16 August 2016

What If The Fish Is--Or Was--A Bicycle?


A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

Gloria Steinem popularized that expression in the early days of the modern feminist movement.  Many people believe she coined it, though she has never taken credit for doing so.

Whatever its origins, sometimes it seems that every woman in the world has uttered it--whether out loud or to herself--at some time or another.  I am no exception.  In fact, I muttered it more than a few times--without irony or sarcasm--when I was living as a man.  

Of course, people have substituted all sorts of things for "A woman" and "a man".  After I read Nietzsche, I inserted "People" and "God".  Later, I would modify the latter to "religion".  

In this depressing election cycle, we could say "This country needs Hillary/Trump" (take your pick).   

All right, I'll stop preaching politics.  After all, you didn't come to this blog for that, did you?

Instead, I'll come back to the fish-and-bicycle dilemma.  Perhaps a fish doesn't need a bicycle.  But does that mean a fish can't be a bicycle?

Maybe not.  But a pike or pickerel  can be made from bike bits.  At least, French sculptor Edouard Martinet pulled off that feat:



He has also made birds and insects from bike parts and other objects he's found.  




Edouard Martinet


Edouard Martinet


Edouard Martinet



Think about them the next time you toss out that worn chain:  A bird or a bug or a fish might actually need your bike--your bike parts, anyway!

3 comments:

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  2. I'm having a lot of fun looking at the individual parts of the sculptures trying to figure out what they were in they're in their former lives as bicycle parts. As for Hillary and Trump, our democracy has given us a wicked choice. We can either vote for a disaster or vote for a catastrophe. I'll leave it to you to figure out whom is which. Anyway thanks for the fun post.

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  3. Phillip--That sculpture is a kind of puzzle, isn't it? For me, that makes it all the more fascinating.

    "We can either vote for a disaster or vote for a catastrophe." That has to be one of the best summations I've seen of this election.

    Olivia--Thank you!

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