A Dream In Sunset Park

I am going to make the most audacious claim you'll hear for a while.


I am going to show you a photo of a dream:

Here's another photo of that same dream:

Believe it or not, the place in the photo looked more or less as you see it back around 1961.  Yes, it's a place I'd actually been to before today.  This is how I got there today:

OK, so now you know I'm not in some exotic foreign land.  To give you an idea of where I am, here's another shot.

Those of you who are familiar with Brooklyn, NY--or part of it, anyway--now know where I am.  It's Sunset Park, which is on a hill surrounded by the eponymous neighborhood.  


Save for the views, not many people would call it their "dream" park.  But it has become mine, through no choice of my own.


I don't make any great effort to remember my dreams.  Some of them just happen to stick with me, for whatever reasons.  But I know that I have had more than a few dreams in Sunset Park, or some place that looks very much like it.  


One of those dreams came during my first night in France.  That day, I took the boat from Dover to Calais.   After I'd gone through French customs, I went to a bar.  In those days, Calais was fairly gritty and, being a seaport town, full of sailors, dockworkers and such:  the very kinds of people who were in the bar.  


Every one of them was even more inebriated than I would become.  Given the sort of person I was then--at age twenty-one--that's saying quite a bit.  However, I'm not sure if the libations were lubricating their tongues and making them start conversations with me.  


I wasn't worried about them.  I was, however, worried about this:  The only word I understood of what they were saying was "miss-shyure."  Did I not work hard enough in my French classes?  Was I taught a dialect they didn't speak?  


Anyway, we all got laughs at each other's expense and I managed to ride to Boulogne-sur-mer.   It wasn't very far, but the town had a hostel listed in the Hosteling International guide.  It was clean and relatively quiet.  At least, it was quiet enough for me to fall asleep not long after I had supper.  Or maybe the alcohol had something to do with it--or the dream I would have in Sunset Park.


My grandmother was in that dream.  I spent a lot of time with her and my grandfather when my mother had to go to work. My grandparents lived not far from the park and, very early in my childhood, they used to take me to it.  In those days, it had a garden in the middle of it.  Of course, in my memory, it's one of the most beautiful gardens in the history or horticulture--or, at least, one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen.  So is the view I've shown, which--as I've said--is much like the view I have in my memory.  


The following day after my first dream in that park, I cycled into a town called Montreuil-sur-mer.  It's a few kilometres inland from the English Channel, but a few centuries ago, before its harbor silted up,  it was right on the coast and was a fairly major port.  It's the town in which Jean Valjean of Les Miserables becomes one of  les bourgeois and serves as mayor--and where Inspector Jalabert tracks him down.


Nothing quite that dramatic happened to me.  (After all, we're talking about life, not fiction, here!)  However, I did come to a garden in the town that overlooked the sea and gave me a clear view--even on that overcast day--of the coast from which I'd sailed the day before.  And the grayness of the day did nothing to dampen the vibrancy of the colors in that garden:  there were sunrises, sunsets and dusks, and all of the seasons, in it even thought the sky wasn't expressing any of them.  Perhaps the view of the sea had something to do with that.  


Now, remember that I was twenty-one years old when I say what I'm going to say next:  That was the first time I cried during that trip.   At least, it's the first time I recall crying.


That evening, I got to a town called Abbeville and called my grandmother.  Somehow I knew she sounded better than she actually was.   And, without my asking or prompting, she talked about that park, and that we used to go to it.  "You loved to go there."


"Yes, I did.  I always loved going there with you and grandpa." 


"It seems like only yesterday that we used to go there."


I didn't tell her I had indeed been there the night before.

Air Conditioning

After riding, however briefly, on a hot day, it's refreshing or jarring or both to go into an air-conditioned space.

It's really odd when that air-conditioned space is a bicycle shop.  You see those shiny, new bicycles and they betray nary a hint of the sweaty cyclists who might be astride them one day.  Even the mustard-yellow Salsa and the cruiser in the color of moss look nearly as fluorescent as the store's lighting in the chilled air.

At least, when I ride to work, I am ready for the chill I will feel upon entering the building.  I teach in one of those places where they seem to turn on the air conditioning in June and leave it on, full-blast, until September.  Mark Twain once joked that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.  A summer class in the college where I teach might've changed his mind.

Yesterday, I had both of the experiences I've just described.  I took midday ride on Tosca, my fixie, down to Battery Park.  On the way back, I stopped at Bicycle Habitat to pick up a wheel Hal built for me. This wheel has a Phil Wood front track hub, a black Mavic Open Pro rim and DT spokes. It's on the front of Tosca, which previously had a road front wheel and has a rear wheel with the same rim and spokes and a Phil Wood "flip-flop" hub with a fixed gear on one side and a freewheel (which I have yet to use) on the other side.

Then, I rode the LeTour to my class.   In between, I changed clothes:  I was wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt for my early ride.  When I rode to class,  I wore knee-length skirt and sleeveless top that's part of a twinset . When I got to the college, I put on the cardigan from the twinset.  I find that when I feel cold, I tend to feel it more around my shoulders and chest.  I felt comfortable and rather liked the little bit of chill I felt around my legs:  It's the next best thing to a breeze by the ocean.

Back when I was Professor Nick, I didn't think as much about how I was dressed when I taught.  When I taught evening classes during the summer, as I'm teaching now, I sometimes came to class in the shorts and T-shirt I wore when I rode in.  No one seemed to mind, and since neither my department chair nor any of the administrators were there in the evening, I don't think any of them knew.  If anyone complained, I probably would have heard about it.

I never rode to class in lycra.

Although there are no official dress codes at the college, I don't think I could get away with teaching in shorts and a T-shirt, much less lycra, now.  Then again, I wouldn't do it: As Professor Justine (or simply Justine),  I am more conscious of how I dress and otherwise present myself.  Some of that may simply have to do with getting older and perhaps, in some way, more conservative.  Some of the more radical feminists and queer theorists might say that I'm taking on society's feminine gender role, or some such thing. 

But I digress.  Bicycling and air conditioning seem like the opposite poles of a summer's day.  Or are they?

Hmm....If I hook up my helmet with an air conditioner, does that violate the manufacturer's warranty?  Will it be safe if I ever decide to try to break some motor-paced speed record?

Cycling On Le Quatorzieme: Revolutionary?

Today is, of course, le jour de Bastille.   Three times in my life, I've been in France on this date: Twice I was cycling in the countryside; the other time I was just barely keeping myself out of trouble in Paris. 


Possibly the most interesting of those quatorziemes was the one I spent in a town called Foix.  I ridden from Toulouse through the Pyrenees into Spain and had just come back into France when I came to Foix.  If you are in that part of the world, I definitely recommend going there.  It's not a big city at all, but it has played significant roles in the history of France and the region.  I won't get into it here, for much more than a blog post would be needed to do it justice.  But it's also worth going simply for the spectacular views. friendly people and the castle:

According to a local song, El castels es tant fortz qu’el mezis se defent: The castle is so strong it can defend itself.   Indeed, since it was built around the year 1000 C.E.,  it has never been captured.  Within its walls resided the counts of Foix, who were considered l'ame  of the Occitan resistance against the Albigensians in the 13th Century.


Most people think that some particularly clever Marine came up with the slogan Kill 'em all.  Let God sort 'em out. Actually, it was Arnaud Amaury, the Abbot of Citeaux and the Papal Legate to the Crusaders, who said Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet ("Kill them all; God will know His own.") when Simon de Montfort, the Commander of the Crusade, pointed out that not everyone in Beziers, a town he was ordered to sack and burn, was a heretic.

No matter how many people they killed, they couldn't touch the Foix castle. I have no idea of what the Bastille was like. But I imagine they would have had a much, much more difficult time storming the Foix castle than they did with the Bastille. How would history be different if the Foix castle had been built in Paris or the Bastille in Foix?

Anyway...When I showed up at the castle on my bike, people--all of them strangers--applauded. Do people applaud during revolutions?