Bliss and a Red Bicycle

Dear Facebook [originally published there, republished here for Sarah Osborne],

we both know I am too verbose for this to ever work. I would apologize for my selfish ways but I will never curb this habit and so it would be terribly insincere of me to do so. I suppose I could publish this instead on one of my many blogs but I'm pretty sure only Sarah Osborne would see it there. I might post it there just for her anyway.

A few days ago I purchased a less than shiny but nonetheless glowing in a new-to-me sort of way cherry red bicycle. I am in love with it. We've had such wonderful times together already in our still fresh and short affair. I was just riding it home from my favourite coffee shop in downtown Boulder which was beginning to wind down for the night anyway and I was beginning to develop a fierce and insistent hunger for the avocado I'd been meaning to eat these past few days. Perhaps in part due to the feeling of joy I experience riding this bicycle, perhaps in part because of the still mild temperature even after 10pm on an early April night, perhaps because of the sense of enrichment gained from spending another Saturday in the mountains on a WRV volunteer project... my entire ride home was a smoothly unfolding aesthetic experience.

[For those of you who haven't read or heard me talk about my Master's thesis... "Aesthetic Experience refers to a subjectively important and valued experience brought about by direct interaction or observation of an environment" (Chenoweth & Gobster, 1990). This lackluster description does not begin to convey the sensation of an aesthetic experience, but that's okay because it's subjective anyway.]

For after 10pm on a Saturday evening in April the roads between Trident and home were quiet. Once I got onto the Goose Creek bike path they were A. no longer roads and B. deserted. An aspect of solitude is often attributed to provoking aesthetic experience by the way (See Chenoweth & Gobster, 1990). The air as I already mentioned was cool, but still mild enough that attired as I was in pleather jacket, hipster star scarf and roller derby helmet I was not chilled. I had also just been kissing a certain fellow rather to my liking which naturally left me somewhat buoyant and perhaps impervious to the cold. As I rolled first down the darkened and quiet streets and then, the smooth and solitary bike path, the wind rushed past my ears in just the right way to make a sound like the powerful winter storm that's howling outside while you are warm and curled in front of a fire untroubled by it. The soundscape also included the soft whirring of my thin city tires, the ambient city noises of distant traffic, Saturday night bar goers, spring porch conversations and the slight bounce of my handlebar basket that hangs just a little too low and partially obscures my bike light. This detail became important in particular.

Once I'm on the bike trail, I need not get onto any more roads all the way to my house which, I will say, it lovely. It's also dark (at night). With my bike light partially obscured as it was, it was a little too dark for the safest riding perhaps but given the absence of fellow riders on this evening, it was nice. In fact in hindsight it reminded me a little of starting out at 5:30 in the morning on my day's walk while I was in Spain traversing the country via pilgrimage route. There were rarely other's about then either and I had the path to myself for a while. I find contemplation is best accomplished in motion and on one's own. I digress. My bike basket is made of a metal mesh and had the effect of diffusing the part of my light that it overlapped into a strange pattern of light pinpricks most apparent when going trough an underpass on the trail. The first time I noticed this effect, in my already blissful state, I was enamored of it and these words began to unfold in my mind immediately. I had also been reading Henry Miller and he often has this word unfolding effect upon me.

When not in a tunnel, the light I cast ahead of me was something like a ring around the moon and I'm not just saying that because I'm a little lunatic. The bike light made a halo which was more real to see through peripheral vision, but which when scrutinized, lost something of it's magic. A lot of things are like that. Since I was thinking about the Three of Swords (Tarot) earlier, I will state for the record that Love is one of those things I'm pretty sure, better left un-analysed.

I am humming along softly with the untroubling winter storm in my ears, the halo of my very own moon ahead, the lingering sensation of someone's lips on mine, the image of Henry Miller's prehistoric writing desk rebellion in my mind and my straw hat glowing slightly in my basket as it catches the the scattered light beams. As I reach the Eastern most portion of my ride home I enter the pitted fields of prairie dogs and catch glimpses of their ghostly figures darting away in the light of an LED. From here, I am all but home.

All of this is occurred simultaneously and in a delightfully multi-sensory way over the course of the 15 minutes or so it takes to get from 9th and Pearl to Airport and Valmont. Needless to say I enjoyed every minute of my ride home and I am even more in love with my bicycle.

Sincerely,
morgan

P.S. I will not actually provide you with a bibliography. Although I clearly considered it. Also just as I arrived safely under my porch, it started to rain. ♥