Good Sport

It was a terrible day a few days ago, the regular stew of workplace injustice and instability, and also, it was hot. And also, I was walking home in that heat, not dressed for it. Suddenly, a lanky long-haired stick person came just in front of me on a bicycle. I noted the acid-wash jean shorts to the knees, the faded paisley button down, but mostly the hair that hung like a limp cat, overpowering any other aesthetic.
Later, as I was crossing the road, I noticed that the bicycle this person was riding was candyfloss pink - which only caught my eye because this person had scooped the bicycle up in his arms and carried it across the street! As if it were his beloved, in a saccharine flick.
That was amusing, but soon afterwards I returned to the grey cartoon cloud above my head. Except just a few yards later, I saw the bicycle man again, clumsily purchasing a fluorescent ice lolly that had been quickly derobed of its paper, now pop-artily in his hand.
Despite his flaccid pony tail, I found myself smiling at this apparation of a man-person. That is, until I again drowned myself in the rain of depressing thoughts I was cultivating. Until again, the man-person reappeared beside me, the unusually long spider legs inconceivably able to peddle the bike - until he finally disappeared, almost into the sunset (which was really disappearing behind the square he dissolved into).
I decided that the man-person was my omen: that there is really no reason to give in to depressing thoughts, whether or not they are "real", but which are becoming unwieldly because I had registered for a marathon a few months ago, and am now tapering, which is really as horrible as everyone says it is. Without all those miles to bring a physical perspective to pettiness, it is hard to find balance. It is an ambient favoured by doubt - and doubt does not ride a pink bicycle, but is more like a garbage truck intercrossed with the sirens of several emergency vehicles.


But I heard a great comment about doubt today along with other things I agreed with (such as the fact that there is no such thing as writer's block - I teach my class in such a way as to prove that to claim this is merely lazy thinking). The comment was that we all have self-doubt (a sweeping claim I would hesitate to make but one I found incredibly reassuring) and that there is no reason to believe doubt when it arises, which it will because there is always room for it.
The commenter was Adam Skolnick on the Rich Roll podcast (new to me): Skolnick spoke mostly about his book on freediving, which has a lot to do with the art of breathing but is also described as being a poetic encounter with the infinite. He also talked about his own far-range ocean swimming that brings him alongside large sea creatures. As he spoke, I thought of those Mycenean frescoes of flying fish and dolphins and that seeming communion with nature that runs across those walls. Out of the scheme of one frolicking monkey after another, there is a fresco (Akrotiri, Xeste 3?) where a singular monkey ascends stairs to a throne. At one point, the reflection of things takes on a new dimension, there is presence through one's looking, so one is there, but one's eyes are no longer glossing over "furniture", rather objects take on quests out out out, and suddenly one is seeing being.
I had that experience earlier this week: I was running by a huge surface of water at once so still that it seemed to capture the sky; I was looking into a huge mirror and instead of this mirror reflecting a banal face or human chatter, it was reflecting the expanse of sky, so astounding because it seemed like although I was looking, I could still not see the end of what I was looking at.


Except the podcast does not leave one in that infinitude, which is but momentary, rather the podcast concludes that such encounters are fleeting and, with respect to freediving, risky. 
So what of the pursuit? It contains the risk of dissolving in deception. Not all bicycles are pink and come with pocket money for cool treats; some bicycles are a tiring journey into penury.
But if the bicycle is the heart, it needs attention or it goes away. Not lavished, not spoiled, but listened to in the way it is said that one is to learn to listen to the body. Something can be learned, though never to the point of total mastery: injury can be sudden and is real and humbling. The pursuit gets harder that way, when it is not where it seems to be. Effort is made for the wrong reasons, invested in the wrong people - both friendly and not, and strength is lost. To trust, on the other hand, is not to strain overexhertion, to not consume what does not fuel during training, but to allow that one is holding a singular gift that will find its way because it didn't belong to one to begin with.
Maybe it was this gift that the man-person was carrying across the road, the bicycle gift that would never have caught my attention had it not been held in such a way as to stand out from what is otherwise just the furniture of the street.

Book in background: Boucher's 10,000 Years of Fashion; brush: Misprinted Type.

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