Pedaless Bicycle

The light dove might imagine that flight would be easier in empty space

MOMENTUM AND IMBALANCE
As a child, I remember thinking there was something magical about how a bicycle stays up. It made no sense to me that while staying still, lateral imbalances would tip it over, yet somehow forward motion seemed to appease the imbalances. Once I got the hang of riding one, I was again shocked to find that nothing feels more stable. In my older age, when I began long-distance cycling, I discovered that if you stay steadily peddling for long enough, everything within you begins to seem very still; one would hardly think of cycling as any kind of balancing act.

My summer was very busy with post-covid social affairs, it was nice but exhausting. I got the overall impression of seeing the last couple of years sort of etched over peoples faces. It feels harsh to say, but I like to think these discernments are based on what I can see of the state of their hearts, and not some super-egoic estimation of their social standing. Initially, these brief first glances weighed sluggishly on my mind. I know that not everyone can be 'doing super great' all of the time; I'm not doing super great all of the time. Additionally, we are getting older. However, there was a quality to it that felt to me like a microcosmic reflection of larger historical waves, and part of me doesn't want to see people I love to be so tied to the zeitgeist that they're psychically overtaken by its breaks.

STRUGLELESS or PEDALESS
Talking to another friend about the general air of mauvaise foi we were finding in people around us, remarked that they thought an economic depression could be good for people. They felt that a lot of the sadness they were detecting was people getting stuck in their comfort. That no one cooks for themselves much anymore, that everything is too easy, and there’s nothing to buckle down and struggle for. My first impression was that I know plenty of broke people who don't cook for themselves. But I take their point, rich or poor we can be weighed down by having nowhere to point our lives.

INDIVIDUAL
Once I cleaned out the house of an old friend after they'd tried to commit suicide, obvious their situation was extensive and complex. But what I saw in the visible circulation patterns traced in a long un-mopped floor was literal stuckness; between bedroom, bathroom and fridge. And I'd like to tell myself and others that at any moment, I know they had the ability to break out of that literally ingrained infinite loop. I wondered how much different the world would be if they had: My heart says disproportionately better.

INDIVIDUAL TO SOCIOLOGICAL
What exactly constitutes the thing inside of human experience that I would like to describe metaphorically as the forward motion of the bike? Not pedaling seems like the easiest thing, but falling over isn’t. Is this the possession of Sartre’s bad faith? A failure to act on hope. A desire-lobotomy? Is it like being the end of history? Do bees suffer in these ways? Is this what colony collapse disorder feels like? Is this Byung Chul Han’s denial of the other? A world that forces the I to produce itself? high-jacked libidinal energies, accumulating in a blend of self-narrowing narcissism? The narcissist sees the world happening to them, with no notion of how they happen to the world.

INSTITUTIONAL POSSIBILITIES
I was walking to the grocery store to buy oatmeal when I passed by a metro station. A man who had been hanging around the entry joined me lock-step, and began to tell me, “my life is over, my dick doesn’t work anymore.” Since this isn’t usually the drift of my encounters with people at the metro station, I burst out laughing, and strangely he began to laugh also. I asked him, "what’s wrong with your dick?" (Notably, he seemed very young to be having dick trouble) He explained that he loved weed. He smoked a lot of it, and at some point, he got so high that he suddenly felt he was being raped by a spirit. He was left feeling emasculated, explaining in detail how he had been the bottom in this situation. Take this as you will (I don't usually bring this up in casual conversation), but something that could only be described that way, has happened to me as well, after eating a brownie. So I told him and he seemed relieved by that. He went on to tell me that he had felt like he’d lost his soul, he felt completely violated, so he went to see a psychologist. He told the psychologist what he told me, and she put him on anti-psych meds. The meds, he felt, had wreaked havoc on his overall health. He told me this time represented a collapse in his life, that it had ruined his youth and his opportunity, and now, worst of all, he cannot use his dick. 

MORAL GROUND
I began to like the guy. He followed me into the grocery store and tried to convince me not to buy oatmeal, that the grocery store was robbing me by charging $5. Instead, he really wanted me to buy cream of chicken soup, but ew. Anyways as we walked back towards the metro station he told me that now all he thought of was revenge. Initially, I thought he meant towards the psychologist, but turns out he is a bigger-picture sort of guy. He said he felt like he was owed a sort of revenge against the universe and women more specifically. After this, I found this man to be pretty convinced by the idea of making the world a little shittier in the small ways that he could. And yet, he didn't seem like a violent or bad guy, he just seemed, well honestly, lost. I tried to tell him, “hey, I’m not religious, not trying to convert you, but forgiveness is for sure the way. And trust me, I may not know much, but if you want to make your situation better, you could."

PITY
I realized, I just don't want to pity anyone, anymore.

Even my sorriest source of worry has choices; the power and the means to reconnect with the basic foundations of physical and spiritual health. I don’t want to get conned by sentimentality into looking upon others as though that power is not always at the tip of their fingers. It seems like niceness, but I'm beginning to fear it's just demeaning, just adds to the overall air of lacking possibility. I do understand how impossible those choices can feel, but I like to be pragmatic, and I think the truth is—and certainly, the power lies in acknowledging—that the seemingly impossible just simply is not. Pity (even call it by its more virtuous name 'empathy,' if you like) only affirms impossibility and I don't think that actually is nice.

ONWARD ORIENTED STILLNESS
I have become a believer in Rilke’s imperative: You must change your life.

But I think I'd like to amend the wording (amend Rilke, bold I know). 'You must change your life' feels like a task, where the onus is on you, and—in light of all I have said above—if you don't do it then the world's gunna end. But really, the imperative I'm looking for is more like: Change is life, so live.

Like the bike, I get the sense that if we don't overcome ourselves—continuously—time demands that lateral imbalances will bring us down. And we need possibilities, a hopeful place to go to intrinsically motivate the going. With skill, that doesn't mean we ought to exploit ourselves in 'the hustle'—keeping with the metaphor, I'd liken that work to a spin class—but we will also burn ourselves out, trying to balance at the narcissus' stoplight of mauvaise foi concerns. Fortunately, there is repose in motion; the unstuck rest; the harmonic balance; the durational stillness that emerges once motion grows steady.

“Riding a bike is all in the mind”