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dirty hippy me hugger

4 July 08

A friend and I went mountain bike riding a couple of weekends ago. I hadn’t been in at least a year and had forgotten how much I love mountain biking, and why I love it. After about half an hour of riding around in the woods, I got to that point where it felt like the bike was breathing and we were breathing in unison. In fact, everything around me: the rich dark earth, the roots, the trees, and plants were also breathing and all breathing in unison. At first, I thought I had become completely introverted: the only thing I could hear was the sound of my breath and the sound of my heart beating strong in my ears. But I soon became aware that it wasn’t only mine but that my rhythms were in sync with the pulse of all around me. My body and the bike felt like one single entity and I felt like I had caught up with time. The bike and me, the ground and the bike were one. I wasn’t planning my next move on the path but I wasn’t out of control. It’s that feeling of indescribable oneness for which I am constantly striving. That moment in a sports game when no teammate has to say a word but everyone knows where each other is and where they need to be. A fluidity. The moment when lovers merge, not lost in each other but beyond (or fully?) the self. Everything just feels right and purposeful, like waves in the ocean, like the unfolding of a new leaf. And, like all of those moments I have experienced, it was beautiful and brief. Soon enough I was awkwardly trying to manipulate my bike over roots and through mud, sometimes narrowly missing branches, sometimes jumping off the bike just before it toppled over, sometimes misjudging a turn and actually side-swiping a tree with my body. I had a streak of sap so imbedded in my left forearm that it remained through daily showers and direct scrubbing for more than a full week. I wondered from time to time if it was actually my own scab and my own sap that had bled from a scrape on my arm; perhaps soon after that moment when I was more than my normal perception of myself.

Destiny?

      I've just returned home from a book reading by Rebecca Walker. She's promoting a book that she wrote called Baby Love about the process of pregnancy and giving birth and all of the things that she experienced and thought about along that journey. At one point, and I can't even remember the context now, she said the word "destiny" and it appeared in my head like a long lost relic. I was impressed that I still remembered the meaning, I really can't remember the last time I heard that word. Or believed in it. She used this word of fables in the context of reality. Destiny. Would life be simpler if I could rely on its existence? It was such an odd moment, as if my mind had perked up its ears, the little light went on, the reminder that we can believe and live in other realities. Was this idea the reason I was destined to go to the reading?

      Then my friend and I walked to her car. I noticed pieces of glass on the ground and thought it must have been a shame when that poor person got their window broke. Little fragments littered between the car and the curb... and on the passenger seat? I realized that those pieces of glass belonged to my friend's car and her backseat passenger window had been completely broken out. Not thinking of anything beyond my immediate response, I called out my friend's name, put my hand through the hole and told her the window had been broken. She almost started hyperventilating. She was almost incoherent, unable to complete a sentence (out loud at least). I didn't know how to console her and held back my sermon about how much worse it could have been. They left with her backpack and some cds. She called the cops and reported the bag stolen. She seemed in shock the whole drive home and I wondered what exactly was rushing through her head, surely at light speed.

       I thought about Rebecca Walker's word. Destiny. Not a subject I was about to bring up with my friend, but I thought about it. How she's been struggling with thoughts of leaving town. How things just haven't been going ideally here. Was this destiny's foreshadow? Or are signs that clear? What if she misreads the event? Is it possible to misread and react improperly... in terms of destiny? Really, no answer is wrong, if destiny is intractable. And can it be anything else? If it's malleable then it's not destiny and I'm still struggling to create and adhere to some self-proposed sense of meaning in my life. Which isn't a bad thing, but it just doesn't feel as important. Do some people get destiny and others don't? Am I just not important enough to merit a proper destiny? "Ah, let her do her own thing, it's of no consequence." If I believed that, I'd have to believe that no one has a destiny because, really, who's all that important in the grand scheme of things? So, maybe I'll see if the idea of having a destiny sits well with me... if I am able to live outside of my habits of thought. Do you have a destiny?