Ah, Spring! Lovely warm, green, vibrant spring.
I’m very glad that the earth, as it always does, has swung back around and our hemisphere has begun to lean again toward the sun, bringing us the myriad lessons of rebirth.
And yes, a rebirth of riding, too, since I rode very little this winter. There were a few short bursts on the indoor trainer (while watching Breaking Bad on Netflix), but alas, the sound was poor and I couldn’t really hear the dialogue, and so never truly lost myself in the episodes. And riding in the basement without some sort of engaging—and audible—distraction was too much to bear.
I’m still pretty out of shape. I’m still recovering from a dizzying set of recent events—loads of work, ballet collaborations, readings and talks, finishing off a book, etc. All wonderful things, to be sure, but they were all very labor and energy intensive.
Which is to say that, as great as they were, they made it easy to neglect the physical avocation that keeps me sane, i.e. biking.
My buddy Ed and I are going to Moab next weekend, and I hope I can get my legs ready, without totally burning them out. And I hope my bike holds out, too, as it’s been wonky and creaky lately. (Time for a homemade, in-garage tune-up! One more thing I love to do, but it takes a lot of free time, since I am slow and not real great at it, and tend to drop small bolts and stuff, and then have to crawl around to find it among the dust and muck.)
But I can’t complain. Such is life. The renewal, and endless tasks, the beauty and wonder of it all. I’m a very lucky man, and I’m very grateful for everything I’ve got goin’ on.
Speaking of feeling grateful—Robert Lowell’s poem “Home After Three Months Away” perfectly captures that sense of falling back into one’s life after a long absence. In his case, the time was three months in a mental hospital recovering from a manic break.
My breaks are much milder, and not (so) literal. But the poem’s happiness at being present in one’s life rings very, very true. The faster life chugs past, the more you must—you must!—slow down. You must remain present in the moment, and stop thinking or worrying about tomorrow, or whatever it is that consumes your ability to be here.
Something I’ve been trying hard to do, so that my heart stays sane.
Here’s that poem by Lowell, followed by some images from a recent ride on a cold, gray day–and one from a sunny day, too.
Happy spring to you, and yours.
Home After Three Months Away
—Robert Lowell
Gone now the baby’s nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of gauze–
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.
Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each of us pats a stringy lock of hair–
they tell me nothing’s gone.
Though I am forty-one,
not forty now, the time I put away
was child’s play. After thirteen weeks
my child still dabs her cheeks
to start me shaving. When
we dress her in her sky-blue corduroy,
she changes to a boy,
and floats my shaving brush
and washcloth in the flush. . . .
Dearest I cannot loiter here
in lather like a polar bear.
Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
Three stories down below,
a choreman tends our coffin’s length of soil,
and seven horizontal tulips blow.
Just twelve months ago,
these flowers were pedigreed
imported Dutchmen; no no one need
distinguish them from weed.
Bushed by the late spring snow,
they cannot meet
another year’s snowballing enervation.
I keep no rank nor station.
Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.
Mood shot.
Time to climb.
That’s Ed. Or at least his legs. His really-in-shape-climb-a-wall legs.
Rocky Mountain Biker 