the virtues of early mornings

So, I did it.

I pulled myself out of my malaise and treated myself to the most luscious Sunday I have enjoyed, well, since my move.

I loaded my bike onto my car and drove 25 minutes to Pinnacle Mountain. My expectations following my excursions in Allsopp, the urban park downtown, were minimal: while you can't be ungrateful for any trail-enriched green space in a city, I just hadn't been inspired by the offerings. Allsopp is a cobweb of criss-crossing, spindly trail that darts off into abrupt thickets and overgrowth, littered with broken beer bottles and the detritus of low-grade teenage hooliganism. The Allsopp system rides like the manic dream of an ADHD addled doodler, with the aforementioned incomplete offshoots and no comprehensible sense of order. I am a spoiled Pisgahn citizen, who has grown fetishistically attached to maps, multi-hour excursions, route planning. Allsopp is nice. It's convenient; an easy roll down the street. But it doesn't satisfy my need to open up, to invest completely and totally in a moment- in my breath, my cadence-- in blowing the shit out of my legs, my lungs, and coming back exhausted, sweaty, and floating.

When I arrived at Pinnacle, it was a mob scene of families with alarming quantities of toddlers, walking sticks, and knee-high white socks. I unloaded the bike, changed clothes, and eyed the paved path emblazoned "Mountain Bike Trail" with an arrogant chuckle. However, within ten feet, the path gave way to the glorious assemblage of natural materials that most brings joy to my heart: rocks, roots, and mud, all in twisty double- and singletrack. I rode for 7.5 wonderful, fast miles.

My thoughts quelled. The black torrents of irrationality gave way to being. I was not in my head or pacing, miles removed from both my body, the moment. I breathed deeply, heavily; I pulled myself up and over rocks, kept my balance in muddy slicks, and felt the sun on my skin. 

That's what I love. I love the quiet and calm I am when I ride. It's not even a feeling-- which implies an interpretation, a dissociation from the directness. It is literally what I am. I am such an assemblage of adjectives and states as to be almost embarrassingly hyperbolic to put out there. 

And, if I am frank with myself, that's where much of the negativity and fear I related in my last entry rooted from. This is an exciting transition. I am so happy, but it has come at the cost of an environment and activity that was my connection to something so much greater than exercise or riding bikes. The bike is just the medium. But what I get and access from it is something that is, honestly, sacred.

************

This morning, I pulled myself out of bed at 6.

I put the bike on the car, myself in the front seat, and drove to the park.

It was still grey. I ducked and dove, sprinted. Remembered the fast sections, the climbs. Delighted in the soaring of my heart, the meditation of moderating my breath. I came up around a corner, crested a modest hill, where the sun rose in a brash pink burst and a family of deer, startled, sprang towards dawn's stippling. These ecstatic silhouettes merged into the brightening horizon, and I kept pedaling.

 

Some Endearing Late Night Blog Stylings

I have torn myself away from a Netflix binge session, troubled by a realization that has disrupted my usual post-work dissipation into mindlessness. Succinctly stated, it is this: I feel riven by the intense energies my mind and body both exert, their apparent competition for controlling dominion. Who will win: my hyperactive physical body; a twitching accumulation of motor-driven flesh that demands the blood-tribute of suffering, sweat, and bordering-on-brutality exertion? Or, perhaps, the victor is the pale, withered, Gollum-like lord that unceasingly narrates from my skull (riffing on topics as diverse as the universal idiocy of every other motorist to the virtues of Nutella to how ecstatically beautiful well-written essays on WalMarts of Mississippi can be). 

Must one win by submitting the other into oblivion? And really, is it a fair fight-- pitting the merciless, tan muscle of my flesh against the misshapen shadow creature of my brain? No, I don't think so. I don't.  Of course, I must tell myself this at this particular moment, to keep myself buoyed above a breakdown. But, when I sincerely check that internal compass that has literally never, ever been wrong (predicting with an eerie accuracy who I will be seated next to, of my fellow gate-mates, on the plane as well as more weighty life decisions, such as landing this internship) I know both can thrive. But these sides must be reconciled, equally strong. They must nourish each other rather than tussle. And, all metaphors aside, I am their master. It must not be otherwise attributed.

But, it is hard. I feel, always, an extreme: too little or too much. And now, I feel very much. I am seeing, more clearly and less abstractly than ever before, Becoming. I feel I am being presented some very concrete opportunities and choices regarding the accomplishment of diverse goals I have set for myself. I must make some choices. I must seek to define myself and what values I truly cherish and weigh above others.

This blog has been a public exercise of the private mantra. I have said before, and will say again, that I am a writer, will be a writer, want to be a writer. But saying is not doing. I sight the thing in the distance-- the intention, the idea, the pretty phrase. I just have to go for it. And, I always catch myself the second before leaping off, right as my feet leave the ground-- I abort, force a crash land, blame some obscure phobia of heights or the weather being shitty or my blood sugar is low. I am a stylist, a liar, a bullshitter, a faker. I can always concoct some veil over the truth. But I know, and you know too.

If you have goals, they require leaps. This is a cliche, a sad tired plucked over chicken carcass of a cliche, but I am using it nonetheless. Because I am ready to stop the bullshit. I am ready to stop throwing a web of the language (which I should be using otherwise) over my fears, my laziness, my reticence. Oh? So you're athletic and into being outside and also a pretty good writer and documenter of other humans and expresser of your own slice of the human experience? It's terrible, isn't it? Being so burdened with opportunities, blessings, education, and arbitrarily handed out talent that you don't know what to do with it? 

I'm over it. I am reconciling my forces. Concentrating my powers. Nothing inside me or within me has to die (so absurd to even type this) for me to do anything. Compromises are one thing. Give and take, sure. But I am going to figure it out.

To that end, please stay tuned for details on upcoming projects. I am planning on using my time in Arkansas to initiate some creative nonfiction essay pieces exploring my new surroundings. My camera died, which is a colossal bummer, but if I can't fix it this weekend I will buy a new one, and then I will be able to share with you guys (the 3 people that I think regularly read this thing) where I am and what I'm up to.

Until then, take a look at the Oxford American Tumblr page and see what is one of my specific duties at the OA: curating the bejesus out of this sucker.

I'm a little sleep deprived, and feel I am a few steps away from the resolution (or, as -- God help me-- Oprah would say, the Aha moment) that I was seeking when I began this meandering post, but I feel sufficiently lulled to return to gorging myself on the magnificence of House of Cards and my absolute, unceasing, perfect-for-writing solitude.