Happily Riding In A Moment Fugue

I have just had about as nice a cycling weekend as one can have without going to a country like the Netherlands or France where they actually see bikes as forms of transportation and recreational vehicles for people of all ages.

It rained during much of the past week. The good news is that I had a chance to catch up--or at least make progress--on a couple of bike- and writing-related projects. I'll say more about those later. As skies clared late Friday afternoon, while my religious faith did not return, it was enough to get me thinking that the cycling gods--some of whom I've written about in earlier posts-- were smiling on us.

We are in that "sweet spot" between spring and summer:  The air warm enough to cycle shorts and a light top, the water just warm enough for a swim or at least a dip (depending, of course, on your temperature sensitivity) and skies so clear--yes, even here in New York--that no matter how or where you ride, more roads, more fields, more water, stretch ahead of you--and the flowers that have budded and bloomed for the past few weeks pulse with color.

So I did a back-to-back of two old favorites:  Connecticut (the longer and hillier ride) on Saturday and Point Lookout yesterday.  While I am thinking, perhaps, of even longer rides in the coming weeks, I was content with what some might call the "Zen" way of riding:  I enjoyed the individual moments and what some might call The Moment of the rides writ large.

About the longer rides I'm considering:  I might ride from my apartment to some place from which I can't return on the same day.  I'd also like to go further away, to take one of the trips that were postponed by the pandemic.  While I had been planning to go to places I'd never been before, and I hope to take those trips, whether this year or some other times, I feel even more of an urge to see people I haven't seen in a while and other people I've "met" through this blog and other online means but have never seen in person.

But the past weekend's cycling is as fine as any I've experienced in a while.  More like it would make me happy.

Perhaps This Ride Will Bring Him Back

In A Movable Feast, published several years after his death, Ernest Hemingway says this about F. Scott Fitzgerald:

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings.  At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.  Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned how to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Now, I know Fitzgerald and Hemingway only through what they wrote and, to a lesser degree, what has been written (and said) about them.  I suspect, though, that Hemingway pegged the author of The Great Gatsby.  Well, almost.  I get the feeling that, if anything, Fitzgerald became conscious of his celebrity and what it entailed, and tried to live up (or down, depending on your point of view) to it.  Plus--now, I know someone is going to accuse me of sexism for saying this--he was trying to please a woman who couldn't be pleased.

(Remember, I am transgender, having lived more than four decades in one gender other than the one I live now.  So, while I may not be unbiased, I think I am justified in, or at least can rationalize, a somewhat jaundiced view of both men and women.)

That amended version, I think, can also apply to Kanye West.  There was a time when I thought he was going to become a sort of male version of Lauryn Hill--a "voice of a generation" that would rise out of the scars of his life.  She released a watershed album two decades ago and has barely been heard from since.  He, on the other hand, released an album that seemed to augur, in a similar way, a new vision--and went in the exact opposite direction from Ms. Hill, to the point that his celebrity seems to be a parody.

I really, really was a fan of his when he released College Dropout and subsequent albums Late Registration and Graduation. Like Hill, he seemed to exhibit a self-awareness that seemed almost of a piece with his awareness of the world around him.  And like her, he had talents that served as near-perfect vehicles for that awareness.

Then he became a celebrity.  And he married a Kardashian.  Well, you know the rest.

Still, I must say, there are moments when I remember the Kanye I liked so much.  One such moment came when someone sent me this video from Twitter of Kanye riding a bicycle:




OK, the emphasis is on riding.  Someone else is doing the pedaling.  He says he was in San Francisco.  Wherever he was, he seemed to be having an un-selfconscious good time.

It gives me hope that perhaps he will become a musician and performer--and not merely a celebrity--again.