Pedal Tones - Part One

Pedal Tones

Part One

         On Saturday I pedaled down back country apple cider roads and enjoyed the sensation of the late October air, on the cusp between mild and raw, kissing my face. (My cheeks blushed, red as apples.) Greedy for air, I squinted my eyes and let my jaw drop low and I sucked in all I could, the smell of wood smoke and the scent of decay, the unmerciful procession of time, too little left, it seems, and as I pumped my legs harder and harder and went uphill slower and slower, my chest did not explode and my heart did not sink and the beat within stayed regular, rhythmic and rote. Now I was rowing a boat. I crested the hill, between sunken ancient orchards, twisted limbs reached from the unknowable sea, toward me, beckoning me…sail on. Then I plunged downward, wan sunlight 'scaped from behind yon gray clouds while miniscule droplets pricked the ruddy flesh of my face. Squinting still and squeezing tears with the speed I developed and my boat bobbed up and down. Arm muscles flexed. I pulled on alternate oars and dove down. From apple orchard zenith to swamp bog nadir. Now on a lower level…sail past the swamp and its secrets (I have tarried in the swamp before and sought to delve into its secrets, but not today) and then past a wide open field of dry yellow, burnt umber, ancestral site of extreme unction—today too mild for thoughts of death and even, perhaps of incurable sicknesses—hemmed in by whispering hills. Spilling over crest of hill and down the slopes, the hasty hush hush hush of warm shouts from another sky—brave and bold, the sky makes it plain, wishes to conceal nothing—snowball effect across the field, tension mounts, murmurs and rumors, wants some sort of climactic finale as it approaches road's verge, and it has picked up and piled up and herded along—the snowball tumbleweed effect, now—all the debris of this bitter season, the dry detritus from the trees, proud last week in their glorious finery of yellow, scarlet, and gold, now quivering ashamed (or titillated, hm?) in their nakedness—shoots it all, the whole damn shootin' match! into the public roadway and across, in front of me, in front of my very eyes, growing dim with the dust, the finer particles of the broken cloth of the once-regal arboreal vestments, dust to dust……….suddenly a sea chanty pipes in my ears, the rolling pile of leaves leaps up and breaks and crashes on the sea-road, back country apple cider seawater, my schooner plows the watery leaf main and the salt leaf stinging drops rake across my apple cheeks, soft water has sharp edges…….and I am blind: I see the equatorial dead sun, becalmed, and I am deaf: I hear the chainsaws and backhoes and tin whistles and squeezeboxes, and I am numb: I feel the blunt bayonet tip of October nostalgia, I pull alongside an atoll and tumble out of the craft and assess the damage:
         Brain hemispheres are not east or west anymore, but north and south now, and the shift in latitude prompts another shift in attitude. When I crawl further on the coral reef I see the dust devil I once saw forty, oh my gosh, forty freakin' years ago in the middle of the road in front of our house. Out of the middle of nowhere, on a dry dusty summer day, when life had the irreplaceable sweetness of not having to have any importance, a whoosh of wind came down the middle of the road, right toward little nothing me, and then skidded to a comical stop and did a little dance for me. My first private drama. I did not understand. I was being trained with kind coercion to believe in an extra-terrestrial omnipotence which loved me so much that it was going to punish me for unknowable offenses and just by way of struttin' its stuff would kill thousands in earthquakes and floods and yet was taking time out of its hectic schedule to put on a little whirling dervish show just for me—I was all alone on this quiet day of fantasy and longing, just me and the cicadas and the blue jays and the box turtles—just for me it whipped around in a miniature tornado of dirt, dust, gravel, bubblegum wrappers, popsicle sticks, and straw. It hopped to the right, it hopped to the left, it grabbed me by the arm, went do-si-do. Then, with no goodnight kiss, it disappeared into the day and childhood disappeared into the night. Had I any foresight then, I would have started to be an ardent nonbeliever of ridiculous bullshit right then and there and kept always, instead, a simple faith in the fact that the living world would always throw an ass-kickin' free show of humor, beauty, and awe for even the most destitute among us. Especially the most destitute.

Part Two

         The sun never came out that day. The rain never came down. Burning issues consumed me from within and conflict resolution had been resolved upon, but the best I'd ever be able to do was to complicate things further. A spider's web is immaculate in its symmetrical geometry and orderliness and catches food to sustain life...my webs are a sticky mess that convolute upon themselves and only catch me and starve me.
         The final stretch home at day's end. Perfect darkness not fouled by any moon. Now the rain let loose, driven in frantic directions, like schools of fish which synchronize their uncertain dashes to and fro, by sudden and powerful gusts of wind. Wind-strewn leaves carpeted the bikepath and aided only by the feeble beam of my headlight I could not detect the edges of the path and I wandered often onto the bumby ground. I could have run into gullies or I could have slipped down the long embankment into the swamp.
         The wind whistled and I would have wept, but I listened...the ominous wooden straining sound, forces counterforces flexing...of culluose ligaments leaning and lurching, breaking free...one hundred years of energy imprisonment, heave relief sigh heavenward hydration duties done...dead wood decided to lay down on the wet ground to rot, mandated by wind, by time, fate didn't create this tree...
         It was such a heavy sound--a rumble and a crack and a sharp splitting...the sound of substance which only a thousand pounds of wood could make.
         I sped along in animal fright--a pulse through my body of heat then cold cringe the blood that wants to stay unspilled--a giant's hand of wind swatted me from the side then from behind then the other side. I pedalled at every odd angle and I tore along over the bumpy ground then over the wet leaves on the paved path...bump bump bump jar jar jar white knuckles wet leather glove grip rubber pads slipping just far enough away. Thud! Only more like THUDDDD!!!! and twenty smaller thuds as the main trunk of the tree crashed to the path twenty feet behind me and the dead branches branched out in explosions sending chunks my way and that way down dark night highway of the pedal path.
         I just kept going as fast as I could to outrace outsmart outfate the next tree to give in give up the ghost. Another tree fell once, over seven years earlier in Haydenville during a July microburst. It was a mulberry tree and it crashed onto Route 9 and exploded all over the map, pieces almost hit our house. We were upstairs, Pooh Bear and me, and a few of his young hippy wannabe friends, including Cathy. Havin' a little summertime shindig...smokin' it up on the back landing when the sky darkens and the wind whips up and the trees start flailing their arms like drowning sailors at Pearl Harbor. Blazing bolts of screaming yellow electricity touch down all around and we take it inside. We close up all the windows, 'cause the wind is sideways and so is the rain. Cathy stands at one window and everytime a bolt of lightning touches down and announces its thunder boom intention seconds after the fact, or a tree limb is dismembered, or a trash can goes metallic rolling down the driveway, she lets out a squeal of delight. She is truly aroused by the imminent apocalypse we're caught up in. And when that mulberry tree lands on the highway like a case of TNT that fell off the back of a truck, I swear I think she's wet her pants. We all go running down to check it out ten minutes later when the burst has finally busted and I'm keepin' an eye on her.
         I make up my mind to go ring her doorbell the next time an electrical storm looms. "I'm afraid", I'll tell her, "between the steel plate in my skull and all the fillings in my teeth, I can't afford to let myself get caught in a storm like this. Can I wait it out in here?" And I know she'd be tickled pink to have such a guest at a time like that. She would tingle with anticipation just at the thought that a beautiful bright bolt of pure energy could come crashing through her window and zero in on my head. Her brown tresses would frizz and she'd probably fling off her tank top and frayed cutoffs and flop about on her filthy wooden floor in mirth in heat in electric epileptic ecstasy. Oh the low down cons I would pull. Later I would apologize profusely: "Oh you silly little chickadee, oh you silly little robin--I don't really have a steel plate in my head, great as the need may be for one, and most of my fillings have fallen out. But thank you indeed for the pleasure of your company, my electric lady friend!"

Entr'acte

"Focusing on nowhere
Investigating miles
I'm a seeker
I'm a really desperate man"

         The seeker, embryonically, seeking a thousand isles, seeking seven seas and ten thousand lakes, seeking nine moons, three suns, and one black hole...a worm hole out of which he crawls on all fours, he slithers a good long while, then he arises and strides forth on two, the other two outstretched, fingers double-jointed with greed, underneath his three-cornered hat a thousand points of pride, then stumbles and bumbles, never yet humble, and finally skulks away on three, if he's lucky, and he chomps on his bitter cigar...brown spittle, frayed lapels, a bib and a diaper and a cracked chamber pot. The Sphynx winks his eye at him and spits when he turns his back and shuffles off.

"People tend to hate me
'Cause I never smile
As I ransack their homes
They want to shake my hand"
("The Seeker" - courtesy of The Who)

[It's fun to fill this prose with bitter zingers!]
[A tip o' the hat to Sir Reginald]

"Some people seem so obsessed with the morning
Get up early just to watch the sun rise
Some people like it more when there's fire in the sky
Worship the sun when it's high
Some people go for those sultry evenings
Sipping cocktails in the blue, red and grey
But I like every minute of the day"
("Blue, Red And Grey" - courtesy of The Who)

         i like it all i want it all i run run run try to catch it dig it trap it fling it down down up sideways stuff more in more on more on i'm a moron i get up at four to get a head start but someone said "it's too late to start sooner" i give up up up and away but i really do like the morning the mid morning the first twenty seconds after noon but i get depressed at five fifty five sharp.............i'm in love with every wasted minute of every wasted day simply because i can't have it i want to break open the hourglass and swallow the razor crystal sand grains...the one part of the day i just can't hack is the big fat pregnant NOW it hits me full in the face and i'm overwhelmed and by the time i figure out how to wrap my grubby paws around it it's been replaced by another irredeemable NOW...i'm no longer a seeker but just another chaser, one of the millions

Entr'(entr'acte)acte

         Who can I trust anymore? Who do I want to listen to anymore once I stop listening to myself? (Oh I give myself such a big headache.) They (they!--the world that coughed me up and invited me in, but which I'm unable...unwilling?...(ah but yes it's true: my heart's just not in it right now)...totally unprepared and completely ineligible to join)...they all said, "Don't do it! It's too crazy, too dangerous--you're not qualified! You can't fling yourself out there on two wheels with limited provisions into the void into the wilderness full of serial killers and people you don't know...you will die once you leave your 50 mile radius of security warmth comfort routine tedium the-proper-things-to-do the save-up-til-you're-65 then hop on a jet check into a resort book a fancy stateroom on the luxury liner creature comforts soft dozing old age dotage pilates on the lower deck tea and crumpets on the upper, oh man, oh man overboard! I'm bustin' out, swimmin' with the sharks, I wanna feel the danger of life smack me in the face like a nail-studded two by four. I've avoided vicarious living by roaming peripatetically, a thousand miles at a gallop, until oh so conveniently dismounted on account of

Part Three

         that young woman at the convenience store. It's Cathy--she's standing out front, waiting for a ride apparently. It's March the 2nd, twenty degrees out here and I just got off the bus from Bradley after flying across this big old nasty island all the way from LAX and I say "Hi, Cathy!" and then we're gonna have this great conversation about everything that's happened in the last eight months including my 4000 mile odyssey in which trees fell and tumbleweeds rolled and snow and ice crystals stung stung stung and she'd talk about her own inner mushroom wanderings and her eternal truths and temporal lies and all the meanwhile it'd get colder and snow would start to fall and I'd mention how I needed a place to crash for the night, 'cause I can't make it up to Haydenville; it's midnight and I can't wake up my friend ('cause he's probably not asleep yet) and she'd say, "Well, sure, c'mon over and crash on the floor...on the sofa...in my futon oh why not the 'shrooms liberate the body as well as the mind, maybe the house next door will burn down accidentally and we can watch for free, at any rate you'll be warm warm warm...", but she doesn't even say, "Hi, Bob!", she says, "Seen Pooh lately?" And oh freakin' yeah, so he's like a potentially famous bad-ass writer, 'cause he writes stories about people who sit around in a bar gettin' maudlin drunk philosophizin' existentialism, which is paramount to being a rock star in her mushroom nature-child hairy armpit baggypantsland. (She once stood swooned at a July window soulglass and took to her bosom the lightning the gales the primal force of exploding wood...I saw her cell walls dissolve, reverse mitosis.) "No," I reply to her Pooh inquiry, "we parted on bad terms." "Too bad," she says. Too bad what? No futon future? "Well, see ya 'round," and I depart up the street toward bike path and swamp, no bike--abandoned in So. Cal.--on foot with backpack and sleeping bag.
         I’m all mummied up now in the gully by the bike path not far from the tree which will explode six years eight months from now. I roll on my side and wait for snow. I close my eyes and stare into Cathy's face and breathe the story of the dead land into her I want to pull her out of that Grateful Dead basement boredom and show her a world she almost saw she was at the diner for two whole days and I know she knew it was the highpoint the tide change for her when we sat in Jerry's truck for a smoke break and she let Nine Inch Nails clear the wax out of her Pooh molded head she could've escaped then but she's just like all the others wants the safety confuses it for serenity dead while alive at twenty eight years. I told her how I couldn't sit under the bodhi tree for eight years, but I could ride for eighty miles all day into the wind along U.S. 301 and every few miles kept seeing signs referring to the 'Nice Bridge' and I thought they were talking about a nice bridge as opposed to those horrors I crossed like the George Washington Bridge or the Pulaski Skyway, but when I got there it wasn't nice at all, it was the Governor Harry W. Nice Bridge over the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia. No bikes allowed, I'd have to hop a ride with a state police pickup the next day and that night I camped out in some woods a mile back up the road. "Remember 'The Blair Witch Project'?" I asked the cold dead leaves that represented her face. "It was like that only worse only better. As soon as I got inside my tent it started raining. Each raindrop felt like a marble, like an aggie, when it hit. And I thought of you with each drop and when the lightning struck just a hundred feet away you gasped and wrapped yourself around me and shrieked the wind howled and then tree limbs started falling thud here thud there I waited for the final thud I stared miles down into your hollow eyes, was it apathy, was it hunger?
         It stopped raining the minute I crawled out of the tent in the morning and I saw the dead limbs everywhere around me. All the trees in this little patch were dead and I learned to be more careful from now on. Watch out for the dead that remain standing as well as the living who lie crouching hiding.