nullsurface

It is impossible to capture the flow of a stream: its babbling, its starting and stopping, its weight, the way starlight reflects off its surface, the glistening of treasures below it, the feeling of the water between your toes.

So I will not try.

Romantic.

Limericks: Dark, darker, darkest.

Madness.

Ancient.

Storm.

Dreams.

An excerpt from an excellent work by Steven Bauer. http://spokenrune.tumblr.com

Recompense. Robert E. Howard. http://spokenrune.tumblr.com

Why didn’t anyone tell me that riding your bike gets harder…

• …when you don't know how to properly use the gear shifter. Turns out you don't want be in the highest gear when going up a hill. (Also, why didn’t anyone tell me this, either?)
• …when your wheel is not-quite aligned and the tire is scraping against the frame. Guess that squeaking sound isn’t the creakiness of the bike after all.

(c.f. part one in this series.)

Why didn’t anyone tell me that riding your bike gets harder…

• …when you are going up hill for like a mile.
• …when it is very, very humid.
• …when you are wearing a heavy backpack.
• …when your tire pressure is one-third of what it should be.

That last one especially. I kept thinking to myself: “Shouldn’t this be getting easier? Why are my legs like wet linguini halfway through the route I rode fine last week? Does cycling actually get you into worse shape?” I was lucky that a kind soul set me straight and I’m now the owner of a heretofore overlooked yet apparently essential item: a bicycle pump.

Stress tested this piece of blue metal. My house to west Philly takes about 25 minutes plus or minus my need to take whimsical detours. Arrived whole two nights in a row. The chill air of night is spectacular, when you come to an open road with no cars in sight. The meaningless stop lights, the slightly downward inclines.

Rush hour is terrible without a bike lane. My strategy is to find someone else on a bike who seems competent and imitate them. You can learn a lot from these experts, like how to make a left turn or how to weave through traffic. Doing this I also learned the proper thing to yell at a driver who swerves in front of you to make a turn.

But the best part -- the absolute best -- is not having to worry about missing some train or bus and always rushing off to wait and hope that it comes soon. The time it takes me to get somewhere is the time from when I leave to the time when I arrive. Except for the excursions up and back downhill, under a bridge, riding on the wrong side of the road, and in search of undiscovered bike lanes and the places they lead.

I used to ride my bike to school every day. Actually, before that, I rode my bike all around my neighborhood. The wide New Mexican roads were perfect for this. The most popular thing for me was to pretend your bike was some kind of speeder from Return of the Jedi or other high tech thing. Other people liked trying to do tricks: jumping off curbs and wheelies and all that. But more than that I remember the places we used to go. The weird alley behind the shopping center, the crab-apple tree, the rocketship park. Everything was within riding distance.

Even though I haven't sat on one in a decade, and the idea of riding around Philly with its too-narrow streets and too-many cars is a bit frightening, those three minutes I spent test riding today were enough to push me over the edge. Why did I wait this long to remember? What secret places will this new one take me?

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where and Eidolon named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wierd clime that lieth, sublime,
   Out of Space—out of Time.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
for the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters—lone and dead,—
Their still waters—still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

from Dream-Land
Edgar Allan Poe
1844
(complete work)

Haunted Poe was tremendous. It struck the right balance between farcical and grim without feeling too much like a haunted house. The costumes and decorations were good and ghastly. The details all felt right, like the slowly creeping vines, the bubbling mist, and the insectoid catacombs, but some of the bigger designs could've been more impressive. Prospero's masquerade, for instance, seemed a bit spartan. The actors were excellent, in particular the ghostly Poe (though his reading of The Raven threw me a bit—I'm used to a more Basil Rathbone-esque interpretation), and the murderer tormented by the heartbeat beneath the floorboards, who looked like he could explode at any second. Hands down, the best scene was a deliciously eerie epiphany of Poe's preoccupation with the death of his beloved. Even though the whole show lasted about 45 minutes, there was so much material left unscratched I could've probably gone another hour in there.