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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Dreaming Demons
The Night Face Up In the dream, the man travels through the city on the back of a whirring, glittery insect-like machine. I remember this dream--which Julio Cortazar has so obligingly written out as "The Night Face Up." I remember this dream because it is the dream that is my waking life. I ride at night, sometimes leaving the house as early as 3:00 a.m. to ride the sluggish and dreamlike streets of the city. I ride in the early mornings, too, when it is clear and cold and the sky is filled with stars.
I practice quick stops and ninety-degree turns in parking lots. My life may someday depend on these skills, so I take my practice seriously.
That Someday Arrives I have nearly been hit three times--and before you ask, none of those times were my fault. One driver pulled out of a parallel parking space without looking. One driver saw my tail light go off as I left a parking lot and nearly rear ended me. One driver blew off a red light and almost ran me over. These three incidents happened within the first nine days I'd had the bike. That's an average of one near-miss every three days. If I can get that up to one near-miss every five days, I think I can consider myself pretty damn safe for a beginner.
How To Spend A Saturday Morning On Saturday morning, I rode my bike (followed by Max in the car) down familiar roads, roads that I have loved to drive since I was a teenager, roads that cut through the valley where I grew up. The road flattens out beneath my wheels and curves that feel extreme in a car are suddenly easily managed on the bike. (I slow before entering the curves, then hear Mike's voice in my head telling me to "Roll On! Roll On! Roll On!") Other bikers know these roads too. They are out early to ride them. They lift their hands in greeting and I wave back and whoop with delight at this comeraderie amongst bikers. While I ride, I sing to myself. I recite poetry. I laugh. It's good. It feels good. I stop at a farmer's market and buy fresh produce from the men and women who work the land that lines the road that runs through the valley where I grew up. I buy kale, chard, summer squash, white peaches and nectarines, Asian pears, blackberries, raspberries, white and purple eggplants, figs, Thai and purple basil, green beans, Chardonnay grapes. Two huge bags of fruits and vegetables costs fifteen dollars and I feel triumphant over this. It's like an undeserved reward for a well-done ride. Max and I stop on the way home at a cafe in the valley where there is motorcycle only parking out front. I pull up on my bike and begin the task of stripping off my protective gear while Max circles for a parking spot. I pull off my black leather gloves, my chrome helmet, my Kevlar-armored black-and-red jacket. Several people eye me curiously. (They are even more curious, it seems, when the helmet comes off and they can see that I'm not a boy but a woman.) There is a helmet lock on my bike so that I don't have to carry my helmet everywhere, but I still like to carry my helmet just for the looks I get. It's like going out in an evening gown--people can't keep from looking. We have coffee and split an orange-chocolate chip muffin and talk about the ride, about the farmer's market, about Ladas's dream in which he was a biker boy. I tell Max that the symbolism of the motorcycle is large now in my life, so much so that I haven't even yet begun to dream of motorcycles. Riding my Frida is still so dreamlike that I hardly dream at all. (But I have dreamt of Hottie Jason's voice on the other end of the phone line...) Max tells me too that the red bike attracts a lot of attention from pedestrians and other drivers on the streets. "Some of them follow you with their eyes until they can't see you anymore," he tells me. I laugh, ask, "Really?" "Be Careful Lest You Become Too Respectable"--Elizabeth Cady Stanton Several men have related dreams to me in which they are bikers. It was through these dreams of others (long before I bought Frida) that I began to learn, to understand, to see that motorcycles are a symbol of freedom, of the desire to break free. Several people, when they learned that I was going to buy a motorcycle, warned me. "Be careful," they all said. "You have to be careful." I know they meant that motorcycles are dangerous, that people lose their lives all the time in motorcycle accidents. But could they also not have meant: Be careful lest you become too independent. Be careful that you don't get too far outside the norm, too far from the safety and constraints of society. Frida is a symbol of freedom and a means to the reality of freedom too. She is powerful medicine that way. To ride can be to inhabit a liminal state where danger and independence run together, and where dreams are not bounded by but instead cross over into reality. That is a dangerous place. I live the dream that is my waking life there now. It was Lawrence of Arabia--killed not in war, but in a motorcycle accident--who said: All [wo]men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous [wo]men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. -- from Seven Pillars of Wisdom I Am Grateful To Know From Experience That A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
More lies:
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