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even virtue in others
In this world men become envious of others, just because the others are good, while they themselves are not so good, and they cannot bear this. It is strange indeed that men should not suffer even virtue in others.
-- Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari's translation of the Mahabharata
unquestioning
When authorities say we should not politicize something, they mean that the politics of the status quo should not be questioned.
-- Rebecca Solnit, Looking Away From Beauty: What remains hidden behind the nationalism of the Olympic Games (Orion Magazine)
Found via Toban Black, Athletes and nation-states at the Olympics
framing our discussion
I walked out of Art Etc. feeling full, connected, buoyant: way more than I paid for.
The look of the frame is called distressed, and that was probably the look on my face, too, when I saw it. That splotching wasn't there in the frame sample I'd chosen last month, though the previous attendant had spent quite awhile helping me select just the right match for the photo. Edie cheerfully offered to do it over. That would've required more time and another cross-town trip, though, and I explained I'm not so mobile with such parcels on bicycle. (I didn't tell her Jenita's Christmas present was already 7 months late.)
She said she carries framed photos on her bike all the time, but offered we experiment with the frame a bit -- and brought it into the studio. Steel wool and solvent to tone down the high-contrast speckles. Evened it down and odded it up ~ til I was happy.
She asked about my least favorite routes to ride.
Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.
-- W.E.B. DuBois
Commiseration / Bridging: the Lorain-Carnegie puncture lane, fishtailing after rain on Columbus's slippery steel grating. Charging up Cedar, freedom on Hough, the highway that is Chester. Roads and roads.
She and her husband ride the winter too. Wool, neoprene, gore-tex. Balaklavas, breathe-ability. Boots in 40-or-below to avoid losing feet heat through clipless cleats. Racks, fenders, panniers. They have 18 bicycles in the garage: cargo bikes, winter bikes, touring bikes, a tandem...
Cars beget rage. The people inside, cagers. ("private metal pods with blackened windows".) Her cager friends ask just how to say "Hi." Two short beeps means hello. Anyone that lays on the horn is obviously saying something else.
She packaged and wrapped it when the paste had dried. I sat down and we continued talking. The world of cars, our house of cards. The future, if people don't wise up. The fun of slowing down. (If only they knew!) And one's freedoms at another's peril. Interdependence. The brick roads underneath the asphalt will resurface.
The gift of the multiple crises we face is that in order to address them successfully, we will have to fundamentally change who we are. Some say people don't change, but they do when they have to. And part of that change is the capacity to listen, to put aside those things that separate us as unimportant, and honor the core values that unite us.
-- Paul Hawken, on Blessed Unrest and Deep Economics, (interview by Jon Lebkowsky, Worldchanging.com)
We're wary but hopeful. She calls it skeptimism.
She's sure that we'll see each other out riding soon.
I'm sure that I'll suggest Art Etc. to anyone that wants a really great custom frame, and to find out what Etc. can mean for them.
So how about this? How about we plan our communities to be social and business hubs that people can walk to and from--cars unrequired--and participate in in meaningful way? How about we attach these hubs by public transportation? How about we build our communities in ways that both help people feel less alienated and let them lead less resource intensive lives?
-- Colin Beavan, (aka No Impact Man,) More on community versus consumption--smart growth
but can you tok the tok
My neighbors produce ungodly amounts of trash. Most of the time I curse them when I see the pile at the end of the driveway, but if there's something good, I'll curse them, then grab it.
Apparently, they didn't want this wok anymore. I didn't ask if they wanted the dinner I made with it tonight.
It sat on my living-room floor for a few weeks because I didn't know what to do about its stickiness and propensity to rust. A few short YouTube tutorials, though, and I learned how to properly wash and season it.
It makes a nice stir-fry. I wonder what they didn't like about it, or what they did to it... and if they have a hoak to go along with it.
myriad
There's an old man sitting in his car on my street. Lights off, engine not running, windows up, and club across his steering wheel. I dropped off the plastic plant pot in my driveway and u-turned to ride by again. I had to give a nod for looking at him, and he had to mouth some greeting.
My plastic mailbox had let some rainstorm in, which made my Bonus Eligibility Miles offer harder to tear in two. I had forgotten there was a hunk of cornbread left, and ate it with leftover stir-fry, then finished the fake ice cream that I was going to save for tomorrow's breakfast. I'm wondering, again, where these house flies are coming from. I was wondering the same thing before leaving the house this morning and before going to bed last night.
Sometimes ideas bounce around nicely as thoughts, but don't hold their shape when you take them out and stand the words up.
On the way home, I had reminded myself to look up "velodrome trackstand" videos and send one to Frank. So YouTube collected much of the waning evening. I guess that Google made some money for me doing that, but I don't know how.
I don't think the old man's out there anymore. I didn't want to walk too close to his car, in case he was there, (maybe for fear I'd have to nod again,) but I didn't see a head or any white hair. I looked stupid walking half a block and turning around. Maybe he got tired of feeling sorry for himself.
layers of paint and mystery
And when, after long centuries of slow forgetting, migration, and climatic change, the knowledge of the mystery was finally lost, we in our anguish traded partnership for dominance, traded harmony with nature for rape of nature, traded poetry for the sophistry of science. In short, we traded our birthright as partners in the drama of the living mind of the planet for the broken pot shards of history, warfare, neurosis, and -- if we do not quickly awaken to our predicament -- planetary catastrophe.
As the layers of paint and mystery are pulled away, it becomes apparent that unpredictability, chaos, and madness are some of the most important cogs in the city's machinery. The deck is stacked with jokers. There is a ghost in this machine, and it appears to be stupid and/or drunk. This situation will not change, because the human condition is its source.
-- Robert Hurst, The Art of Urban Cycling
cultivating freedom
The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war.
The point of an economy, even a dynamic economy, is not to have more and more; it is to liberate us from the economic--to provide a material platform from which we may go on to build the good life. That's the alternative American dream.
-- Jerome M. Segal, Graceful Simplicity: Toward a Philosophy and Politics of Simple of Living (found via No Impact Man: An alternative American dream)
