As it happens, I am back at my desk at work. The morning was humid and damp, and, unfortunately, the flowers on my desk - this beautiful surprise waiting for me when I got back from vacation - are wilting. So it goes.

I'm restless and antsy. My pedal unscrewed itself from the crank on the way in this morning - why? I don't know - that's not supposed to happen.

I'm discombobulated!

I got back from vacation in Salt Lake City and feel somewhat defeated, deflated to return to a routine that is bracketed by time spent at work. Not unhappy or depressed, but rather, aware of the importance of experiencing new things and the extent to which a 9 to 5 job fetters that, binding the will, energy, and ability in manacles.

I have a sudden claustrophobia, I'm realizing - I need time and space. I need a long afternoon to myself, I need to clean up my shit in my house. I need to listen to REM on repeat. I need a day that doesn't end. I need time for liesurely bike rides - not commuting, not racing, but fun and exploration. I need, again and again, to go places I've never been. I need the clarity of a mountain top, the exciting heartbeat of thin air.

In the past - in more punk rock days - I would dogmatically spew lines about how selling one's labor is the death of the soul, that life it too short to do so, that sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul, that product is the excrement of action, that lived experience must be elevated to the status of art... slogan after slogan... and yet here I am. Quagmires - student loans, health insurance are what keep me at the desk.

I'm thinking of foregoing a race this weekend in favor of a ride to the beach. I was just thinking about how I haven't been in an ocean in a log time. Might be good for me. Shake some of the cobwebs out of my brain.

I get a big stupid smile in my heart when I'm moving through places that amaze me. This one moment last night, coming back from the velodrome out in Queens, biking past Shea Stadium and through a huge cloud of smoke from a car fire.

And then this morning, after a pre-work ride to Piermont, coming back across the Hudson River, seeing Manhattan in all of its glory.

I bought a cute little cycling hat. This is one of the best things about cycling.

If I glance at myself in the mirror, I can see a dark smudge on my forehead, about two inches long and three quarters of an inch wide, next to my hairline. I figured that it was from biking all day in the sun on Saturday - I got tanned in accordance with the vent holes on my helmet. No more!, I declared, and bought a cute little cycling hate, so as to avoid silly through-helmet tan patterns.

Also because it's a funny little cycyling hat. It says "Columbus" on it, which is the kind of steel that one of my bikes is made of.

This morning, several people asked me how my ride was, so I told them that I did a longer ride before coming in to work. They asked how long, and I told them forty five miles, which is the truth. "Wow, you must be in really great shape," is a frequent comment I get, but I'm not too interested in it.

I prefer to talk about how I'm just really proud of myself for having abandoned some unhealthy habits in favor of this far more healthy habit. I'm pretty proud of what I can do with my body - it's an achievement for me, and it's changed my lfie significantly.

I'm wary of sounding as though what is important to me is the Biker Points that I rack up - the mileage, the rides, the placings in races - because at the heart of it is the fun I have, the mobility I've aquired, and the pleasure that I take from it.

I take some inspiration from Jeanette Winterson's Product is the excrement of action (which, by the way, mimics some of the stuff we talked about a few years ago about elevating Lived Experience to the status of Art; oh, and, apologies for linking to crimethinc...): "After all, it's so complicated to have to worry about whether you are really enjoying yourself, how you are feeling in the moment. It is easier to focus on the results, the hard evidence of your life; these things seem easier to understand, and easier to control." When I'm in the saddle, I'm feeling my legs, my hands, my ass, my pace, the wind in my face. I'm looking at the view, I'm moving through it, I'm feeling the pavement through my tires, I'm feeling my feet through the rotation of the pedals. These moments come frequently and they're moments when I am truly enjoying what I am doing, and I can honestly say that I am present to my body, to my self.

I learn lessons from riding.

A foray into reflections on the "blogosphere"? What?

I've been having problems with blogs lately. Some of the fuss over at Tenured Radical gets repeated The Combat Philosopher (who, by the way, has an interesting post about some environmentally despicable things happening - among a host of other despicable things, of course - in New Orleans).

This all seems uncomfortably similar to what happened in Wesleying's post - itself mainly a link to a Wesleyan Argus article - about an incident involving the Middletown Police violently attacking a student of color outside of a party. The comments section was flooded with idiocy from people all too willing to use the internet as a way to shed their humanity and somehow argue that justice has been served with the attacking and pepperspraying of a student who they don't like.

Assholes.

(It makes me glad that my blog isn't heavily trafficked - not that my daydreamy self-indulgence is particularly inviting to inflammatory remarks. Though I have a livejournal that got some idiocy visited upon it by people who chose not to identify themselves - apparently, criticizing racism in the classroom is not good, oh, and something about how liberals are dumb, too. right)

I recently sent an email to The Gothamist, pointing out that while they're a convenient news source, their overall quality goes down as soon as somebody clicks on "Comments" and is exposed to a veritable bevy of racist and sexist remarks, particularly any time Al Sharpton is mentioned, and frequently when he isn't.

Remember when about a month ago, the New York Times broke the news about how people use the anonymity of the internet to act in ways that they probably wouldn't 'IRL'?

It makes me wonder if, as more and more of people's communication and interaction takes place through the internet (as it has for a chunk of people in this world), people just become worse human beings.

Today, it was rainy, and people bumped me in the face with their umbrellas, but I wrote poetry and picked up an Italo Calvino book. Kurt Vonnegut died recently. There - I waxed blogoriphic, as I am wont to do, so as to keep this post consistent with my others.

There's something about Interstate 95 in New Jersey that's magnified by a wet, humid Saturday morning in January - the whole state seemed moody and hungover, the worse for wear. On the way back, the Delaware Bridge was obscured by fog; crossing the George Washington Bridge after sunset we saw the lights climbing the suspension cables before disappearing into the dark fog. Even Manhattan was barely visible.

Several times on the drive I pulled out my camera, but put it away for lack of space on the memory card, and for another reason too. Photographs are just photographs - they can beautifully augment an experience, capture a moment, or the process of doing that can leave you stuck behind a viewfinder.

So, attempts to write the song that perfectly archives this or that Life Experience - with humor, hindsight, regret, nostaligia - can occasionally be detrimental to one's ability to learn from a situation. Archiving life by writing about it is a good idea, but sometimes those songs and stories must remain unfinished, so that I can remember what I carry with me - past, pain, joy, love. Keeping yourself firmly rooted in the past is part of staying in the present.

And, with that said, I'll close with a joke about how coming to visit somebody From The Future is way more of an exciting and terrifying prospect than saying to somebody, "I Am Coming To You From The Paaaaaaaaast!" Because really, that should not come as a surprise to anybody...