Polysemous Cyclists

Dario took the bait and here is the responding guest post.  Let's roll this idea around a bit more.

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     Tony's eloquent post (Sun., June 9, 2013) launching from verses by Wallace Stevens and landing on a topic, sustainability, which is dear and near to beatbikeblog readers seems at first a stretch. But as I re-read his post, I begin to see interconnections that I think we can develop further. If Stevens did indeed compose his lines while walking to work in the morning and back home in the evening, he wouldn't be the first peripatetic philosopher-poet in Western civilization. Homer, Dante, and Whitman immediately come to mind. But there are so many others. All of them great travelers. Stevens perhaps less so, although he didn't need to travel as far and wide in order to gain perspective on the world. Like Dante, Stevens is a keen observer of the small, the incidental, and of happenstance. For both poets, nothing, however, is ever really small, incidental, or just the result of happenstance. Everything is pregnant with meaning. The "thin men", the "blackbirds", the "golden birds" from the seventh stanza of Steven's Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird are polysemous, that is, they can mean many things to many people.

    Imagine Mr. Stevens who was quietly but fervently skeptical of absolute and universal belief systems walking along Asylum Ave. thinking such thoughts. At the time of the poem's publication in 1917, Stevens had recently taken up his post at The Hartford insurance company. World War I was raging. Bolsheviks were taking over Russia. Labor strife in the United States. Revolutionary ideas. Hartford with its history of craftsmanship and industry and also finance was a flourishing city. But not all was golden. Stevens was politically conservative, but he was a radical thinker nonetheless. He had a deep sense of the overarching paradox of our lives that bind all of us together, rich and poor. Of necessity, the poor have to enjoy the "little things" in life. But conversely, if the rich cannot or are unwilling to see the grandeur in the small and in the ordinary, then they are blind and truly impoverished. Lao Tzu reminds us: "Have little and you will gain./Have much and you will be confused."
           
     In his post Tony writes: "If you want to live a happy and sustainable life, it seems important that we recognize our nearby and local treasures." I'd argue more forcefully: "Without cherishing our surroundings we cannot endure." This is why walking through Hartford (as Wallace Stevens did) and cycling through its streets (like the beatbike bloggers often do ) is necessary and not just important. Without assiduously casting our gaze in purposeful seeing (analogous to the way we view works of art, let's say, or the famous sights of the world's great cities) can we ever fully appreciate where we live? I'm reminded of this question, Tony, when on our rides we see a side of Hartford not seen by many others. The actual experience of seeing is often a catalyst for the imagination and, vice-versa, the imagination inspires our ways of seeing things. Sustainability and, more ideally, happiness require the use of imagination. Perhaps Wallace Stevens didn't need to walk along Hartford's streets in order to create his introspective art. Perhaps he saw the thin men in his mind all along or maybe while walking he saw all too many thin men (real ones and metaphorical ones) that inspired his poetry. For beatbike bloggers, cycling is a catalyst of the imagination and of our own individual sustainability.

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Any other aspiring literary cyclists out there in Hartford or regions further?  If so, how goes your appreciation of blackbirds?  Does your imagination seem to be sustainable?  Are you feeling anti-social? 

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O thin men of Hartford

I was struck by the Wallace Stevens stanza while perusing Real Hartford's latest photos of the Asylum Hill neighborhood.

     O thin men of Haddam,
     Why do you imagine golden birds?
     Do you not see how the blackbird
     Walks around the feet
     Of the women about you?

Not sure why, but I thought is was both funny and relevant.  Mr. Stevens was an insurance company executive at The Hartford, but also found time to write poetry.  I've been told much of the poetry was composed while walking the couple miles to and from work.  The historical markers are way points on his route.  If you watched the Hartford-centric indie film Rising Star, you'll recall that the nuanced sledge hammer message of the movie that one can have both a profession and a passion.  If the passion isn't the profession, the separate passion doesn't have to be extinguished or left to wither.  Make your bread, but don't lose your fire.  If you reach too ardently after the golden bird, you may find yourself lacking in depth and short on joy.

The movie also seemed to imply that you could walk all of Hartford in a leisurely afternoon.  I would be interested in seeing a route of the scenes on a Google map and with calculated mileage.  There is a difference between suspending disbelief and believing in the absolutely ridiculous.  I imagine that the local audience is supposed to take the exhaustive walking tour of Hartford as an inside joke.

The golden bird may be an idealized goal, or simply cold hard cash.  In chasing the hard to reach and living the commercially promoted life we forget that within walking (or biking distance) of our home and place of employment there are countless blackbirds possessing their own singular beauty, overlooked perhaps with familiarity or prejudice.  Within a life that isn't gilt there are still opportunities to find happiness.  This is a valuable lesson for Connecticut and those living or working in the Hartford metro region.  If we want to live a happy and sustainable life, it seems important that we recognize our nearby and local treasures.  Culturing an appreciation for blackbirds may both simplify and expand our lives.

Dario - I expect this will give you some inspiration.  Perhaps a guest post?  

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Talcum Crotch Rode

After the pious finally reach mecca -- dollars to doughnuts -- a few among them feel more than a tinge let down. Despite tiring of the institution, I can still appreciate handiwork and odd relics. When the opportunity to visit the local poetry mecca afforded itself to me yesterday, I succumbed.

Not long after the Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival debuted in 1992 was I informed by nearly everyone I knew that I should make the pilgrimage. Not only should I journey through the woods, across the river, and up hills, I was told to submit my poetry so that I might read there. Methinks my poetry was too fresh for their Fresh Voices Competition, and then I had no idea how to get in there as an adult writer, so I sort of allowed the Hill-Stead Museum fall off my radar after several years of obsessing over the place. Yesterday, after eighteen years of curiosity, I visited.

I remembered that the price of parking was reasonable. The amount of two dollars was in my head. Some last minute research showed how very wrong I was. While admission was free, it would cost ten dollars to park in their lot. I don't spend over two dollars to park anywhere, and given the suburban setting, trying to park on street seemed pregnant with the promise of returning later in the evening to find that my Honda had been towed. I recently read that the neighbors of the Hill-Stead have their boxers all bunched up over the traffic created by the museum's farmers' market. Because of time constraints that would not allow for us to just ride there, Interstatement proposed that we load our bikes on the bus and then ride home from the event. I cringed at the thought of my Jenny flailing around on the front of the bus, but knew that of my bicycles, she would have to be the one as the others lacked appropriate number of functioning gears.

We loaded our bikes in Asylum Hill on a bus which had the final destination of Unionville. Our addition of bikes to the front of the bus apparently shook up passengers. They could not understand what we would do this. A bit later, the bus allowed for a man using a wheelchair to board, which was also a controversy amongst these passengers, as I learned they already had one person in a wheelchair ride earlier. Seems like people along Route 4 have a very low threshold for changes in their routines.

Speaking of routine, the bus driver was asking potential passengers what bus stops for them next. At an intersection, she wanted to know if she should turn right. I get that this was not her normal route, but the bus full of loons lacking indoor voices, plus a seemingly confused driver does not exactly inspire confidence. Meanwhile, I was cringing at every pothole we hit, waiting for the Jenny to come crashing down from her docking station and fall under the wheels of the bus. For $1.25 each, we arrived at the museum. Zooming past the parking attendant was fun. There did not appear to be any designated bike racks, so we tied up to a light post which we later came to learn was an unofficial mosquito breeding ground.

The grounds of the museum are picturesque, bucolic even. We could hear Common Ground playing already, so did not want to dawdle exploring the site. The band did some kind of gospel number that did not jive with me, but then they switched back to Afro Cuban jazz while we snacked on crackers and honey chevre. Besides the music, lovely garden, and ambient sounds of livestock, what was most notable was the formidable silence otherwise.

The poetry segment began with what reminded me of (one of the reasons) why I lost interest with spoken poetry -- the air of pretension. Later, poet Bessy Reyna read in English and Spanish. Her style was more enjoyable to me, though I wish I had seen her perform more locally, where I would not have felt the sense of embarrassment listening to an audience not knowing when to applaud due to lack of understanding one of the languages.

As we headed back to gather our bikes, we encountered the Overloaded Bike that Brendan Hates. The willingness to pay ten dollars to park somewhere must be the norm because we were treated with awe in the parking lot. A concerned woman informed us that it "is not exactly flat" on our way back to Hartford. Interstatement thought she was being nice, but I think this sort of observation is silly. Even if she knew we had taken the bus there, would she not have figured out that along the route we would have observed the hilliness of the region?

While the cars created a traffic jam getting out of the lot, we rode down a dark drive that offered an unprecedented-for-the-day cool breeze. This section was gated off from the street, so it was just us and the fireflies. When we reached Mountain Spring Road and Talcott Notch Road, I began to really miss Hartford. There were no street lights on these windy, often shoulderless roads. The darkness would have been a nice change had it been a clear night without cars bombing up and down the road. I was reminded of why I never rode a bike in my hometown-- people drive far too fast for the roads, are not looking for bicyclists, and quite often have a few drinks in them. It was hilly, as expected, and probably would have been less awful if the humidity were not what it was. When not getting ready to vomit, I was preoccupied with not flying off the bike as I hit an uncountable number of potholes which were impossible to see. My gears starting doing funny things. It was a suckfest.

Around the crossing with Route 4, we pulled into some massive parking lot to tinker with gears. Rather, Interstatement tinkered. I guzzled my lemonade and tried to find my zen place. The rest of the ride was beautiful. The roads became more predictable, or at least were well-lit so that I could anticipate potential problems. An actual shoulder appeared. Before I knew it we were passing the Reservoir, which, by the way, looks excessively simple to ride into during the late evening. We cruised downhill most of the rest of the way home, even getting to see a bunny scamper across Boulevard.

I am pretty certain that I would skip those two windy roads in the future, and possibly also, the bus.

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Baiku

Wavy rim requires
Many twists of the spoke wrench
Truth is now beauty

Building my new ride
Odd, oversized parts require
Trips to the tool store

Rear derailleur works
Shifts perfectly every time
Front one won't comply

Three rims befuddle
Three different diameters
All "26 inch"

My bike needed parts
I found many on ebay
And now I am broke Read more!