Where’s the Awe

I wake up intermittently through the night because every turn of the body ignites pain in my collarbone. At least by waking I’m able to prevent further damage to myself. Still, sleep is a chore.

I’m at least finding some mobility returning. I’m putting on button-up shirts more easily, flossing, and nearly tying shoelaces. They are all things that I couldn’t do last week.

I’m finishing a book that I decided to revisit: The Damnation Game by Clive Barker. It’s a favorite from college. I was curious whether the book would enrapture me like it did years ago.

Parts of the book were equally as page-turning, such as the wild and macabre introduction. However, I also struggled to find an off-switch for my inner critic.

This section has too much dialogue, and all of the dialogue is exposition, I’d think.

This section’s character motivation is questionable.

Needless to say, some of the magic was lost. Often in place of story immersion was skepticism. A mind searching for flaws replaced a mind that dared to wonder.

I recognized this inner critic and managed to barricade it for the book’s final section. For a few hours, I was again attuned to my inner dreamer.

What is it about age that causes us to increasingly kill the magic around us?

At times, the industrialization of the mind seems as inevitable as the industrialization of the environment.

It’s as though the process of adulting wrought enough grim realities to shock the inner dreamer into submission. Survival and magic are mutually exclusive. Life is work, politics, and a steady and horrifying debilitation of one’s own body. Where is there time for awe?

Sometimes finding that sense of awe can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s there though, if you allow it to be. Just open a book from your youth and make the choice to see it.

Fear of Finality

The morning after Halloween, I rode my Giant road bike along the Riverfront Trail as dawn broke.

The faint sun was veiled behind a dense sheet of clouds. About thirty minutes into the ride, a fog drifted in and choked out the environment. I could see nothing but gray. The animals, the trees, and the river seemed to no longer exist.

I found my mind drifting like the fog around me. I thought about Halloween and what scares people.

I think at the core of what scares people is the fear of finiteness, which is entwined with the fear of death. That one’s existence and consciousness can be wiped out in a moment is what keeps people up at night. It is what has helped conjure various religions and the stranger superstitions such as astrology and tarot cards. Their purpose is to deny this fear from being. We want to believe there is purpose for our existence and that we will continue for eternity. What is it like to not be?

I see this fear played out in every facet of the world.

Corporations and governments, like all organisms, want dominance, but empires come and go.

Modern young adults like to speak of building legacies. They expect their life volumes will be in print forever, but said volumes are quickly lost in the library archives. This reminds me of the ending to Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. The city’s greatest gangster, who spent his entire life vying for power and control, is buried in the city. Then, over the course of a hundred years, we see nature steadily ruin his grave until it is barely perceptible to the human eye at all.

Money, like the tide, ebbs and flows.

Things fall apart, and things cease to be. But, this is only scary if it is denied.

It is not “ceasing to be” that scares me a fraction as much as something else: wasting the time in which I am.

Hustle Culture

Hustle culture can seem omnipresent in the city.

Cars rush forward at the break of dawn because hurry is the queen bee of the hive. Stoplight to stoplight, interstate entry to interstate exit, drivers hope to save ten seconds, for the sake of being on time (the white rabbit is always a slave to the queen). Their mood and their morale are fully dependent on the mercy of the stoplight and the traffic congestion. The roads, and their vehicles, are therefore their masters.

Breakfast is not so much an experience as it is an inconvenience, solved via the drive-through.

Coffee is slammed, not sipped.

There are agendas for the day. Emails to answer. Calls to take. Appointments to arrive at.

The best to-do list, according to hustle culture, is one that forever adds and never subtracts.

To that I say, the best to-do list is one thrown in the garbage and forgotten!

A breakfast is better spent over three hours than over three minutes. Give me jokes, countless cups of good coffee (and no deadline to finish them), merry company, and sunshine! Let me taste real food and engage with real people.

A rushed drive to work is best replaced by a slow walk through a forest.

A screen is best replaced by a book, a painting, or a music album to listen to.

An obsession over retirement is best replaced by a spontaneous and fun hobby for today.

Fretting over the future is best replaced by contentment for this beautiful, precious moment, a moment in which we are aware of our own existence.

This is what I aspire to… which is why I’ll take my time with my coffee this morning.

Soldier On

It seems fitting that Dave Mustaine, the frontman of legendary metal act Megadeth, just released what some critics are already calling his band’s best album since Countdown to Extinction. The guy has an endless supply of vigor and musical fervor. He’s survived decades in an industry that sees most rock acts dissolve in a blink. And if you thought that he might mellow with age, you were wrong. The new Megadeth album The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! is as fast-tempo’d and furious as anything Megadeth has ever dropped.

Mustaine survived cancer; his purported 51 radiation treatments, coupled with the pandemic, seem to have redoubled his artistic flair, as well as his awareness of his own mortality.

One of my favorite tracks, Soldier On, is about the desire to persist in spite of anything, or anyone, that life hurdles at you. It’s about the simple need to keep going.

The song makes me think about why I embark on long runs. Why go so far? Why push past fatigue, mile after mile, hitting the earth with a force equal to up to five times the weight of my own body? Simply put, because it’s only when you exhaust yourself fully that you understand who you are. Maybe it’s another form of Tyler Durden’s treatment for materialism (“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything”).

As the miles pass, the logical mind takes a back seat and a more primordial self helms the vehicle that is you. Your trivial anxieties and plannings for the future, your dreads and longings for the past, and all that’s left of your ego can seem to dissolve.

You’ve peeled every layer from the past that piled onto you over the years, and at the core is just an organic being attempting to persist, attempting to push forward, one step at a time. And that experience reveals an important part of what the core of your being actually wants: to soldier on.

Conversion to Machine

I enter age 37 with a desire to take a trip and get lost on a random adventure. In a banal daily work routine, which can feel like a constant slideshow of indistinguishable and bland virtual meetings, interactions seem progressively colder and more detached. Work hours pass in purgatorial fashion. All smiling is off-camera. All laughter is on mute. There is an agenda and we must tackle it. We must perform. There is no time for small talk. No time for warmth.

The conversion to machine is gradual and is predicated on the need for comfort.

I try to counter these dark feelings, which I write about freely here, with cycling. Cycling is purely for me, the most selfish of hobbies. Adults generally don’t give a damn that I can ride a bike really far. There’s no one to impress. It’s not like my old days as a swimmer, when I won to gain the adulation of everyone around me. I just find cycling fun. Adults are often too consumed with their own consumption to be concerned with activities involving movement. Cycling is my antidote to the soul sucking virus that is careerism.

Is there still a ghost in the adults of today, or has the spirit left the shell?

Virtual work means that jokes are followed by silence and emails are followed by a false sense of urgency.

“This is the new trend!” I’m told, but I note that the general population has gained misery, weight, and anxiety since the pandemic. There is always a trade-off for convenience. Faust doesn’t grant wishes without taking something in return.

Years ago, I was lost somewhere in Russia. It was a random trip I took while living in China. It’s a coastal city with a relatively friendly atmosphere.

Getting lost is actually pretty fun; cycling reminds me of that when I take a wrong turn. Trips remind me of that when I meander aimlessly through the foreign city streets. Adults hate being lost, but kids generally love it. Adults prefer predictability and assurance. A destination is the ultimate form of salvation for the worker. They want a linear path without bumps. Point A to Point B, and not a minute to waste.

Yet the white rabbit is always a slave to the queen, as Alice in Wonderland showed. But the modern adults wants pavement, an air conditioned environment, and a to-do list that forever grows, forever demanding haste. I cannot relate: I find solace in the rocky terrain of a faraway trail, where haste is revealed to be arbitrary.

I remember hiking Eagle’s Nest Hill in Vladivostok and quickly getting lost, somewhere off the trail due to a lack of focus, and not really caring. Time ceases to matter when there is no agenda. Can adults abandon agendas for awhile? Who cares if the paved route is far away? I remember being somewhere high, on a bluff, overlooking the city. So I still arrived at some interesting destination. It’s the randomness and unpredictability that I prefer. I was on the opposite side of the world, which is both thrilling and terrifying.

The computer, and its primary appendage the phone, is placed at the altar of the modern posh careerist. It demands of its flock a new form of faith and a false set of promises. Mortality can be avoided, it says, with the swipe of a credit card, the pop of a pill bottle, or the adherence to a politician. Swiping requires money, which requires work, which requires sitting and staring and hurrying.

May we all be lost somewhere, in a strange city we’ve never been to, and wander aimlessly, without an agenda, in search of new adventures. Maybe somewhere, in the midst of that wandering, we’ll reencounter our long lost inner child.

The Last Day

My last day spent as a 36-year-old was a stark contrast from my last day as a 35-year-old.

I spent my last week at age 35 bedridden due to a bicycle injury that prevented me from running for the remainder of 2021. On my last day at age 35, I dreamt of running, but struggled to leave my apartment.

In contrast, I spent my last week at age 36 running longer distances than I ever had in my life. With each run my right foot feels better, not worse. I often imagine myself running like a Kenyan, gliding over the Iten hills and along the top edges of the terrain’s escarpments. In my dream I possess the seemingly effortless fluidity of a Kenyan athlete. I snap from this vision and reality reminds me that I don’t have their running ability, but then again, arguably no one else does either.

Because I ran throughout my last week at age 36, I slept for as long as possible through my last day at age 36. I ate donuts and drank a brown sugar shaken espresso from Starbucks. In short, I indulged, and I don’t regret it in the slightest. I hadn’t indulged in awhile. I might as well be gluttonous on the last day.

I visited a doctor for a final evaluation of an elbow injury that I suffered from a bike crash about a month ago. The X-rays were negative. The elbow sprained, but it did not tear. No surgery is needed. Time will heal the elbow. It might be weeks, and it might be months, but it’ll heal. That news was a very nice birthday present.

I continue to heal the pinched nerves in both of my hands, remnants of overuse during a bike packing trip I embarked on two weeks ago. I’m still reflecting on that trip and will post more about it.

I think of these injuries and realize that even when I’m healing my foot, I seem to be injuring other body parts.

I am about to finish repairing my gravel bike. In that aforementioned crash last month, the bike’s front wheel bent and its derailleur, cassette, and hanger broke. Yet somehow I didn’t break. The doctor I visited told me I have strong bones. I think that’s true, but these crashes also add up over time. I don’t know if I have another crash in me.

“How are you feeling?” The bike shop manager asked me when I took my damaged bike in for a repair. He noted my scrapes, bruises, and swollen elbow. It was a question I don’t often get from anyone besides my immediate loved ones.

We always ask, “How are you doing?” This beckons the default answer, “Good.” I was surprised that someone would ask how I’m feeling.

“I guess I’m good today,” I said.

“I mean, how are you feeling mentally, after the crash? Are you okay? Because after my last crash, I was never the same again. I wasn’t the same cyclist.”

I was touched that someone cared to ask that. It had been awhile since a relative stranger showed care for my wellbeing. I absorbed it for a moment. Was I really okay? Am I?

“I think it might be time for me to only bike on trails and greenways,” I said. I took a deep breath. There was a sense of finality in my words.

“I reached the same conclusion after my last crash,” he replied. “I hope you feel better though and keep cycling.”

“I’ll definitely keep cycling,” I said. “Maybe not on roads though.”

I left the shop and looked out at the clusters of brick and mortar buildings, the gaunt sky, and the constantly flowing currents of traffic that carried with them the acrid scent of car exhaust.

36 is over. There’s no getting it back. I was flawed for that period of time and I’m flawed now, but hopefully I learned a few things through the passage of time. It was quite a journey.

I’m on to 37. I’ll wake up and go for a run. Mentally, I won’t be running through a concrete cluster before work. I’ll be in Kenya, gliding through a valley, or along an escarpment, as the sun crests over the horizon. Away from the screens and keyboard warriors of the sedentary west, and away from the common materialistic ambitions and plastic goals that inundate the office.

Miles from me, a lion will stalk its prey. I will steadily accelerate my pace; the village has long-been out of sight.

Implicit Connections, Necessary Journeys

Dawn shows signs of an eventual takeover by rendering the streets and adjacent buildings in a gaunt gray. I pedal out of my apartment at 6:00 am with my sunglasses hanging from my long sleeve tee. Both my front and rear bike lights blink. I hear the occasional motor in the distance as I maneuver west, where the horizon is darkest, where a few remaining stars still wink. For the most part I am the only person on the road.

Another cyclist pedals furiously the opposite direction. Like me, he wears a backpack and tee. We give each other a faint wave. There is an unspoken and implicit connection between us, one that many cyclists have, and because of this connection, a simple wave speaks a thousand words.

He’s also bike commuting. Our directions have a 180 degree difference and yet the endpoint is the same.

Two days before, I biked along Gravois Greenway. A cyclist behind me pedaled up and rode beside me, directly to my left.

“Where are you commuting from?” He asked. I told him where I was biking from and where I was heading toward. We chatted for a bit as we rode. We talked about our commutes to work, the exhilaration of arriving at an office with beads of sweat hanging from one’s brow, of pedaling up to the front entrance of the office building, of moving a distance through exercise that everyone else would rather sit for.

We road a few more miles and then parted ways. We didn’t need to say what specifically our connection was. It was implicit. The hobby of cycling can run much deeper than simple exercise.

I’m packing my belongings and preparing myself mentally for my most intense bikepacking trip yet. It will take days. My sleeping bag, food, and tent are ready. I’ll pick up my rented bike in Virginia and head north, towards Pittsburgh.

More than 300 miles of cycling and camping is not everyone’s idea of a good time, especially in the summer. But it’s my idea of a good time.

What if you get lost?

All the better.

Away from offices and screens: that’s where I need to be.

On a gravel road, one mile at a time, northbound.

Progression Run and Memories

I embarked on my weekly “long run” this morning a little before 7 am. Tomorrow is July 4th, Independence Day.

The run totaled 12 miles. I kept my pace in a low heart rate zone for the majority of the run; I’m mindful of the human tendency to overdo exercises. I accelerated the final 25 minutes of the run, but felt relatively fresh at the finish.

I prefer having the majority of my long runs in a low heart rate zone because I find myself in a meditative state while running at a prolonged low effort. My mind wanders. There are no thoughts of physical pain or fatigue. This pace is my “forever” zone. It is a pace in which time ceases to exist. My sights are on my environs, not the ground beneath me.

For a brief moment I thought about what I surprisingly miss from living in China (I’m staying in the US, but I did get a lot of value from my time in China). There are several things I admittedly miss, but I’ll only detail one of those things here: the struggle of it all. Through the struggle of figuring out how to persist in China, I found meaning.

The temperature, for example, was almost never ideal. In the summers I baked due to a lack of air conditioning. In the winters I froze due to a lack of adequate heating. And yet somehow I adapted (or attempted to as best I could). It was that adaptation that strengthened me.

In the return to a world utterly obsessed with perfect temperature regulation, I’ve found both comfort and a relative emptiness. The A/C puffs a cool breeze that both soothes my skin and drains my soul.

Every now and then I’ll turn off the air conditioning and let my apartment’s temperature shoot up to around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I try to remind myself that it’s discomfort that spurs growth, not comfort. I’ll let myself sweat it out at night.

I find “discomfort experiments” such as this worthwhile because I am building up to some extreme endurance activities. Endurance running and cycling require the ability to withstand and understand discomfort. So, I try to disrupt the status quo here and there. I think back to my life in China. I try to resist the innate temptation to overcompensate with comfort.

In China, my struggles were also exciting. The struggle to communicate, the struggle to eat adequately, the struggle to adapt. They caused stress and yet they enlivened me. I miss those things and more. I don’t plan to return to China, but these struggles taught me valuable lessons.

My thoughts of China were brief and mixed with several other random reflections.

Another thought I had on my trail run regarded the animals I often cross on my path. I’ve seen a menagerie of wildlife: geese, turkey, robins, crows, squirrels, rabbits, possums, and even a family of beaver. There is something deeply satisfying in crossing paths with these animals. I’ve gained a better understanding of some species-specific behavior. I’ve had a better glimpse of the world as it was meant to exist, outside the vice grip of the city.

Turkey, for example, are much flightier than geese, which will often “stand their ground” defensively. The turkey take off running.

I suspect that distance running is really about connectedness. You can’t find that on a treadmill. It’s about experiencing the earth’s surface, developing a relationship with it, and finding connection with nature. A treadmill is more of a torture device. I can’t run on those things for the life of me. They lack fun in every sense of the word.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. For the sake of memories I’ll post a photo that was taken about 4 years ago. This one still feels like yesterday. I feel like the thrill of it all captures how I think of my time in China, in general: exhilarating, nauseating, unique, and brief enough to feel like a dream.

I rode this in China and then fought to avoid puking for an hour afterward:

The Need for a “What If”

I find myself needing a hypothetical “what if” in order to look forward to the future. That “what if” scenario is simple:

“What if my important accomplishment or action, which I was placed on this planet to fulfill, has not yet occurred?”

I find the need to posit this scenario because as a former elite athlete, it was easy to assume for the better part of a decade that my greatest accomplishment already transpired. This is a debilitating state of mind that ensnares many athletes because their athletic careers typically end well before the halfway marker of life.

I freed myself of this mental prison with a hypothetical question, and whether or not it’s true is inconsequential: “What if there is still a greater adventure ahead?”

I think of Bilbo Baggins and his reluctance to leave the safety of the Shire. After all, Gandalf reminds him, there is no guarantee of a safe return, or a return at all.

Yet something catalyzes Bilbo to embark on his greatest adventure and to eventually slay a dragon. He is about 50 years old when he leaves the Shire, which in theory would mark him well past his physical prime.

I am turning 37 soon. I spent the first quarter of age 36 learning to walk, and then run, again. As I embark on longer runs and longer bike rides I have no delusions of winning any sort of championships, nor do I care to.

There is, though, a unique excitement in knowing that I just ran or biked farther than I ever had in my life.

About a week ago I managed a long Sunday run of 15 miles (24 km). That was the longest run of my life, and I finished it feeling fresh. Today I biked a little more than 50 miles (80 km) without stopping. My “injured” foot remains in good health and I find myself feeling physically “lighter” than I have in the past.

Why do I feel lighter? Maybe the burden of expectations has finally been lifted from my spirit. Without it I’m free to experiment and fail.

I suspect that I have a lot of miles to run, and plenty of engine to run them. That’s why I signed up for my first full marathon, which will take place in April 2023. There’s plenty of time to build to it. I have a dream of running several. I’m in it for the long haul.

I don’t obsess over any sort of victory anymore, but I do feel a compulsion in my soul to finish my first marathon without stopping. Maybe it’s yet another form of my battle with my own mortality. Maybe I finally found the metaphorical dragon to slay, as Bilbo did. Or maybe the marathon is simply my “Gandalf”, my catalyst to introduce me to even better adventures ahead.

After all, why run roads when mountains are an option?

What if the best is yet to come?

Some Life Reflections

I learned that my uncle passed away earlier this week. It was something of a shock to me because the possibility of his passing wasn’t remotely on my mind. Unlike when my grandfather passed away last year, I had no dreams of a final communication. He was 67.

My first thought is that life is short and precious. He lived a very full life. Longevity in terms of years should never be assumed under any circumstance. I hope for longevity and yet if my own span is 67 years, I’m past the halfway marker. If my own span is less than 67 years, what the hell is the point of planning for retirement?

I find myself constantly moving these days. The realization of my own mortality is part of the reason for that. I suspect that somewhere behind me, Death approaches, scythe in hand. I don’t know how many miles of headway I have. Continuous movement may bide more time. But then again, nothing is guaranteed.

I always had good encounters with my uncle Bill. I didn’t get to know him well enough. I suspect we often feel that way upon the death of a relative.

I remember when he and his daughter drove to Minnesota to watch me compete at the NCAA Swimming Championships. It was my freshman year, which was about seventeen years ago. I remember looking up in the stands when I was preparing to swim and seeing him wearing my college team’s apparel. He was cheering loudly and it meant the world to me. He didn’t know me all that well and certainly had no obligation to attend. His being there really warmed my heart. He struck me as someone with an intense sense of loyalty to family.

He never knew this—in fact my own family never knew this—but he became something of a legend between me and my roommate in college. We always talked about “being tough like Bill.” When culture seemed to weaken, it needed to “toughen up like Bill.” “Bill’s out in weather thirty degrees below zero, working on a construction site to help feed his family, and these college wusses can’t get out of bed for class!” It’s true that he was a construction worker in North Dakota under some of the harshest weather imaginable. He was blue collar to the core, tough as nails, and due to that toughness one would wonder if anything could ever eventually take him down. He also had a warm smile and a wicked sense of humor that I appreciated.

I wish that I made the effort to tell Bill about those stories. I hadn’t spoken to him in a long time, though I wish I had. As I get older and I experience more family members passing away, I sense that we often think of the things we wish we had said, not the things we said. I hope Bill knew that I really appreciated him though, however brief our encounters.

I’ll close this blog with the thought that tomorrow is a new day—hopefully a day devoid of getting caught up in the everyday petty bs concerns—and hopefully the new day brings a new adventure. I’ll think of Bill as I do my best to “just have a good time.” I‘ll make plans, but not retirement plans. There are no plans for my 67th year, or my 66th! My plans involve gravel roads, a desert sky, granite mountains, a bicycle, and a menagerie of wildlife.

Montana Hiking: Day 3

We began our final day in Montana with a breakfast at Feed Cafe on Main Street, where I had two of the best slabs of bacon I’ve ever tasted. The food helped erase the effects of the Montana-made Bourbon that I imbibed the night before.

After breakfast and a short nap we ventured to a different mountain range for the final hike of the trip. This was arguably the most challenging hike; it took us several hours to complete. The trek took us several thousand feet up in elevation and the temperature dropped more than twenty degrees from the start to the trail’s apex. The views were breathtaking. We almost didn’t make it to the trail due to ice and snow covering the ground near the trail’s entrance, which our rental car’s tires struggled to grip.

Though I entered Montana in the best physical condition of my life, the high altitude still taxed my lungs and the steep inclines strained my glutes. I was plenty sore and fatigued by trip’s end.

I was told to bring bear spray with me on each hike, but I forgot to buy any. Luckily we did not encounter any bears. It’s my understanding that the region has a mixture of black bears and grizzlies. You obviously don’t want to cross paths with either, but you really don’t want to cross paths with a grizzly. A male grizzly will eat its own child without remorse; it therefore would have no qualms having a human for dinner.

We finished our final day with a walk through downtown. We ventured through a few apparel stores (I just window shopped) and ate one final meal. Each of us had an “elk burger” and for each of us it was the first time eating elk meat. When in Montana, you just gotta try Elk. It’s a very lean meat and frankly I find it almost indistinguishable from bison. Maybe my tastebuds just aren’t refined enough.

I’ll miss Bozeman. The people are friendly and welcoming, and the pace of life is objectively much slower than big city life. I prefer that. My time spent in cities has convinced me that despite their conveniences, they are not natural for people to inhabit. In fact they may be detrimental to the human psyche. Murder exists almost everywhere, but it’s most prevalent in cities and extremely rare in many rural areas. Many people in cities, especially these days, have a certain angst and anxiety about them that troubles me.

I’ve read before (but cannot cite the source) that growing up in the city doubles your risk of developing schizophrenia when compared to growing up in the countryside. This does not surprise me. Nor does the detrimental mental effect that being amassed by tall buildings must have. I enjoy the conveniences of city life and have good friends that live in cities prosperously, but every convenience has its set of consequences.

I’ll conclude this blog with a dream I recently had. I don’t know what it means, but I think it’s loosely linked to my mountain trip and a cynical feeling that suffused me upon returning to the city.

In the dream, I made one last return to my old high school swimming pool. Somehow, inexplicably, there was a swimming competition being held and I was competing in it. My coach announced to a packed crowd via microphone: “We’ve managed to bring Matt back for one final race! This is your last chance to support the guy who broke every record we ever had.” I nervously prepared for a race behind the starting blocks and broke my goggles from my nervousness. Someone gave me a spare pair and I quickly broke those as well. When I finally adjusted my third pair of goggles, I realized that the pool, which was supposed to be indoors, had the opposite wall removed. The pool seemed to extend to eternity. Behind the normal length of the pool, I saw obstacle courses such as climbing ropes and white water rapids. “Obstacles courses!?” I yelled at one of my brothers. “Yeah, you didn’t know?” He said. “That’s what you have to compete with now.” I woke from the dream as I frantically tried to prep myself for a new challenge.

Cyclical

I find it fascinating that my indoor plants have an innate understanding of seasons. In spite of their environs’ artificial temperature and a routine watering that’s ambivalent to seasons, they bloom in spring, as if on cue. They operate on a cycle and know the start and stop points of that cycle, even if fully removed from the weather conditions outside the window they sit behind.

It leads me to wonder how much of our own behavior is innate and how much of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions are cyclical. I suspect the unconscious mind dictates more of my own actions and thoughts than I’d care to admit.

How much of me is on autopilot?

This year’s spring has felt delayed. I’m not sure I believe it even started. It was snowing last Friday at a time when I would expect to be out in shorts and a tee shirt. Still, it’s notably greener outside. There is change in the air.

Regarding change, they say we become more bound to our habits as we age. “He’s stuck in his ways” is a popular way to describe it. To be stuck in my ways is my greatest fear. I’d rather be a plant with new flowers each spring.

With each year I find that change requires more discomfort. Change becomes difficult. We want to believe we’ve mastered this thing called life, and therefore being a novice ironically becomes more terrifying. We want to be proven right. We want to be complacent and have nothing more to struggle with. At least I do.

Despite that innate yearning to be done changing, I aim to be a permanent novice. That requires routinely starting with nothing. It requires a lot of winters leaving you with barren branches. Yet that’s what’s required to grow flowers.

I hope the continuous effort to renew myself is worthwhile. I need movement, change, and paradigm shifts. I need to learn from other people. That means I should often be proven wrong and I should often acknowledge that I was proven wrong.

It means looking back on old blogs and cringing, but also acknowledging why I’m cringing and being able to articulate how I’m different now.

Who knows, maybe I’ll gain some wisdom from the whole ordeal.

Another Place and Time

I believe that the best songs transport you to another place and time.

Your destination upon listening might be the place and time in which you first heard the song. It might awaken what you were thinking, feeling, and experiencing upon first listen. In this sense the song is constantly an automatic time transport back to the first listen. It is an echo of a moment in which you may have seen and felt the world differently.

The song may just capture the feeling of a specific moment, hour, day, or year in your life. The melodies remind you of thoughts and emotions from that era. Maybe it’s a moment you’re nostalgic for. Maybe it’s someone you pined for. Maybe it’s an angry metal song that evokes teenage rebellion.

Today I listened to Helvetesfönster by Ghost and it brought me back to a day in high school. Suddenly I was on a science class field trip to Paramount Carowinds theme park with my classmates. Or was it Bush Gardens? I took trips to both in high school and now have difficulty distinguishing the specifics of each. It was more than twenty years ago. I have a strong memory, but memories do fade.

This was before cell phones and smart devices. It was a time when one only accessed the Internet via a slow dial-up connection, when companies didn’t track us via the gadgets in our pockets.

I was content to sit and stare at the passing wilderness that walled each side of the road. I thought about how there was something special in that moment, sitting and staring, surrounded by peers who also sat and stared. I thought that our youth would end before we knew it, that we’d all move on and many of us would forget about each other, that we’d vie for good jobs and social status, and that ultimately we’d lose what made us genuine, if we were ever genuine to begin with. We’d have families and become consumed by their relevance. We’d have money and be consumed by its investment potential. We’d become what Holden Caulfield called “phonies” if we weren’t phonies already. We’d be fully absorbed by the rush of it all. We’d never again just be glad to sit and stare.

Sitting in absolute silence while a song plays and watching trees whir by a window somehow made the modern world’s anxieties seem trivial.

One of my favorite songs, Like a Stone by Audioslave, played on that bus ride. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the song, but the song was relatively new at the time. It seemed fitting to think about life while listening to a song about death. That was when we were capable of just listening to a song, when songs weren’t a means of multitasking or a drug for numbing our hatred of a moment pressing down on us.

Like a dream within a dream, I was listening to a song within a song, and it felt nice to return to a simpler time.

I wish to turn off the noise and just listen to a song again.

The Cost of Energy

I pedal up a steep incline five miles north of the Gateway Arch. A wild flock of turkey loiters ahead in a grassy patch. A harsh wind rocks me from the side and I feel my bike teeter in response. Winter seems to have extended its shadow far beyond its form.

The relevant debate these days is over the most efficient form of energy. Energy affects a lot of costs, but most conversation focuses on the cost of a motor vehicle. Gas prices are soaring, after all. People need energy for transportation, and the need for energy renders them powerless to the price at the gas pump. And in the debate, said energy must be nuclear or green.

My legs renew themselves constantly on this 30-mile Saturday ride. I summit another hill and I catch my breath as I pedal lightly. I sprint for a brief stretch, just for the heck of it, maybe seeking my long-lost inner child, and I coast afterwards. I fatigue and then recover. Rinse and repeat. Endorphins flood me at the finish. I feel a rush of excitement as I arrive at the Chain of Rocks bridge. Adventure is always optional.

My body’s energy moves me forward. Thanks to being a homosapien I can scale long distances (we have some of the most efficient cardiovascular systems on the planet).

That is not to say that cars don’t have a place in the world. Not everyone can ride a bicycle; it is fortunate to have the opportunity and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Yet car ownership is brutally abused by culture, which has led to some unnecessary obsession over gas prices.

Still, I don’t ride a bike to “save money on gas.” It’s just what I prefer; it’s more fun.

I finish my bike ride and in my fatigue there is a sense of strengthening, of knowing that muscles first need to tear in order to strengthen.

San Francisco: City and Coast

I drove a few miles north of San Francisco to absorb the breathtaking views of the Northern California coast. I had been far removed from the ocean for a long period of time, which can cause a rebound of relief upon returning to the coast. The Pacific breeze was steady and harsh.

I enjoyed clambering down the rocky cliffs edging the beach and walking along the sand; in spite of the freezing water, there were a number of surfers in wetsuits.

I do believe that Northern California has some of the most incredible geography on the planet; it’s rare to have the ocean, mountains, and a bustling city within such close proximity to each other.

After returning to San Francisco I walked along the pier near Union Square and ate a good dinner.

It can feel like pandemonium for someone not used to a city of its magnitude; traffic is a constant assemblage of skateboarders, cyclists, and car drivers. Still, I was constantly impressed by the cycling community in the city and the cyclists’ ability to mount some very steep hills.

Armstrong State Park and the Redwoods

After driving south from Healdsburg and through the Russian River Valley, my route was towards a mountain pass near the pacific coast. The route was vertiginous, topsy-turvy, and I occasionally caught glimpses of the Russian river at the nadir of the valley to my left.

We made a stop at the Armstrong State Park and hiked there to see the famous Redwood trees. Many of them are over a thousand years old, having lived through fallen empires and regimes, famines and diseases, and who knows how many extinctions of species. They can tower over 300 feet and require the Pacific’s wet and temperate climate to survive.

Walking through this forest is an ethereal experience. The forest is also known for its “banana slugs,” but sadly I didn’t find any.

A Walk

On Monday I took an afternoon walk under a pale and soothing winter sun. It was random and directionless—traits of the best walks.

Near the end of my walk I loitered in the Saint Louis Citygarden, a sculpture park just a few blocks from the arch. I sat on a stone bench as the afternoon sun warmed my left cheek. I listened as a steady wind rustled the remaining leaves that hung from the skeletal tree branches around me. The rustling sound was indistinguishable from the sound of water crashing into a pool, which emanated from a nearby artificial waterfall.

On a granite wall, kids climbed and danced; their movements were random and unrehearsed. A few families walked through the winding paths in the park and I found myself calmed enough to consider not returning to my apartment until nightfall.

Loitering is one of the best acts one can do, I think. Just sit and look. Time immediately slows. Nervous tics eventually halt. Anxiety plummets.

Since when is it a sin to be still, but a virtue to rush? Note that both Jesus and Buddha taught the opposite.

Some of my best memories of life in China involved simple wandering, either with company or alone.

Today, I hope we stray from the beaten path and get lost on a walk.

Fork in the Road

I find that my most joyful time on a bike ride is when I stray from my plan. It is when I ignore the voice in my head that whispers to exhaust myself, to burn the maximum amount of calories, and to “pedal at full speed.” The further I stray from this voice, the more at peace I am.

This morning I found myself at such a metaphorical fork in the road, ten miles north, along the Mississippi River. I was four miles shy of my “planned route,” which is typically the Chain of Rocks bridge, but a flock of geese was feeding in the moist grass to my left, and there was a balmy scent in the air that strengthened as I pedaled farther away from the city.

Rather than “maximize my workout,” I shunned this inner competitor and stopped. I parked my bike against a tree and watched the geese, without any particular plan to resume my ride or turn back. I did not have a watch or a phone with me and I realized just what a brutally manufactured device the clock is for so many who live and die by its limitations and permissions.

Suddenly moments passed more slowly and with gratitude I stopped activity and absorbed my surroundings. As I breathed, my own anxieties over tomorrow calmed and the diabolical planner within me died, and I felt better for it. Let my inner planner die: he lived too long already!

It is a modern mantra, I think, that an idle mind is a wasting one, but in fact the opposite is true. An active mind festers and an idle mind blossoms. The less I try to do, the more I am able to think and the more I am able to be at peace with my own existence.

How few have the courage to stop all duty and appreciate the stillness of nature. Those at work say time flies by, and this is true for anyone in a constant chase for tomorrow and a constant bracing for “the next step,” heeding for “the next thing needed for fulfillment.”

Life is brutally diluted under this mindset. What was organic becomes a construction, a ladder to climb that is in a constant state of lengthening, and when one reaches the end of the lifespan, there is nothing to do but look up and realize that the ladder still extends out of sight. Then the mind will cry in anguish, “But I had so much higher to climb!” But who’s version of fulfillment do you climb for?

If we grant ourselves permission to halt our inner urges for progress, time ceases to rush as well, and ironically, I believe, the years graciously slow.

You deserve to own each day, and therefore make it distinct, even in your chores. You deserve to spend your hours freely and merrily, to sleep and dream, to be outside, to have a picnic that lasts for hours instead of the brief office lunch in which employees tragically cram their food in haste, often at their work desks, under artificial lights, breathing artificial air.

A “year” spent in leisure is infinitely better than a year spent in labor so long as the stopwatch, and the compulsion to plan, are removed from its borders.

A Last Time for Everything

As the first gray hairs settle in just above my ears and my ankle heals, it dawns on me that I may be approaching the midpoint of my lifespan. Who’s to say with certainty? We have no control over the future, but if considering the median age of a male life, I’m nearing the midway marker.

The car hit last year struck me more mentally than physically (and that’s saying something because it struck me with pretty good force). By this I mean it spurred a number of realizations about mortality. The chief realization among them that is on my mind today is that there will be a last time for everything.

I was fairly certain upon feeling my foot bend the wrong direction against the road that I had ran for the last time. That was it, and suddenly it was gone like the rabbit in a magic show’s disappearing act. I was lucky enough that it wasn’t the case. Nonetheless, that day will eventually arrive, and I must accept this.

If that day did mark my final run, I did not get to wish my running days goodbye. There would be no “festive final run” or “emotional farewell to the act.” It’s simply there one day and gone the next. I suspect that most final acts end the same way and that most of us in the west do not realize this.

One day, there will be a last hike. There will be a last dream, a last bike ride, and a last beach trip. There will be a last glass of wine, a last kiss, and a last act of love. There will be a last dessert and a last witnessed sunrise. There will be a last hug. Mothers will see their babies become adults for the last time. Fathers will play catch with their kids for the last time. I will see a last colored hair fall from my face and see this city for the last time. I will write a final blog and a final story. I will read a final book. I will share a final joke. And of course, there will be a last breath of oxygen.

I suspect these moments happen, they pass, and we often take them for granted. We don’t expect the end of any to be near, but each day likely presents the final time we will ever do, or feel, or think something. Every day is in some way a final act.

In the daily rush that modern culture attempts to sweep me into I find that the act of “hurrying to what’s next” makes these final acts even less apparent. They are hidden by the greatest magician of them all: industry. In the chase for something better, for fewer problems, and for perhaps a glimpse at immortality, we lose something important today and are unaware that we ever lost it.

I don’t think this to put myself in a gloomy or nihilistic mood, but to note that it’s worthwhile to pause and appreciate what I have, and what I’m doing, at this moment. And to appreciate what I’ve done and where I’ve been.

The Voices in Your Head

It was a quiet morning. As dawn broke I embarked on a run alongside the Mississippi River. I saw patches of ice and snow scattered over the road and was mindful of each step that I took. The river glistened and its water crept south under a pale winter sunlight that was partially blocked by clouds.

At some point, a few miles into my run, a homeless man faced me. We were the only two inhabitants beside the river. His face was streaked with dirt, his beard unkept, his flesh wizened.

He had Apple headphones in his ears and the wires dangled down, connected to nothing but air.

“Hey, you there,” he said. “Come here.”

I looked his way.

“I found these ear pieces and put them in my ear,” he said. “And voices started talking to me!”

I said nothing and kept running. He continued:

“The voices tell me to do horrible things. Things I could never imagine. Come here, buddy. Come listen with me. I want you to hear the voices too.” And he took an ear piece out of one ear and extended it toward me.

I kept running, but I’ll remember that moment for some time.

Then I looked up at a bridge crossing the river and saw a steady current of vehicles moving toward the city. From my distance it looked like a single file of ants marching from their colony.

And as I thought this I turned around and ran home, not knowing if I was running away from this terror or toward it.