R+71: Embracing the Tangle

Detroit. 2.28.14

I have been back at work for six weeks now.  I am still getting my feet under me.   The contrast to our lives on the bike is remarkable.  While we were on the bike sojourn, and then later, when we were on the writers’ retreat in our cabin, life, managing priorities and communications were much simpler.

On the bike, choices are reduced.  When do we leave?  Where do we go?  When do we stop?  Where do we stay?  What do we eat?  Of these, the only one that regularly presented complications was “Where do we stay?”  In many places across the country, there were exactly two choices.  Do we camp outside or do we stay in the one small motel in town?  In Circle, Montana, for instance, there was a KOA campground or there was a creepy looking motel.  We were so tired after biking hours in a howling wind, we didn’t want any more time outside.  We opted for the motel, and were filled with anxiety when we saw its ramshackle sign and abandoned, crumbling coffee shop.  As it turned out, the motel owner “gave us his best room,” which although the plumbing leaked, and was newly painted a spectacular combination of pink, blue, and gold,  it ended up being a pretty good rest for our weary bones.

To stay or not stay here....that is the question.

Other times, we were faced with a plethora of choices.  In Shawano, Wisconsin, there were many nice looking accommodations.  It was late, we had been lost (again), but we had reservations at a resort, theoretically on the lake.  Our inner voices were screaming at us, to just take one of these rooms and not bike out in the dark to that distant room.  But no.  And when we got there, after meeting the befuddled owner in a lobby reeking of cat, we found our beautiful lakeside resort was actually a rundown welfare motel. 

Still--these choices were pretty straightforward: cope or not cope with the choice.  Rail against your fate (Wes’ choice in Shawano) or slip into surly resignation (Shaun’s choice in Shawano).   The good news was that we could leave behind our bad choices the next day.   We left it behind and rolled onto the next adventure.

Communications on the road are also pretty simple.  First of all, for much of the day, silence reigns.  Once we mount our bikes, there might be an hour or two where the only communication was an internal conversation with yourself.   Many times, there was not even that.    

Our brains were focused on making sure that our bodies were functioning as needed, especially when the terrain was challenging.  The only thing that mattered, that truly was all-consuming, was getting that bike up that hill.  The same can be said for many down-hills.  Full concentration was required when zipping down a mountain at 35 miles an hour.  There is only one choice available.   The same is true riding in traffic, as when we were trying to make our way on that hell-hole of a two lane road going into Whitefish, MT.  With no shoulder, heavy traffic, and a six inch drop off the highway to the surrounding land, it took every ounce of our mind and body to stay alive.  

As we were going in and out of public places, like restaurants or bars, communication was an option.  If we were tired, or not feeling social, we could easily choose not to engage with the people around us.  When we did talk to the strangers we met, it was easy enough to turn the conversation to them and find out about who they are, what they are experiencing, what they are perceiving in the world.   We had nearly pat answers to the five standard questions.  (Where did you start?  Where are you going?  How many miles a day do you ride?  Where do you stay?  How many tires have you gone through?)  If our conversation turned to our background or interests, we could disclose… or not.  In any case, these were 15-45 minute relationships.  Before long, we would be down the road and would likely never see this person again.   Such are the pleasures of anonymity.

Oh, what a difference to be back in Detroit and back at work.   First of all, good bye to anonymity.  Nearly everywhere I go in this small town masquerading as a big city, I see someone I know.  Here at the coffee shop where I am writing this, I have spoken to 7 people in less than an hour.   Some of these people I have known for years.  I know their families.  I have had disagreements off and on through the years.  I must choose how I continue these relationships.  Let bygones be bygones?  Warily engage and watch out for grounds of conflict?  Keep the war alive?  I almost never choose the latter, although I know people who do.  I wish I could always choose the first, but I am rather bad at that best of choices.  Mostly I focus on the positive and watch out for the negative.   With the woman whose politics make me uneasy, but whose personality and family I like, we talk of family and history and neighborhood.

Back at work, the choices can be overwhelming.  There are ramifications to everything.  Who will it benefit?  Who will disagree?  What happens if we do?  What happens if we don’t?  What are the steps to get there?  Everything is a finely balanced choice.  Choose wrong and the resulting mess will bring emotions and confusion and disorder that may take years to sort. 

Even in the best of circumstances, I am operating with a mass of indefinites.   This is a human operation.  Humans don’t always say what they mean… even when they are not trying to obfuscate.  They may not have the skills to express it.  They may not feel comfortable expressing it in these circumstances. They may not know what they want (one of my particular failings)… And there are the inevitable balancing acts.  What may be just great for A is deeply upsetting to B and C is not yet ready to choose.  Round and round and round it goes. 

Then the context for every decision must be considered.  Can I see what is happening in the city, in our community?  If I align with one group, do I damage my relationships with another?  If I speak against one option, do I close off the possibility of a relationship with the people who support the other option?  Which way is the best way?  Who knows?  Who can tell?
And no matter what, whatever I choose, I will have to live with consequences of my choice.  If my choice angers someone, then I will have to work through the backwash of that emotion, even while allowing another person the space and time to celebrate, or worry, or dismiss the same thing.  It is a tangle, that’s for sure.

During these first few weeks, being back in the tangle has felt claustrophobic.  How often I just wanted to get on my bike and disappear from all these complications. How much I just wanted to retreat into a spot where all the choices are mine, as are all the silences. 

However, in one of those moments of grace that sometimes touch my life, I had a realization.  The tangle is the work.  To engage in human work, and be in the human community means embracing the tangle.  My only choice is to be as authentic and simple and straightforward as I can.  The negotiations will be constant.  The confusion will be ever present.  My job, therefore, is presenting my best and truest heart, and silencing the worrisome yammer in my brain.  I agree to muddle on, sorting and sifting and winding the tangle that is life.

T-699: Be With It

Wes came bouncing in a little while ago, soaked to the bone.  He had cycled to the Mass General Auditions earlier in the evening.  As it had all day, as it had been predicted, thunderstorms came rolling in. 

While I was pacing the floor and anxiously calling his cell phone, Wes was blithely cycling home in the rain and dark.

When he arrived, he was ebullient.  I told him I would have come and picked him up.  Why didn't he have his phone on?  I was worried.

He didn't quite laugh at me, but almost.  The rain was warm, the night quiet; he knew the way home.  It was clear he was going to get wet, but so what.  That's all that was going to happen.  He was going to get wet.

My worry was a form of rank chicken wimpery--- a kind of piddling fear of the ordinary that is part and parcel of modern life that makes us feel so small and jittery.  It keeps us from joy, from being.

Abike, you are where you are.  It is necessary to just be with it.  Feel the heat if its hot, the wet if it rains, the dark if its night.  Living in our modern boxes of cars, offices, and homes where all the air is still and warm and utterly predictable, I have forgotten the exhilaration of experience.

I remember riding my bike in a ferocious storm.  At first, I was huddled and hurrying against it.  It soon became clear that I was not going to get home before the storm let up.  The best I could do was let go.  It wasn't long before I could enjoy it.  I drove screamingly into puddles, my legs akimbo, with the audacity of an eight year old. 

In my current life, I am an excessively cerebral and emotional person.  I create and live in challenges that tax those two functions.  Being outside, living outside, as one does while abike on tour, has always reminded me to be in my body, be with my body.

I am amazed and jealous of people who seem to be fully in-carn-ated.  They are "in the state of being in their body."  I know we all are in our bodies all the time, but I have learned to shut that transmission line down. How often have I come up from some deep engagement and realize I have been holding my back and shoulders rigid to the point of stiffness.  As I write that now, I remember to release the hunch in my upper back.

What's worse is that I LIKE being physical.  I like being in movement, especially rhythmic movement like swimming, or cycling, or walking.  But I don't do it with any regularity when I live in the city.  Is it because I don't value it?  Is it because I let my sloth and my fear create a toxic stew of inhibition?  Is it because I am overly committed to being productive nearly ever moment of my life and walking...even though I like and it is doing me good....does not feel productive?

Well, that's a rotten form of  putrid delusion.  Let's hear a prayer for the end of petty fears and foolish inhibitions.  I was told years ago by my best friend's father, who though drunk, was right.  I was running to get out of a little sprinkle of  rain.  He laughed at me and said, "I don't know why you're running away.  You're not so sweet you'll melt."    As they say in Detroit, "True that."   I haven't melted yet, but I have surely avoided the rain like I might.  Enough.