El Cinco De Bloggo

All right...Those of you who speak Spanish might hate the title of this post.  But what else was I going to call it?  A Fifth of Bloghoven?

Anyway, I am not going to deal with any weighty, serious issues (as if I ever did on this blog!).  Instead, I'm going to celebrate, and hope you join me.

You see, it was five years ago today that I wrote my very first post on this blog.  At that time, I had been writing my other blog, Transowman Time, for nearly two years.  I had just started riding again after a layoff of several months following my surgery. 

A reader of TT suggested that I start a cycling blog.  Midlife Cycling labored in the shadows of Transwoman Times before taking on a life of its own.  Actually, I very quickly found that I enjoyed writing a blog about my Journey and journeys as a cyclist and found myself putting more and more of my energy into it. 

Anyway, here I am, and here you are, dear reader, 1456 posts later.  I hope that you are enjoying this ride with me, and that we continue it for a long time.

Somehow this image--which represents the freedom cycling offers us--seems apt for my celebration of cycling and what it's given me:

Image by Julia Van Vuuren on Behance

 

50 Years After Malcolm X

On this date fifty years ago, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom.  Today the site of the Audubon, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, is a laboratory for Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.  I have ridden by it many times and, in fact, once went inside the Ballroom.  Every time I passed or visited the site I thought, however briefly, about his importance, not only to the history of the US and the world, but in my own life.

I first read Malcolm’s autobiography when I was about twenty.  It was around the same time I discovered African-American writers like Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston—and when I first heard Bob Marley.  In one way or another, they all not only expressed the burning desire to be free, but also made oppression—which is to say, the things that turn people into slaves of all kinds—clear and vivid.

I identified with their wishes and feelings for, as it turned out, reasons very different from theirs.  How could mine not be different?  After all, as difficult as my grandparents’ lives were, nobody brought them here in chains.  Even more to the point, I knew who my grandparents and their grandparents were, even though I had never met the latter.  So, even though I knew that so much of what I learned in school was a whitewashed (Yes, I am conscious of that word choice!) version of the truth, I wasn’t—couldn’t be—conscious of it in the profound way that Malcolm and all of those black writers and artists were. 

So, in my own clumsy way, I reacted to the injustices that persisted long after Malcolm’s murder and the deaths of the others I’ve mentioned though their polemics, rhetoric, rhythms, intuition and sense of irony.  What I did not understand was that they could use those tools or gifts or whatever you want to call them because they mastered them in ways that exact terrible, terrible costs.  (Baldwin has written that any people who has a language of their own has paid dearly for it.) What I could not understand was that I was paying my own dues, as it were, but I did not yet understand what I was paying for.  So I borrowed anger, grief, pain and a very dark kind of humor in my own feeble attempts to come to terms with why I could not live the kind of life for which I was being trained—or why anyone should want that kind of life.

So why am I mentioning such things on this blog?  Well, for one thing, being a cyclist has freed me from a lot of things.  I think of all of the time and money I didn’t have to spend on buying, fueling, maintaining and parking cars.  That is part of the reason why I have been able to live in New York and spend time with things I love:  I didn’t have to work in some job or in some business that would have destroyed my psyche or other people’s lives.  Being a cyclist when it wasn’t fashionable also, I think, has made me less vulnerable to propaganda and groupthink, if it hasn’t made me a better critical thinker or more creative person (though I think it’s done the latter for me). 

Of course, for me, freedom has meant living as the person I am.  Anyone who cannot live with integrity and with dignity is a slave or a prisoner or worse.  One way I identify with Malcolm is that it took him as long as he did to truly come into his own, even if he accomplished a lot else before doing so.  His descent into slavery, as it were, came when, in spite of his academic success and oratorical skills, his eighth-grade teacher mocked his dream of being a lawyer. When he, as an inmate in the Charlestown (MA) Penitentiary, became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, he found a voice.  However, it took him much longer, I think, to find his voice.

Our voice, if you will, is how we express our authentic selves in the world.  For some, it is in their careers or vocations.  For others, it is in creative work or performing:  I think of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar as his voice.  Others express it through a passion or relationship.  Actually, I think that for most of us, our “voice” is a combination of the things we do and are.  Whatever it is, if it isn’t authentic, we’re still slaves or prisoners.  For me, that is the real importance of Malcolm X’s life and work.

Why Do Women Ride?

Why do we--women--ride?

I came across this infographic that shows some of the most common reasons.  What I found most interesting are that 78 percent of female riders in the Seattle area ride their bikes to run errands, and that 49 percent of all bike trips in the US are less than three miles.  

From Velojoy.com

As the infographic says about that last statistic,  "Women ride because it's smart."

I find that comment perceptive and very funny.  Just today, I remarked to a friend, "I did a lot of stupid things when I was living as a man."  She said, "Well, I'm sure you did some smart things, too."

Yes, I did at least one.  And it's something I still do.

Aren't you glad I didn't ask, "What do women want?"

 

Celebrating Myself And The Soul Clapping Its Hands And SInging

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

 I am, ahem, a bit older than thirty-seven.  And this blog is a good bit younger than that.

So you can be forgiven for wondering why I'm starting this post with the first part of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.

Well, you know, writers and English instructors are supposed to use pithy quotes from their favorite writers.  But seriously...I feel that Whitman's verses encapsulate much of the spirit of this blog--and this day.

You see, this blog turns four years old today.  So, it's lasted as long as a US Presidential term (and a gubernatorial term in most states).  It's also lasted as long as the average American stays on any particular job. (My friend Lakythia, with whom I rode yesterday, works in workforce development and mentioned that particular fact.)  And, ahem (What does it tell you when you see two "ahem"s in one post), it's as long as I was married.  When I look back, I'm amazed it lasted that long.


But back to Whitman and this blog:  I guess one might say that this blog is a celebration of myself.  Perhaps a blog about one's personal experiences, feelings and such is, by definition, just that.  Some might say it's self-indulgent.  Perhaps it is.   But even the most self-effacing person, let alone an entire culture, does not survive without celebrating him/her/itself, even if in small ways.

Seen while loafing and inviting my soul during a stop in St. Luke's garden in Greenwich Village

We also survive, at least in part, by loafing and inviting our souls.  Scientists have emphasized the importance of daydreaming, imagining as well as various other kinds of playing and "down" time in everything from the development of a child to the creative processes of everyone from poets to physicists, artists to entrepreneurs.  Perhaps my accomplishments are small compared to those of others and the footprint I've made--and will leave behind--will be minimal.  But it's hard for me to imagine my accomplishments and triumphs, such as they are, without cycling. 

Sooner or later I'm going to update the masthead photos: People tell me I look a bit different now and, of course, the bikes do, too, with the bags Ely of Ruth Works made for me.  Since it's loafing, if you will, I'm not going to rush any of it.  I tried soliciting donations and advertising, to no avail. Really, I am not disappointed with that:  This is a labor of love.  And cycling has made so many other things possible in my life that I simply can't begrudge whatever I didn't make from this blog.

Anyway..,It makes a certain amount of sense to do what I'm going to do next:  close with a quote from William Butler Yeats. For one thing, I often find myself looking at Yeats after I look at Whitman.  But, for another,in his Sailing To Byzantium, he gave the best advice one can get after loafing and inviting his or her soul.  It's a pretty fair summation of what I feel when I'm cycling:  Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing/ For every tatter in its mortal dress.