing—Private Property” sign beside it, yawned wide open.

“Wanna go through?” 

“What can they do? Chase us away?” I wondered.

So I wheeled La-Vande, my King of Mercia and she walked beside me. She is about half a foot shorter and more than a few pounds lighter than me—hardly an imposing figure—but somehow her presence emboldened me to do something—enter that gate—I wouldn’t have done alone.

About a hundred meters inside the gate, a man whom I guessed to be a bit older than me greeted us. Helen—who, as it turns out, is a freelance reporter—asked the man what he knew about the history of the place. Quite a bit, as it turned out.  So did the postal carrier who told us he lucked into that route as his “retirement gig.” “Have a good afternoon, ladies,” the older man bade us. 

That last detail stuck with me because later, Helen asked why I thought those men, and a few other people we encountered, were so friendly. After all, we were in a gated community—yes, in the Bronx—and had no business being there. “Well, we’re not causing any trouble,” I mused. Then, something else occurred to me. I am well into midlife and Helen, though seemingly younger, certainly is a grown woman. And, I added, “I am White and you are Asian.” While I don’t want to impute racism to people I don’t know, I couldn’t help but to notice that everyone we saw was White and middle-aged or older. So, Helen and I simply never stood out as we might have had we been two young Black men.

Don’t get me wrong: Both of us enjoyed our moment there.  “You don’t need to go on vacation with these views!” she marveled. And the architecture and history of that place are fascinating, all the more so because neither of us expected to see it in the Bronx.