Now I have to take a trip to Edmonton.
No, I'm not going there to take in an Oilers' game. And, while the idea of biking or hiking in the Rockies and taking in the Edmonton night life appeals to me, I've never made going there one of my goals.
Lately, as a result of Sarah Chan's Girls and Bicycles blog, I've been reading about Edmonton's bicycle scene. Until I came across her blog, I thought that cycling in Edmonton looked something like this:
You might accuse me of New York Provincialism. You've seen an example of it on that famous New Yorker cover:
Since I started reading Girls and Bicycles, Edmonton Bicycle Commuters and other sites, I've formed an impression of an active--velocipedically as well as politically--cycling community. And it seems to embrace diversity--and, yes, there's more of it than I, the jaded New Yorker, expected--in ways not commonly seen.
How can you not love a place that has a "Critical Lass" ride?
But the thing that really got my attention was a practice of Bike Works, the bicycle cooperative EBC operates. On the first, third and fifth Sundays of every month, BikeWorks is open only to women and transgenders.
Now that was an eye-opener for me. I didn't think that there were enough transgenders, let alone transgendered cyclists, in Edmonton for them to be so recognized. There's my NYP at work again!
If I ever were in Edmonton, of course I would check out BikeWorks on a women's/transgenders' Sunday. However--and, as someone who hasn't been there, my view is admittedly limited--I have mixed feelings about such a practice.
On one hand, I'm glad that a bike shop or cooperative wants to make its facility female- and trans-friendly and give us a "space." In a sense, they're acknowledging that there aren't enough such spaces and hours. And I know that sometimes (actually, often) I want to be around other women only, not out of any animosity toward men, but because of our particular ways of seeing and experiencing things.
On the other, I have to wonder whether that will help or impede our acceptance by the larger cycling culture, and the culture generally. I feel the same way about other gender-segregated institutions such as schools, and ones that are dedicated to LGBT people. Some educators and psychologists raised the same concern when the Harvey Milk School was opened in New York.
Don't get me wrong: I'm happy that the folks at BikeWorks recognize that there are indeed transgendered cyclists and that we, like other female cyclists, sometimes feel alienated and excluded from the larger cycling culture. I don't doubt that they are trying to make us feel more welcome and to counter some of the condescension and hostility female cyclists have long complained about in cycle shops and clubs.
Still, I find it interesting that such a thing is happening in Edmonton and not in New York, at least to my knowledge.
The doctor was right when she said that my eye infection was viral rather than bacterial. That's the reason why it's cleared up on its own, albeit slowly. So my eyes aren't burning. But the virus seems to have moved to other parts of my body: I've been congested and my Eustachian tube (what connects the inner ear with the throat) feels as inflamed as my eyes felt.
I think it's the reason why I felt so tired after riding home from work on Thursday night, and have felt tired ever since. It figures I would feel this way when we were having a Perfect Fall Weekend.
It's Sunday. Perhaps a bit of worship(!) might be in order:
Is there a Church of the Long Island Rail Road? (Yes, they spell it as two words.) Near the foot of this "shrine" is one of God's creatures:
Her name is Kiki. She patrols a tiny snack shop in Woodside, where I've stopped on my rides to or from work. She claims to be Charlie's long-lost sister.
Anyway...If I'm posting about railroad power lines and cats in delis, I really need to get back on my bike. I will. I'd argue that it beats other ways of transportation:
Is this the real reason why they're the only US automaker that hasn't gone bankrupt?
The other day I pedalled to and from work--my regular and side jobs. And during my ride home, I took of my favorite detours.
I took this photo from Fort Totten, on the North Shore. I think it's the first time I rode inside the former base after sunset, much less by the light of the full moon we had the other night.
Once, when the Fort was still an active military facility, I took a moonlight ride through the park just outside the gates. Then, as now, a path skirted the edge of the water and passed underneath the Throgs Neck Bridge. That path and park were as lovely then as they are now.
That night--more than a lifetime ago, at least for me--I coasted down Bell Boulevard, from St. Mary's Hospital, where I was doing poetry and creative writing workshops with handicapped and chronically ill kids. The wonderful thing about doing poetry with kids of that age--especially those who have never gotten out of their wheelchairs or beds-- is that you don't have to tell them to dream. For them, their unconscious and conscious lives are one. Even if they cannot escape the constraints of their bodies, they aren't simply imagining that they are running, flying, jumping or dancing because their minds and are actually in moving in a jeu d'esprit with the light of their own stars.
I remember pedalling on that cold, windy night with a moon as full as the one I saw the other night and wishing that I could have brought those kids there with me. After all, if I could be so moved, I could only imagine what kind of effect such a night in such a place would have on them.
Then I got very angry--at myself, because there was no one else there that night, and at that place for stirring up such passions in me--when I realized that all I was wishing for them was my own experience which, by definition, they never could have, any more than I could have lived their lives. And the crisp clarity of that night's sky--which was reflected, again, the other night--was, in reality, as chimeric as the lights seen in the mist.
They might have enjoyed being in that place as much as I did, but they didn't need it--or, at least, they didn't need it as much as I did--in order to dream. In fact, the crisp, almost brittle, moonlit chill seemed like the clearest sort of reality the way any sort of shock or trauma seems the moment after you experience it. It seems so real precisely because it's the only reality you have at that moment. But that is exactly the reason not to trust whatever perceptions or sensations you have at such a time--though, of course, you cannot trust anything else. There is no past or future, there is only the present--not even the Eternal Present-- just the moment, repeated a million times every second until there is no other moment to repeat. Repetition does not generate clarity; it merely breeds familiarity.
And so I pedalled home that night. And some of those kids where wheeled back to the homes of their biological or other families, while others stayed in their beds in the hospital.
What I didn't realize, at least consciously, was that I was dreaming of the ride I took the other night. Heck, I didn't even want to know, much less admit, that I could still dream that way.
I was very tired the other night: Some would say that I probably shouldn't have ridden. But, somehow, even though I was pedalling at about half my normal number of RPMs, I felt as if I were levitating on bay water rippling between the surface of the path and the moonlight that was reflecting off it. That is not to say that it was all effortless; I was very, very tired. But I was not exhausted; I was not beaten: I couldn't help but to ride, to keep on riding, as the light of that moment filled me.
In other words, I was in a dream. I hadn't gone in pursuit of it, at least not the other night. But I really never had any choice but to follow it, even when I didn't know that I still could still dream it.
I fell asleep not long after getting home.
