His Wheel Is A Mirror

In one of your English or art classes, you might have seen--or created--examples of "concrete poems".  They're the ones shaped like their subjects:




Il Pleut, by Guillaume Apollinaire, is one of the most famous of its type.  The text of it goes like this:

Il pleut des voix de femmes comme si elles étaient mortes même dans le souvenir

c'est vous aussi qu'il pleut merveilleuses rencontres de ma vie ô gouttelettes

et ces nuages cabrés se prennent à hennir tout un univers de villes auriculaires

écoute s'il pleut tandis que le regret et le dédain pleurent une ancienne musique

écoute tomber les liens qui te retiennent en haut et en bas


Here's a rough translation:

It's raining the voices of women as if they'd died even in memory

and it's raining you as well, the marvelous encounters of my life, O little drops

those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities

listen if it rains while disdain and regret weep to an ancient music

listen to the fall of chains that hold you above and below


Another one of Apollinaire's famous concrete poems is Coeur Couronne Miroir:

Here's the text:

 Mon Coeur pareil a une flamme renversee

Les rois qui meurent tour a tour
Reanaissent au couer des poets

Dans ce miroir je suis enclos vivant et vrai
Comme on imagine les anges
Et non comme sont les reflets

which, in English becomes Heart, Crown and Mirror:

My heart is like an inverted flame

The kings who have died one by one
Are reborn in poets' hearts

In this mirror I am captured alive and true
The way you imagine angels
And not only as a reflection.

I couldn't find anything that would hint at whether or not Apollinaire was a cyclist. Given the time and places in which he lived, however, I imagine he rode a bike for at least some time in his life. 

From Strange Vehicles

If he'd written a concrete poem about a bicycle, would he have said the wheels were mirrors of his heart?  Or would it have been like this?:

By Anwar Choukah

A Bike Spanner That Isn't Raleigh

If you bought a Raleigh bicycle before the 1970s, it might have come with this:

Even if you have never owned a Raleigh, there's a good chance that you've come across the Raleigh spanner (or what Yanks call "wrench").  You might even have one.  I did, for a long time.  I don't know whether I loaned it and never got it back, or simply lost it.

Anyway, Raleigh wasn't the only British bike maker to offer a spanner.  Check out this, from Claud Butler:

Like Raleigh's tool, the Claud Butler spanner has a hooked end for a bottom bracket lock ring.  I am guessing that the
hex side of the wrench fit the bottom bracket cup--or, possibly, the headset.  In the 1960s--when, it seems, the tool in the photo was made--if a customer bought a frame, it was as often as not supplied with those components.

Claud Butler is long gone, and bikes under his name, and Holdsworth, have been made by other British bicycle manufacturers for some time.  CB also offers a line of tools similar to those of other bike manufacturers, but when Claud was still alive, they had their own discrete line, which were probably made by Cyclo or some other Birmingham bike parts company.

A Ride, A Reflection

I have just taken an easy ride through the heart of Queens, to the far end of the borough and the near end of Nassau County.  It's Sunday, and the blaze autumn colors will soon turn into the ashes of fall, the foreshadowings of winter. 

I think I took the ride more for the opportunity to reflect on a few things than I did to exert myself physically.  I do that sometimes, especially at this time of year.  For me, there is something paradoxically clear and benevolent at the same time about the nip in the air and the light of days growing shorter.

There have been seasons that ended with my wishing that I had ridden more, harder or to different places.  I feel no such yearnings now.  Of course, having the opportunity to cycle in Florida, Paris and Montreal, as well as taking rides from my place to Connecticut and various points in New Jersey and Long Island has given me kaleidoscope of images to take with me through the winter.  I don't plan to stop cycling: I never do that except, perhaps, for physical injuries or ailments (which, thankfully, I don't experience often) or when there's a lot of ice on the streets, as there was through much of last winter.  But, realistically, I know that I won't cycle as much between, say, Thanksgiving and March or whenever the weather breaks.


Today I was satisfied, no, I was happy with the riding I did this year.  Perhaps I could have ridden even more, but I don't wish that I did.  I also don't wish that I had the strength and stamina I did when I was younger.  Well, all right, I'd like to have those things, but I know I don't need them to keep on riding, to continue my journey.

From Health Unlocked

As I rode today, I was thinking about a particular ride I took many, many years ago.  I had taken the day off from working as a messenger, hopped onto my Peugeot PX-10E and pedaled across the bridge, up and down ridges, and back up some old mining roads in the Watchung Mountains. The cloud cover was not a shawl that kept the ridges and cliffs warm and forgetful; rather, it seemed to keep the chill and ashen tones of the coming winter all around, and within, me.  

I had, in not much more than a year, experienced the deaths of two of my closest (emotionally and spiritually) relatives and the suicide of a friend.  There was nothing to do but pedal up that steep mining road; it could have been the last thing I did; I wanted it to be; there would be no wishes, no regrets left.

But no matter how hard I pedaled or how fast I ascended that hill, the young man I was could not have met up with the woman I am now.  If he could have, I would have told him that he would be OK, he is riding, he is on his journey, it was all that mattered.  

In short, I could not have understood what it would be like to have taken the ride I have taken to where I am now.