I’m gonna go out on a snowy limb here and say it was probably a good idea that the Soma Pescadero and I had our maiden voyage yesterday rather than today.
Yesterday it was knickers and arm warmers; today it’s green tea and bloggery.
Cruel it isn’t, though. Not at the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, where we haven’t seen any sort of precip’ in the better part of quite some time.
Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain
Whew! That Eliot feller would’ve made one helluva blogger, amirite? “The poet’s mind,” he once said, “is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”
He also wrote: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
Also, on the road. We took our maiden voyage this morning, a rolling 20-miler around the Duck! City foothills to see what was what.
And what it was was … an excellent first impression.
The build goes 24.5 pounds, or just under a pound lighter than the New Albion Privateer. The feel is friskier — shorter, shaped chainstays, a skosh less rake, a nicely sporty ride.
The wheels may be a tad burly, but hey, this is Albuquerque; the roads are broken and bad, and I run 38mm tires at low pressures to keep the fillings in my teeth and the teeth in my head.
Drivetrain is nine-speed double for now, 46/30T x 11-32T, and I can see that it’s gonna take a few outings to fine-tune the friction shifting. Not the machinery; my operation of it. The Privateer is seven-speed, so basically I can just slap the shifter and be on the proper cog. Nine cogs want a little more delicacy of touch.
Who knows? I may go to seven-speed on the Pescadero, too. How many cogs does a geezer really need, anyway? Three? One for up, one for down, one for flat. You need more than that? Get an e-bike. Or a car.
And the Paul Components Racer centerpulls? Disco.
First change I make will be the saddle. This Soma Hishou is a perennial stand-in for (and an homage to) a classic Selle Italia Flite, of which I am all out at present. Further purchases may require additional authorization from The Management.
More as we learn it.
In the meantime, the best thing about the Soma Pescadero is that it took what remains of my mind off fascism for 98 refreshing minutes.
Weird dreams last night. Lots of rain; a bicycle with a dynamo light I couldn’t get working; a close encounter with a mystery motorist who nearly clipped me as I wrestled with the unresponsive light; long drives with people I knew through vaguely familiar landscapes and towns; a small, dilapidated guest house that likewise had the feel of someplace I’d lived before; a couple of friendly dogs I didn’t recognize; and a visit to and some conversation with a genial old man living in a single cluttered room.
What finally blew me out of bed at 5:19 a.m. — and I mean had me out of the rack and onto my feet in some fight-or-flight reaction — was the sound of a woman either laughing or crying.
Herself watching a cute-animal video on the iPad? The garlicky pasta sauce I made for dinner? La Llorona?
Wasn’t Herself. She was in the kitchen making coffee and entertaining Miss Mia Sopaipilla. And she had disturbing dreams too, about her late mom and an old friend who passed not long after Herself the Elder. So it could’ve been the pasta sauce, I suppose.
La Llorona? A strong maybe. This is the Southwest, after all, though my crowd, the Ó Grádaighs of County Clare, is more closely associated with the banshee, an Irish herald of death.
So it may be relevant that yesterday I spoke with one old bro’ about friends and relatives gone west, and with another about the Doors, who took their name from Aldous Huxley’s book describing his experiences with mescaline, “The Doors of Perception,” its title likewise lifted from a William Blake metaphor in his book, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
Now, I have had my own experiences with mescaline and other psychedelics, starting in “high” school and continuing off and on into the Eighties. And they certainly took the Windex to my perceptual doors, if only for a little while.
But these days I see “through a glass, darkly,” as did Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, adding, “now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Or, as newspaper lingo once had it: “More TK” (more to come).
Y’think? Naw. Maybe? I dunno.
Until further enlightenment arrives, I’m betting on either garlicky pasta sauce or acid flashback, though the latter doesn’t explain why Herself had weird dreams too. An acid head she was not.
It’s not the infamous “writer’s block.” The problem is that the only thing I want to write about is all the you-know-what coming from you-know-where.
And isn’t there enough of that sort of thing available pretty much everywhere? Every day? Every second?
I find myself belatedly having some sympathy for the mouth-breathers who squealed like maladjusted brakes whenever my columns would veer off the course laid out in the race bible and careen into the real world. Which, if we’re being brutally honest here, was pretty much all the time.
“Stick to cycling!” they’d wail.
“Everything is political!” I’d bark.
Now I’m just a blogger and don’t have to meet a regular deadline or wrestle with nervous editors, penny-pinching publishers, and illiterate critics.
Too harsh? Hey, I read the letters.
“Go back to waxing your chain, Spanky,” I’d grumble. “Leave writing to the pros.”
These days I write for free, because I like it. Anyone who doesn’t like it is likewise free, to fuck off.
Still, I’m not entirely sociopathic. I have you hardcores, my small, deeply disturbed audience, to consider. And I don’t want every single brain-dump here to be of the rancid, greasy, orange variety. There are only so many different ways to say ‘BOHICA!'”
Thing is, to write about anything else feels vaguely criminal. Borderline treasonous. Anyone with a voice, however small, should be sounding off like they have a pair.
What’s a poor mad dog to do?
Well, you may imagine my delight when I stumbled across another scribbler in similar straits. Chuck Wendig is a published author — like, of actual books, an’ shit — and he has a new one due out April 29, “The Staircase in the Woods.”
I first noticed him when The New York Times included “Staircase” in a roundup of 24 new works of fiction to read. Then his name came up again over at Daring Fireball, the free-ranging blog by John Gruber, who promoted this “crackerjack essay” Wendig had written while trying to write about other stuff and promote the new book and basically just live his fucking life.
It’s titled “What It Feels Like, Right Now.” Here’s a sample:
Writing is hard right now. Releasing a book is hard. Promoting that book is, say it with me, hard. It’s not trivial but it feels trivial. Like performing a puppet show in the town square as the town burns down. It feels good to do it and you want others to feel good while reading it but you also know feeling good right now also feels somehow bad, and maybe that’s one of the most fucked up things of all. They didn’t take joy but they took the joy of feeling joy away, made it feel wrong and strange. Turned happiness into a hot stove.
Top-shelf stuff here, folks. Rage and comedy, despair and hope, the whole ball of wax. Writing as an escape and an act of resistance. Inspirational.
In fact, I liked it so much that I immediately ordered up his new book from my favorite local bookstore, Page 1 Books.
Shit, I’d have given him the $32.29 just for the essay.
Some days, the smashing of the State will just have to wait.
… very, very slowly.
Yesterday was one of them.
The high temp was 83°, which can be something of a shock to the system in April. But we’ve eased into it, starting with 50-something on Monday and jumping up 10 degrees each day.
Shoot, I’ve managed nearly 100 miles so far this week and it ain’t over yet.
Oh, yeah: And in case you think I’ve gone soft on fascism, I’ll have you know that I struck a blow for The People on yesterday’s ride. The gate to La Cueva Picnic Site was closed and locked, but I snuck around it and rode to the top anyway.
Mad Blog Media 