Thursday, September 9, 2010
Ill Wind....
The last two days have been especially windy, blowing hard and seemingly in my face, no matter which direction I ride. The wind tests my mettle: the landscape does not change, so the obstacles of hill and turn are relatively constant. The traffic changes but on my route is usually not bad the whole way (touch wood, etc.), and besides, the traffic is just people doing what I'm doing - trying to get somewhere. But the wind is both natural, and I cannot help think, capricious, changeable, and cruel, seeking to thwart my homeward aim. So narcissistic. So vain. I probably think this wind is about me. Ridiculous, right? Well, I thought so, but then tonight I was going easily up a gentle hill near the park and the wind suddenly started up again, pushing me back, but this time on the wind came the smell of freshly frying fish and chips from Hip Hop Fish and Chicken, and Man, does it smell good. I'm huffing and sweating against the wind, now contending with this visceral tugging sensation in my gut. So distracting. An ill wind blowing me no good, indeed.... I get around the corner and suddenly the smell and the wind die down, and I'm no longer being tested, punished. I become expansive, say Hey to folks as I ride by, and find myself smiling a little.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Life has its ups and downs....
My rock has two wheels, but every (work) day I roll it down the hill and back up again. Which, OK, is the opposite of what Sisyphus was required to do, but the idea seems to fit well enough. Sisyphus was a right bastard - greedy, murderous, and too clever for his own good - but a hero to some nonetheless. He was punished for hubris, made to roll a boulder up a hill every day only to watch it roll down that hill at the end of every day.
So. Late June, and the minivan dies. Or rather it needs $5000 worth of repairs, which is just about the value of this vehicle at the time (since it looks like it's been rolled down the hill a few too many times its own self). British Petroleum are busy pumping toxic dispersants on top of 5 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. My baseline emotional state at the time can best be described as impotent rage. Zeus, I tend to think, was peeing himself with laughter.
A radio report describes the change in our energy usage from oil in the 70s to coal now and the fact that really in order to reduce dependence on foreign oil we must reduce the amount of gasoline we use. How much we drive. My wife suggests we go down to one car. Our eldest is off to college in the fall, so we will be down one in the headcount, so why not?
My rage arcs up like the 4th of July fireworks we can see over the ridge. How can we do this? It will be so inconvenient, tiresome, tiring, dangerous. Difficult. But, like the fireworks, the rage is gone quickly and leaves only a strange calm.
Because, if I bike to work, I willbe feel like I'm fucking BP the way it is fucking the Gulf. I will be exercising frequently, a habit that has failed to re-materialize after a recent hiatus. I will be doing something to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, since George the Chimp's YeeeHawww foreign policy seems to have made things consistently worse over Where The Oil Is. Hubris? We voted for the Chimp then didn't understand why we were loathed everywhere; we deregulated everything and are impotent to stop the collapse of financial markets, the defiling of the wetlands. On and on.
So that is why I find myself rolling my rock down the hill and pushing it back up nearly every work day. I tell my demoralized patients about Sisyphus with some regularity, about Camus' view of him as a hero, doing what he has to and Camus seeing the fulfillment in the work. The boulder is heavy but it is not hard to imagine Sisyphus noticing things on the way up and the way down - a new flower springing up, a new thought, the view from the top, however brief. I will try to pause in my boulder-rolling and jot down a few observations. I will try to temper the impotent rage, or at least channel it more effectively, and I will try not to say, "Who's laughing now, Zeus?"
Because that would be hubris.
So. Late June, and the minivan dies. Or rather it needs $5000 worth of repairs, which is just about the value of this vehicle at the time (since it looks like it's been rolled down the hill a few too many times its own self). British Petroleum are busy pumping toxic dispersants on top of 5 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. My baseline emotional state at the time can best be described as impotent rage. Zeus, I tend to think, was peeing himself with laughter.
A radio report describes the change in our energy usage from oil in the 70s to coal now and the fact that really in order to reduce dependence on foreign oil we must reduce the amount of gasoline we use. How much we drive. My wife suggests we go down to one car. Our eldest is off to college in the fall, so we will be down one in the headcount, so why not?
My rage arcs up like the 4th of July fireworks we can see over the ridge. How can we do this? It will be so inconvenient, tiresome, tiring, dangerous. Difficult. But, like the fireworks, the rage is gone quickly and leaves only a strange calm.
Because, if I bike to work, I will
So that is why I find myself rolling my rock down the hill and pushing it back up nearly every work day. I tell my demoralized patients about Sisyphus with some regularity, about Camus' view of him as a hero, doing what he has to and Camus seeing the fulfillment in the work. The boulder is heavy but it is not hard to imagine Sisyphus noticing things on the way up and the way down - a new flower springing up, a new thought, the view from the top, however brief. I will try to pause in my boulder-rolling and jot down a few observations. I will try to temper the impotent rage, or at least channel it more effectively, and I will try not to say, "Who's laughing now, Zeus?"
Because that would be hubris.
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