Fall, Winter...

                                                   

There are many unexpected insights that come into view when I'm in the bicycle saddle. Many of the poetic variety have to do with the sense of freedom achieved when propelling myself.

But when the weather changes, so does my perspective. It's still gorgeous out there. There are views that make me stop and fish out the camera, like this purply-rose sky and the two snow-heavy spruce trees pointing into it.

North of MacKinnon Ravine, today

But with the glory, there is a keen sense of weakness, of marginalization. A cyclist's lane actually disappears into snow and slush. Trails are not cleared as quickly as main streets. Sidewalks over bridges   are pockmarked lunar surfaces. Even with winter tires, the act of turning a corner or moving from one car tire track into another can be enough to send my back tire out from under me. And then a split second of terror as my pedal-clipped boot fights to get loose and find the ground to prevent a fall. It's a story to which metal-encased cyborg car drivers are oblivious.

When you fall down, get right back up!

That piece of hockey rink wisdom is imparted to all of us, hockey or not, when, as children, adolescents, or young adults we have to figure out how to deal with setbacks and failure and that sense that we are the narrators but not the whole story.

Thoughts of falling off my bike echo those scenes, but they also prefigure the ones to come, when falling can be much more serious. Or fatal.

Senior citizens live everywhere with obstacles that threaten to bring them down. A dog-eared carpet, the threshold into an elevator, the speed of those whipping by, a dog,  ice, a wet floor, an incline, stairs, a door not held open, a misplaced walker, a chair not replaced, and on an on. A maze of hazards not seen by the world that moves on its metalled tracks.

Tonight as I cycled home through a stunning snowfall, I cut into the parking lot at Andy's IGA on 142 St. I glided across the ice, watching the illuminated snowflakes and their shadows dart this way and that, when an oldtimer walked out from beside his car. Our lives intersected for the time it took to exhange a look and these words.

"Good evening," I said through my balaclava. "Nice night for a ride!"
"Huh! I don't think so," he returned with a smile, adding, "I've got an artifical hip and if I fall at my age, I'm not getting back up."
My thoughts went everywhere, but I simply said: "That's the best thing. Just stay upright, sir."
"Have a good night," he said. "Have a good adventure."

That adventure can get lonely when it's one step at a time.

Self-portrait, Nov. 8, 2012










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughe...
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit ...
Read more