...and from the front 

If you could only read Polish…

You would enjoy reading maching tracksuits this week. Kinga, a Pole, moved a few days ago to the States along with her American husband, Gary. Both are posting their impression of being in the States (Gary had been living in Poland for a number of years now). Kinga writes in Polish, Gary in English. Kinga’s observations about her surroundings make me smile. It is like me, looking in afresh on life here, commenting with my own set of childhood (i.e. Polish) experiences!

During my last trip to Poland I made a point of meeting these two bloggers. Two of their Polish friends joined us and we sat drinking beer at an outdoor table, at the foot of the sweeping Tatra mountains.

I thought then: Gary has had to make adjustments during his years of living in Poland, but Kinga will have to make far greater adjustments when they move to the States. The conversation was full of Polish-style banter, but it also turned intimate very quickly, with a great deal of reflection on everything from literature to relationships. Both the men and women tripped over themselves to throw in their two zlotys, in the rapid fire way that Poles typically communicate.

Dusk turned to night and in the space of those hours it became so clear to me that there indeed is this great cultural divide: it is in the manner in which people relate to each other -- the expressions they use, the themes they pick out, the common understanding of what is ordinary and what seems curiously alien.

Even if you don’t read Polish, you can track Gary’s English text (they alternate posts): he writes as an American who is returning here after many years of being away and also as one who is aware of how Kinga is experiencing this country. Having read both sides of the blog, I can assure you that he represents Kinga’s thoughts about their new surroundings quite well!

Letters I wish I had it in me to write, part 2

Dear Trek bike person,

You made me laugh and laugh this afternoon! The final straw was when you told me you couldn’t take a look at my bike because it was (inadvertently) positioned under a birds’ nest and therefore likely to get blasted with baby bird diarrhea any minute. And when you told me that Mr. B and I should not call it quits – it showed how cool you yourself were. I’ll be ready someday, I know I will. Just not today.

Dear home of many decades,

In the end, no one thing has proved to be so stable and reliable in my life as you have. Each dark winter day I would come back and you’d be there – not preoccupied, not distant, not cold. There, every single day, reliably, waiting.

And so it is perhaps incomprehensible to some, to you, why it is that I have to leave you. I love you more than any thing in the world. Sometimes, for reasons that are complicated and convoluted, one has to focus on a future that is stark but sane. You cannot be part of my future. It in not my fault. Perhaps it is not anyone’s fault. It just is. Remember: no one will have loved you as much as I did, no one.

Dear computer,

If you die on me now I will be a beaten person. So pretend you are not old and ragged. My car is old and ragged. Much of my day feels old and ragged. But you, you are a mere babe. So act your age! I’m in no position to seek a replacement.

I'm wondering...

At what point do you tell your aging parent this: no more. You cannot continue to frown upon the life I live and the decisions I make. I will not listen anymore?

At what point do you look up and notice how good and kind friends are when you need them to be just decent (you are all that way! every one of you, temporarily or permanently out of state, emailers, dinner and/or walking companions, latte enablers – all!)?

At what point do you get a new, sexy bike helmet (I tell myself that, knowing damn well that no bike helmet is really sexy) even though you could maybe (though not certainly) get by with pounding out the dents and still strapping the old one under your chin?

At what point do you admit to your neighbors that, for reasons having to do with the soft warm air coming in from the outside and the harsh long week you’ve just had, you are drifting off to sleep, even though they are still there, in your house, engaged in a fantastically lively conversation?

At what point do you tell Oscar that his blog has been magnificent of late (while sitting and commiserating about how awful a latte is as compared to the real thing, on the other side of the ocean)?

At what point do you quit getting a charge out of spooking the neighborhood kids by showing them the extent of your hip bruise from the bike accident (they all get a thrill out of how extensive it is and I feel I am doing them a favor by shocking them into always wearing a helmet and being cautious out there on the roads)?

At what point do you hear the storm, open the patio door, stick your feet out into the rain and think: I can get through all this, really truly?

[the above? my past 24 hours in a nutshell.]

Stick with me and I guarantee at least one brush with death per day

A late afternoon at the Madison’s Memorial Union. So hot! Must be near 100. Friends decide to take out their pontoon boat. They motor over to the Hoofer’s Dock, nice, leisurely. Sandwiches, beer, snacks. The kind of hour where you get heavily engaged in the weighty issue of whether you’d prefer to be with a boring person or a smelly one. Amazingly, most choose boring.

Mmmmm, it isn’t hot anymore. Must be the cool lake breezes. No, not that. Must be the clouds. Wonder where they came from… Was so clear a minute ago.

Let’s roll over to the Governor’s Mansion. He is too pro environment. He is not! Is too! Is not! Why can’t we have Katherine Falk as governor?

Wouldn’t it be cool to swim to shore. [Here, Ocean author jumps overboard.]

Great water… A bit weedy. No bottom. Wonder why it says DANGER on those bobbin’ little numbers? No matter.. Feels wonderful, the temperature is just right. Captain of the boat is swimming as well.. All’s good here in the warm wetness of Lake Mendota. Kind of choppy in the water now. Hey captain? See that line of rain? It’s on the other side of the lake, not too far from us.

Back on board: Hey Captain? See those flashes of lightening? They’re hitting the lake. Hmmmm, not so pretty. [Ocean author wonders if she can take picture of lightening hitting lake for the blog. Ocean author fails to take picture of lightening hitting water.] Look at that! Red lights are flashing on the shore. Meaning: all boats must come in. No kidding! So, you’re scared? Nah… what are you going to do…

Hoofer types are on the dock waving pontoon boat away. Don’t dock here! Storm winds will blow the dock right into your boat! Go anchor at the cement one. Captain fearlessly ventures out into the storm to anchor at the cement one. Captain wonders if maybe leaving boat to the storm would be a good idea. Boat is insured. Captain is sick of boat and would not mind collecting the insurance money.

Storm’s coming! Bring up the chairs toward shelter. Ohh, from this perch it’s exciting! Bring it on! Hail, gusty winds – they’ll wipe the earth clean and dust off the cobwebs! Storm declines the invitation and decides to head north. Storms are that way – they taunt you and tease you out there where you’re vulnerable on the open waters and snub you when you make it safely to shore.

from the Union shore: a dazzling sun; the water tempts... 

from the Union shore: watching others sweat it out 

on the boat: those crazy hazy days of summer 

on the boat: united under unfriendly skies 

unfriendly waters whippin' around the frail wooden dock 

Latte and Latvia

I heard today from one of my oldest American friends and from one of my newest.

My oldest, Kathy, suggested an outdoor latte early in the morning. Why is that significant? If you have been in a bike accident, you’re hesitant about taking on big biking projects. It’s one thing to swing with Mr. B over to the local café, it’s another to take him across town, over Hill and dale, to a more distant place, requiring some fancy peddling, with one hip/leg still looking like it’s storing a year’s supply of fruits and vegetables beneath the skin. Of the purple kind.

Morning bliss is making it there without incident and sipping this outside:

who wouldn't want this first thing in the morning... 

My newer friend is Q. I first met him on a train in Poland (described here). Q was concerned when he heard I am canceling a trip to Europe, currently on the books for July. Q would be concerned. He and his wife love Europe so much that they ditched their place in SF and moved there. He writes me: “if you want a new adventure, let’s meet in Latvia!”

He is a big fan of Latvia. I have never been to Latvia. I swear, if I knew I could get a latte in Latvia, I would go in a second. But right now I am hesitating. I have So Much On My Mind at the moment that it seems extreme. And expensive.

And my latte addiction cannot be appeased with other beverages these days. I need something wonderful and strong to keep me steady. Latte, I think you are second on my list of comfort objects to cling onto! But someday I’ll do it. I’ll pack my Dell and take Ocean to Latvia.

An ode to people who take on big projects

Empty shells Made better With the gutting Of inside space.
Turning it into Something new Not without faults Gritty and daring.

Random words spinning in my head as I look at what some creative types are doing with two old warehouses in an industrial park in downtown Madison.

Ann and I poked around yesterday afternoon after the construction crews had left. Just a photo or two of how things are looking (check out her own photos here for close-ups of graffiti on the outside walls):

Lorrilard tobacco warehouses: someone thought to gut them and turn them into living spaces 

looking down from a lofty room 

bright lofts and curving shapes 

bold skylights and pipes against dark, old timber 

Strawberry season

There is this obnoxious trait that some people have of wanting to take free stuff if it is offered to them and they have a need for it.

For example – you are in a hospital ER room, it’s time to go, all kisses and goodbyes, thanks, you’ve been wonderful, so you’re finally inching out and you remember: wouldn’t it be nice to take with you one of the ice packs to use at home? It’s “free” if you take it from the hospital.

I guess I am one of those obnoxious people, because I did turn around and hobble back last night (during my trip to the ER room) and asked (meekly) – do you suppose you could spare….

The nurse hardly looked up. You don’t have ice at home? (you know, putting those jagged bricks from your ice dispenser against a sore leg is just not as much fun as using an ice pack) No… -- unbelievable answer, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain.

Do you have any frozen fruits or vegetables? -- she counters. Caught me dead on. I could not lie. I have bags and bags of frozen strawberries from last year. Frozen blueberries? Raspberries? All gone: they’re wonderful to slowly munch on when you want to restrain your midnight greed. But strawberries are too big to just pop in your mouth, so there they are, in my freezer and the new season is upon us and so I may as well put them to ice-pack use, digging into the ziplock bag every once in a while for a nibble.

But I got my chance at a freebie: on my way out (for real now), I passed one of those anti-bacterial gel dispensers (that’s what they’re all using in the ER room – none of this hand washing stuff; I know – 99.9% germs are killed with the gel, it says so right there on the dispenser, but it just doesn’t seem in my old fashioned mind as fresh to go from wiping someone’s butt, to putting a little gel on the palms, to picking up your hand to take your pulse). From said dispenser I loaded on the antibacterial gel. For free. You might say I walked out of the hospital clean. Germ free. That’s nothing to sneeze at, btw.

Simulblogging the ER. No, not the TV show, we’re talking about reality reality.

Notes from the night that followed the bike crash:

By ten at night my upper leg had ballooned to such a large size that it felt like I had gone on an 365 day Michael’s Frozan Custard binge. Moreover, I could not walk.

Call to clinic. Nurse plugs in data into her triage computer program and comes up with result that is probably the result in 99% of cases: go to the ER room immediately. I mean, maybe if you call and say that you are at a nursing home and that the staff person was mean to you and would not help you go to the bathroom (the issue confronting the patient in the space next to mine at the ER headquarters of UW hospitals), maybe then they would have said: deal with it. For the rest: there’s the ER.

I was also told that I am absolutely forbidden to drive and that an ambulance would be forthcoming if I hadn’t a friend to take me in. HOW PATHETIC! That’s just an insurance set up! How many people will say – oh, okay, I have no one, no one at all to ask for a ride, so sure, go ahead, send the ambulance.

I called a friend. Friend came, friend drove. Thank you, friend. You saved me the humiliation of appearing pathetic.

Lots of police cars at the entrance to the ER room. I tell friend that if you go in at night, you’re gonna be rubbing shoulders with the overdose victims and gang shootings. Earlier, it’s poor people without health insurance who desperately need to see a doctor. Friend says it has been suggested that ER visits go up immediately at the end of prime time TV.

Inside the waiting room, everyone looks sick. I am thinking: I am going to get your germs so quickly, so please face the other way when you vomit – that kind of sick. Germ avoidance strategy: I use my own pen to sign wavers and death statements. Yes, if you kill me rather than cure me, you can take my remains and burn them quickly before someone discovers your mistake.

I am told: wait here in the wheel chair until your room is ready. Room is ready? Sounds like a Paris hotel that you arrive at early in the morning. Bonjour, not ready yet, excusez moi, quelle damage!

Background music is positively funereal. I had a friend die on me some years back and she requested classical music nonstop in her last hours of life and ever since, when I hear classical music in a hospital, I think of her. I think: had she known the effect it would have on me, she may have substituted it for hip hop. Hip hop in hospitals would not make me think of death and dying.

There are little insects flying around as I wait. Ugh! Germ carrying, all of you! Get OFF of me! You are contaminating me – I saw you buzz over near the vomiting woman there in the corner, go back, go back!

Three times, by three different staff members I am asked the question: is there anyone you do NOT wish to give access to your information from here? I don’t get it. YES! The world! The Dean of the Law School. Does he really need to know about my innards? Do students? In fact, 99.99% of the people out there should not have access to my medical records. Whatever are you thinking?? (Of course, then I go ahead and post everything on the blog. So private!)

Finally, I am wheeled to a segment of an ER room. I am a woman of many health dramas and so I know these places well. Too well. I know the ropes. I know what to say to get service and what to say to get out asap. I am ER savvy! [Mumbling something about being a law prof and teaching torts and malpractice helps; damn it, they always ask, so what, I am supposed to not mention it?]

I look up, stretched there on the ER table, with my leg now twice the size of a football stadium, and I see this cartoon pasted on the joint of the swivel overhead lamp. It’s a picture of a fist with a thumb up, and the words underneath, in bold, with an exclamation mark: yes! For some reason this totally disarms me. I feel the stress of the day, the night, the week and I want to cry. But that’s antithetical to the upbeat mood of that little sticker sign and so I reign it in.

In the “cubicle” next to me is the guy with the nursing home problem. It is indeed a problem and I do not want to detract from it even as he proceeds to describe the bowel movement he is having at the time he is telling the story. But it seems – from my meager qualifications to assess these matters – that it is not an ER problem. It is a call-governor-doyle-and-have-him-commence-a-criminal-investigation-against-the-nursing-home-facility type of a problem.

But then, his woman comes in and they have these rhapsodic exchanges while the staff is out. He is an old fart (literally) with an amputated leg and she is patient and he is so appreciative. I don’t even mind the putrid smells coming from their neck of the woods (remember: we are in the middle of his bowel movement). These guys are so touchingly respectful of each other. I wanted to get up and visit for a while, but the nurse was wiping his butt forever and ever and after that, the moment passed.


Sigh. It was one of those days when you are reminded of how lucky you are for a shrilling number of reasons. I got home minutes ago and transcribed my notes. I am thinking of going out for a bike ride first thing tomorrow, if I can wrap my giant leg around the seat. Hey, the doctors, with their multifarious almost-degrees (this is a teaching hospital after all) told me to move as much as possible, especially in the next few days, to undo the blood clot. I’m with you. Life is all about movement.

I'm feeling a bit woozy so I'll let others speak about my event of the day

Comments from readers concerning morning bike crash:

(a proper subject heading might be:) For whom the Bell…

My sympathy for your loss of Mr. Bell…

Was it Bianchi’s fault? Infatuation is a dangerous thing.

Comment from the sidelines (i.e. Mr. Bianchi chimes in – I am merely transcribing his thoughts; I know him that well):

Dear high-ups who make all the important decisions in this town, like about road stuff:

Cut us a break already. Today, Nina took me for a tour of the downtown. She was looking at some old warehouses there (her ideas come from who knows where) and she took me along for the ride. Never mind that the warehouses were along pebbly lanes (see photo below) that caused me severe nerve damage and rubber attrition. I’m not that young anymore.

Then she spun me around her stomping ground – the campus. I was pleased as pickles: a special bike line, important like, right in the middle of the main drag (University Ave)!

And look, I said: it continues on the little highway called Campus Drive! Man, this downtown stuff is cool! Good bye bike lanes, hello an urban existence!

But then, LO! It’s gone! Right there, in the middle of Campus Drive, the bike lane has disappeared! I had to think quick, take Nina by the ass and made her do a sharp turn off the drive toward the hospital, where we picked up roads and byways all the way to the Shorewood area.

The rest is history. I was out of breath, there was a bump, no warning, just like that, she wanted to turn, I missed the beat and threw her. I stood off to the side sulking (she got all the attention) as doctors and trained people with sirens and flashing lights emerged out of nowhere (the Shorewood factor, she tells me). I wasn’t even asked to help her home. Someone perched me on top of their van and gave Nina the comfy inside seat (the Madison=everyone-helps factor, she tells me).

Before signing off, I wanted to tell you high-ups that I think you treat bike lanes poorly as compared to regular traffic lanes. When I was scooting with her on U Ave, man those ditches, real DITCHES I tell you, many inches deep and wide, every couple of paces – WOOMP, and another and another: that’s just unreal. No wonder my nerves were frazzled and my rubber lost some its punch. I was made years older today.

Nina – she seems bouncy if not totally sprightly. That peasant stock line again. She has sprains and bruises but she, kind soul, is showing no ill feelings. She even took me out for an afternoon latte. True, she could not hold on to the cup well (embarrassing the both of us), but we managed the back and forth trip alright (between you and me, she’s a little off balance, but hey, at least she’s still kickin’. Or rather splashing, since I just saw her crawl up to soak in the bathtub).

Sincerely,
Mr. B

Mr. B waits while I look downtown at Madison's old tobacco warehouses 

A brief (because my typing hand hurts) ode to Mr. Bell

I know you well
My stunning Bell!

On a ride from hell
I up and fell
And lived to tell
This story well.

My head wont swell
Thanks to my Bell.


Thanks, Mr. Bell. I’m sorry that my gain is your loss. You do look awfully beat up. So do I, but I expect to be in good form soon enough whereas you – I’m afraid I’ll have to find a replacement. But here’s a photo of you from just a few days ago when you were looking mighty fine. Please know that I’ll always remember you. You saved my life.
love,
Nina

p.s. Now I know what you're thinking. Given what I wrote before, I was probably not cautious enough, it was my fault, bla bla bla. Not true. I was going slowly and encountered a bump in the road. Mr. B. could not handle it and threw me. I think I need to better understand Mr. B's limitations. He's kind of quirky sometimes. Now I know. BTW, he and I are still friends, really we are. No one's perfect.

my hero (not the latte, Mr. Bell) 

My summer vacation: essay written on the first rather than the last day of summer.

Let’s pretend I suddenly lost all writing skills. Let me rephrase that: the pretense has to be in the fact that I do have them but then am managing to disguise them well tonight in order to act like one who does not.

So let me give a brief synopsis of My Summer Thus Far:

The Daily Show was very funny.
Or was it that I was in the mood for it to be funny?
It was warm outside but I managed to not use the AC.
Who needs the AC anyway.
At work, I tidied up loose ends from the previous semester. [This was MONUMENTAL! Yay me!]
I cooked dinner for a change.
I walked in the morning, I walked in the evening, I biked in the afternoon.
I missed the full moon.
But my day was full.
The summer is a good season: it allows you to move forward in ways that winter would not.

A sign that had “Nina and Mr. B” written all over it

A friend passed this on, straight off of someone’s bike rack:

"Faster faster until the fear of death is overcome by the thrill of speed"

Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good way of looking at our current movements around town.

Motivation

I have heard so many talk about it lately: are you motivated to work steadily, clean up your space, eat less, exercise more, meet new people? Are you motivated? Well are you? Work on it, damn it!

It sounds like a nightmarish rendition of New Year’s Resolutions. Resolve, resolve! Work, discipline, perseverance, determination. A Manifesto! That’s it, a Manifesto for a Better Life!

Better life.

Me, I want to learn to let go, to not be so charged and damn motivated. To think of a day where I accomplished nothing much and went to bed not buzzing or spinning as a good day. To not make to do lists, to work through projects methodically without rush or even much thought. Because most (I admit, not all) projects are rather low-pressure and are well served by insouciance rather than a mad rush of adrenaline. Oh, to not feel anguished and pained at the thought of a week ahead of me! To keep the windows open on the first day of summer and just listen to the sounds out there. And think they’re beautiful. And think about nothing more, for long stretches of time. Hours maybe.

Okay, I got that last thing going now. I’m motivated to work on the rest.

tlc

Would you eat a whole box of TLC crackers just because you liked the name? I would.

my pals 

Bianchi and me, we're getting a little carried away with our passion for each other

Okay, I think I am getting too bold on the bike. I think I ought to wear a bike seatbelt or something. I think I should not be making left turns from busy six lane roads and darting between cars at full speed. Stop me from being a jackass on wheels!

I am a careful driver. So why this defiance, given that I now have two fewer wheels to support and sustain me? Why this feeling of power on the road when I should be cowering and trembling? There are some mean looking SUVs out there and I know they basically have one goal in life and that is to do me in right there on the road. So why am I these days not scared of them? Of traffic? Of life? Why do I feel a special bond and camaraderie with fellow cyclists, wanting to high-five them each time we obstruct traffic with our presence and make life miserable for those wanting to effortlessly speed home in their damn machines?

All those drivers, polluters, spoiled air conditioning addicts – they are suddenly them and the bikers and I, we are us, a fellowship of man woman and spinning wheels. Yeah!

Still, I am putting a little post-it on the handlebars as a little prod: fearlessness gets people in trouble. I should remember how much I hated cyclists like myself just two weeks ago. Road hogs, I used to mutter. Find a bike trail and leave me alone. Of course, that was then. Two weeks can make a new person out of you. Really. One small event -- a bike, a phone call and you're a different you. Pull over, cars, that right lane is now mine, damn it, mine!

the sweet smell of relief and vindication

There is this service out there (for every need, real or imagined, there is a service provider) that comes over and attends to things you’ve neglected in and around your house. As it was gently suggested to me last Friday that my yard and roof need some tlc, I called them and they came dashing over (the big thing about them is that they are like the Roto-Rooter Man – they come out immediately, like your life depended on it).

They walked, looked, poked, inspected. I sweated it out. You just feel so helpless: you start thinking that you truly are a worthless human being who rides Mr. B out west instead of attending to gutters and branches on a regular basis.

Finally, their verdict, delivered slowly but emphatically:

Ma’am (it’s better than miss, alright?) you don’t need the roof edging replaced. Just trimmed. Should take no time. As to the yard: leave it alone. The flowers are great. If someone doesn’t like your densely planted flowers, then they wont like them. But I wouldn’t touch a thing outside. Maybe trim a bush or two, that’s it.

God, I love service providers who tell you you don’t really need much of their service!

Just goes to show that one person’s jungle is another’s Eden, right? Admittedly, I did let things slide a little outside, but I am reassured that I’ve kept at it enough not to make eyes bulge as people drive by (I’m in the suburbs; people don’t walk much in the suburbs – too folksy, I guess).

Inspired, I went to the city park and loaded up on free mulch: your cuttings, pulverized to shredded garden garbage, to be applied now as dressing to my… sweet, dense jungle.

beautiful, right? 

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine*

Which day in the calendar stands out for a northerner? Which one has “revel” written all over it? Which one has you in an apoplectic state toward the third week of December, because it seems So Very Far Away?

Obviously it’s tomorrow. Summer solstice (this year it happens on June 21st, early in the morning). When daylight (in Madison) will stretch luxuriously for 15 hours and 23 minutes (with visible light extending for 16 hours and 34 minutes).

Full moon tomorrow. A long hot day. Windows open. Breezes making their way through, from one end of the house to the other.

Midsummer. Dreamy, crazy midsummer.

*Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream

this morning's rose: color so intense, it radiates 

I feel better: my yard is less chaotic than Owen Woods

So here’s what happened: on Friday, I had a visitor who was here specifically to give feedback on how I was managing the upkeep of the house. His words: the yard looks like you are a woman in despair. You need to hire someone [translate: at a minimum of $40 an hour] to help you deal with it.

It stunned me. I mean, here I’d been trying to stay on top of things and I got this slap: woman, you are a failure! You talk big about perennials and plants but your yard looks so overgrown that even rabbits are staying away for fear of losing their way in the jungle that you call a garden.

Crap. Something needed to be done. First, I hovered under my quilt (this is my response to pretty much anything problematic these days). Then I took B out for a spin. Then came the walk in Owen Woods. Finally, as dusk was turning into darkness, I took the shears to my yard and started hacking away. I made progress. It now needs 9 people with 49 hours and extra sharp shears and blades to take care of it. But I feel complete. Like my coping skills are no longer subject to challenge.

Owen Woods at dusk 

my front garden: you know, all those green stalks will eventually produce blooms. just you wait. 

What was I thinking – first in a series of posts indicating that I basically have lost the ability to draw inferences of the sort: if A, then B.

Here’s a story from last night which, if not offering definitive evidence of the above, certainly is suggestive that my brain has crossed wires and unsound connections within:

In the early evening I biked over to Rowley Street (maybe a half hour away, toward downtown Madison). I intended to drop in on a get together of sorts, even though I knew only a small number of people in attendance. And because I knew only a small number of people in attendance, I thought I would surely drop out pretty quickly. And bike home. With maybe a stop over at a blogger’s house, because she appears to be okay with drop-bys and she lives near there.

It didn’t happen. Turns out there were four people who, in their second (or first?) lives played guitars very very well, and one who played harmonicas very very well and as night set in, the Beatles songs accompanied by multiple guitars came forth and people sang and ate and yes, drank beer and – this is a new one for me – organic cigarettes were passed around and although I did try a puff so that I could later brag that I’ll try anything as long as it’s legal, I wasn’t much into the smoking. But I am a sucker for people singing together, outside, late at night and so it was close to midnight before I left.

But wait, what was I thinking? If A, then B. If you take your bike out late at night to a gathering on the other side of town, then you have to imagine yourself capable of riding it back. I did attach a nice little cateye to Mr. B, so I was fairly certain I could see the road, but others thought I was insane to be riding the hilly roads at midnight.

I retorted that at midnight the roads are emptier than at noon and besides I can always hop on the sidewalk if I feel uncertain. I read the rules for bike riders, I know what is permissible. At which point someone said that the alcohol limits are placed on bikers as well and of course they are correct, but I had been doing more singing than drinking so I felt I was safe there.

What got me finally was someone’s description of what it’s like to ride on the sidewalk at night with even just one beer under your belt: you feel every bump even if you do not see it. It’ll knock your insides out.

So I caved. Which was okay. Someone took me and my bike home and during that car ride I found out that they sailed regularly and so out of the evening I got a lot of Beatles, some promises of joint bike trips from those who were boggled (not necessarily in a good way) by my determination and at least one sailing adventure, if I promised to work the ropes, or whatever it is that one does on sailboats.

If I were to summarize the evening in one sentence, I would say that it reminded me a lot of my earlier trip peddling west: I sang and sang and talked out of some kind of desperation, hoping that something would snap and then I could just glide and be done with it. I can’t say that anything snapped and I certainly did not glide in any shape or fashion, but the process of peddling and/or singing feels better than staying home under a quilt – which is the way I had spent the first half of the day.

How far?

Letters I wish I could write:

To someone far away --
Remember last year at this same time when you shared a song with me? When you, in your life out there somewhere had been listening to How Far and decided that I may enjoy it and I did, only I am such a music baby that anytime I hear a plaintive voice, I get too choked up?

And to another --
Remember when last year we listened to Pokarekare Ana on a blanket outside? And how you did not know then that you’d be hearing it in New Zealand a year later? And that I’d be composing imaginary letters on Ocean? Because one just cannot know these things and I am basically your terrible predictor anyway. So much so that I am prone to asking others about what they think next year or the year after will look like, because I typically have no idea and in my Polish angst about each day, I always assume that by tomorrow life will topple and I will find myself wasting away in some state of discombobulation in a Benedictine abbey in southern Italy, or, horrors of horrors, digging ditches in a Russian kolkhoz with a burly фермер standing over me telling me to dig harder.

How far, how far do we go each day, how far did you travel? Did I?

Today I took the bike out and, in a straight line, headed west. Everyone talks of doing that. Driving, running, without stopping, until you run out of steam, breath, or gas. Well what if you biked? How far can you go before you encounter the first corn field? Farmland that rolls onto itself with no end in sight? A red stable with horses? The end of the road?

The thing is, however far you take yourself, you always have to figure out a way to get back. Leave yourself enough gas, or, with a bike – enough energy to peddle those hills again and head home.

The first cornfield these days is many miles out... twenty-six years ago, when we first moved to Madison, our apartment looked out onto a cornfield -- an interesting experience after south Chicago. 

right away you notice the quiet... 

oh, a visitor, all the way out here! let me trot over and check her out. 

Ocean author reaches out to horse. Hey horse, did anyone ever tell you that you sort of look like a donkey?

the end of the road. 

Holding a hand

I was in Paris a year ago, waiting to cross the street and I looked up to see this small scene. My camera was out and so before the light changed, I took the picture. Today I remembered it. Oh, that look on the man’s face! The girl seemed a little sad as well. But he – he had all those additional years of haunted worry. The look comes through just a little on the photo here:

if only... 

This morning, I was imagining the course of a simple conversation between a mother and a child, one that all parents have at somepoints, many points, in one form or another, and as I was thinking of it, I remembered another photo – one that I took last month on a Warsaw playground. Here are both, the imagined conversation and the photo:

Mommy, what’s a cloud?
It’s a bunch of tiny droplets of water and ice, suspended in the air…

Oh. Why is it covering the sun?
It has to do with the wind and the movement of air. Imagine it being pushed and pushed until it can’t help but cover the sun.

Can you unpush it? Can you make it go away?
No, I cannot.

How about my sore knee from when I fell down because someone pushed me on the playground, can you make it go away?
No, I cannot.

Mean people, mashed turnips..
I can probably do something about the turnips…

But mean people, bullies that push you?
No, I cannot. Listen, I can’t even make the weeds go away in my front garden. Look at it: It is a jungle. Out of control! It would take ten strong people with fifty long hours and shovels and shears and who knows what else to make this yard look pretty again.

I don’t care about the yard. I want you to make the tiny droplets of water and ice go away.
I cannot do that.

On a Warsaw playground: tangled up in ropes