“The following are a series of random thoughts and ideas from the past few weeks, mostly inspired by bike rides and general isolation. I’m sharing these for entertainment purposes only. ”

The Fullness of Emptiness

I never thought I’d be able to ride my bike on Broadway through downtown Portland during rush hour and swerve lazily over all three lanes without even looking over my shoulder. The other day I did just that — it was early evening and I wove through town and the only vehicle I saw for a dozen blocks was an ambulance roaring up my way, doing pretty much the same thing I was doing, which was ignoring the lines and treating the road like they owned it. I’d like to think they were out joy riding the way I was, taking advantage of the free lanes, even though I’m sure their reasons were much grimmer.

Everyday that I ride my bike it feels sort of like we’re living an ongoing string of Sundays and everyone but me is at church. It’s lonely and a little spooky being in a city so quiet. When the sun is out it’s easy to forget there’s a disaster upon us.

Imagine

Everything is different right now; the quality of light, the sounds, the way it feels being in the world. The shift in perspective reminds me what the Buddhists have been talking about for ages — all we have are stories, and the stories are so flimsy. The things we take for granted, like ice cream after a bike ride, a stable society, burrito carts, an endless supply of toilet paper — these are no longer given. It’s shaking us all to the core, and it’s frightening in the way that Big Change is frightening.

But the cool thing is this: Right now we get to reimagine our world.

Sign of the Times

Earlier this week at the bike shop adjacent to my workshop, a mechanic named Shawn had his thirty-something birthday. Bradley, the shop owner, one of the most conscientious humans I know, brought out a rectangular birthday cake with lots of food coloring on top, and gifted Shawn a 12-pack of toilet paper. Shawn’s kind of the new guy, and he clearly wasn’t expecting all this.

When a bike mechanic is gifted a 12-pack of TP instead of beer, and nearly tears up at the gesture, you know shit’s weird in the world. I helped sing the b-day song, watched Shawn bow his head, the surprising blip of joy and camaraderie in the shop — all very moving.

(Pun accidental, but I’m leaving it)

Silent City

I stopped near the highest point on Broadway, right in the middle of the road, and it was like looking at Multnomah Falls or the Grand Canyon or something too big and amazing to comprehend. Witnessing a city without its noise is like accidentally walking into a room and seeing someone naked. Clothed in sound, a city can seem tough and unforgiving, or impatient, intolerant, crass; but without, it’s vulnerable, bashful even, simply made of parts and nothing special, and yet special in so many unsuspected ways.

I heard birds chirping, and there was no need for me to scurry out of the street.

Never Enough

I am so grateful for my bicycle. For every frickin’ pedal stroke. I've said it ten thousand times before and I hope I keep saying it forever.

Air Quality

One of the least safe places to cycle right now is on bike paths. I never imagined I’d say this, but ambient air is cleaner in the streets. It makes sense, though: Few cars = low pollution.

And on the bike paths, with pedestrians and cyclists and skate boarders and roller-bladers and etcetera using the oxygen, breathing all over the place, shedding invisible clouds of god-knows what all — it’s enough to inspire germophobia in anyone with an active and visual imagination.

Forgetting

This morning I saw videos recently shot from all over the world where elk, moose, bear, seals, foxes, and a variety of other fauna were seen wandering city streets. It’s not just rats anymore. It’s like, oh yeah, we all live here, I forgot.

Less Is More

Envision a world with 95% fewer cars. It’s quite possible, possibly inevitable, that that’s what is coming. Right now is a sampler, everything smells better. I can see Mt. Hood and St. Helens in the distance almost every day, and it is so blessedly quiet.

Right now, more than anytime I can remember in recent history, is the perfect time to ride a bicycle around town.

Golden Oldies

There’s this song I heard on the oldies station the other day that went like this:

“I feel stupid, and contagious, Here we are now, entertain us…”

Combustion Criterium

If I was into muscle cars or crotch rockets this would be a rad time for an improv downtown drag race.

Infected

I thought about writing a short story set in Portland, where downtown gets walled off and there’s a televised sci-fi alleycat race but not just with cyclists in skinny jeans. There’d be weapons and combustion engines and armor and what not, Hollywood style murder and anarchy, TV ratings driving the mayhem, anything & everything goes.

Like a cross between Mad Max and the Running Man, apocalyptic urban racing where a character, a sort of bionic and nearly unkillable bike messenger has to pick up a 12-pack of bottled beer and carry it unbroken across town before he can drink it. Everyone else is motoring around with grenade launchers and razor-sharp boomerangs and jet packs and battle axes and shit like that trying to behead and explode everybody else, especially our hero, because they want his beer.

It was one of those stories that I thought might be cool for like a minute and then, you know, the magic faded. I think reading William Burroughs is infecting my imagination.

William S. Burroughs

The kinds of books I was able to ingest before this whole pandemic started are not the kinds of books that work for me now. I don’t read for escape, I read to be more connected, more in tune with the Greater Flow of the Universe, whatever that means. Books are like supplements, and my body craves certain ideas, stories, minerals, resources, that allow it to function better within the context of How Things Are.

Starting in March, as our situation deteriorated beyond comprehension, I had to stop reading anything contemporary that was too self-involved, which to me felt like everything I was reading. I don’t like to abandon books that I’m reading, but with COVID my whole path of usual thinking was derailed.

I was three-quarters of the way through a memoir by a quietly famous literary figure who lives in NY, and as the virus swept through the USA and things started shutting down, it was like the book dissolved in my hands.

So instead I pulled my copy of Cities of the Red Night by William Seward Burroughs from the bookshelf. If you’ve never read anything by Billy Burroughs, my first recommendation is that you don’t start. Just forget you ever heard his name.

If you’re like a cat, though, unable to resist curiosity, and feel you just gotta try, then I’d say don’t start with Cities of the Red Night. Go read Naked Lunch first, and see how that does for you. If you get through it, and want to explore further, then move on to The Job, where, depending on your disposition, you may find a lot of reasons to dislike the author. And if you make it through that, and feel like you need more, then, maybe, try Cities of the Red Night.

“End of part I”