Standing on the Edge

There was this night back in college – wait. Stop right there if you think this going anywhere near where you’re thinking…

There was a night back in college, at the astronomy lab, when it all hit me pretty hard –“all” meaning everything.

I had a roommate who was a lab assistant, and I’d tag along for the nightly lab classes, getting peaks at Betelgeuse or Jupiter – the night Shoemaker-Levy impacted was spectacular. I still remember the night I realized just how big the Andromeda galaxy really is to the naked eye by learning how to view it just out of the center of your vision (it’s faint, but it’s much larger than the moon, actually). Many nights were spent just lying on the grass with dozens of other students catching a meteor shower or viewing the constellations.

It was just such a night when the vast black expanse above overtook me wholly, and I felt as though I was, in fact, suspended above the void, that nothing was holding up against the ground, and that I was imminently poised to fall into eternity. It was only physically experienced as a quick gasp and mild shortness of breath for a moment, but I went home that night shaken, unable to shake the feeling of complete insignificance.

Looking back on it now, it was probably a form of depression – brought on by being a broke-as-shit music student, no doubt. The smallness of my own world – and its then-current meaninglessness - juxtaposed against the realization of how big and vast the universe really was just sorta sent me over the edge. For a few months.

I’m not kidding. I was that obsessed about it. I guess it was probably a pretty constructive form of depression, however. I just spent hours daydreaming about what it all really was. When I saw this picture, called "Pillars of Creation" and described as a “star-factory” it seemed like I lost all productivity for months. I was lost in thought about the scale of millions of light years, about the interrelated functionality of it all – of pulsars, and Supernovae, and galaxies, and black holes, and more specifically – what’s beyond it.

Everything in our universe – up to the point that we can see anyways – is interrelated and part of something bigger or contains something smaller. Is the universe really infinite? What’s beyond its expanding, growing Space? Is there really nothing beyond its outer limits? And what is Nothing? If there’s at least empty – and I mean empty space – beyond, at least that’s still something. How can there be nothing at all?

Are there other universes beyond – other Big Bangs – going on right now? In a sense then, is our Universe really universal? Wouldn’t all of it be the Universe? Many millions of universes – universi? - (and even our own so big we cannot fathom the size of it any sort of term relative to our own existence) popping in and out of existence with Big Bangs like bubbles in a can of soda?

Imagine that. Taking the time scale of our – “our”…ha – Big Bang and reducing to the length of bubble of gas.

Time is very relative. With a scope as large as the one I just described, time stretches to the point, from our point of view it isn’t even moving. Billions and billions of “years” reduced to scale of a couple seconds in relation to what could be going in context all around it. In that scale, it all becomes clear, the functionality is revealed, much like view a time-lapse film of, say, the Earth’s magnetic field interacting with the Solar Wind, looking very much like a wind sock.

Yeah, I was smoking a lot of pot back then.

So? It’s doesn’t make what I was pondering any less relevant to my own existence. And that was the ultimate point. Why I got so lost within it in the first place. And I why I was finally able find my way out of the weeds eventually.

It’s all just so beautifully mysterious. And my life, and everyone’s, does have a place in it. No matter how small and insignificant our own existence and achievements may seem in comparison. It’s all out there for us to look at, wonder at, tremble, cry, investigate, learn, and solve, and then start all over again when we get to the next mystery. A friend of mine (thanks Tim) found this that I feel illustrates the concept wonderfully.

http://openyoureyes.ytmnd.com/

Anyways, I’ve been watching this new show on the History Channel lately, “The Universe,” and I highly recommend it. It’s a high concept science show, yet speaking in the vernacular, in the great tradition of “Nova” and Carl Sagan’s immortal “Cosmos.”

The talking heads on it are dynamic personalities who explain the theoretical concepts in terms we all can understand, get excited about, and get a headache together while thinking about it. So far they’ve covered topics ranging from the very specific, such as Jupiter’s moon’s or the Sun, to vast, mind blowing subjects such as The Big Bang, Super-Giant Black Holes, and this week’s new topic, Dark Energy.

Their explanation of how they found the Super-Giant Black Hole at the center of our own galaxy made me laugh out loud. It’s existence was finally confirmed by the flashes of light coming at regular intervals from the area (in the constellation Sagittarius) they suspected it to be. Turns out the flashes were vast amounts of light being sucked in to the black hole, and being expelled, much as when too much water is poured in to a funnel at once. The Black Hole was literally getting clogged and shooting light back out.

“The Universe” is currently on The History Channel on Tuesday nights. It is definitely my new favorite show.

(P.S. – I import this blog into facebook, and am going to tag my smart, scientist-type friends. Y’all better have some comments.)

Take a deep breath...

It's been a rough last few days. It feels like it's been weeks since I first heard the news of Beth's death. I've been having a bit of a hard time sleeping. As I lay awake those nights since, I found myself wondering, hoping, she didn't see it coming. That as she lay there, in no-man's-land between her body and soul, if she even realized what had happened to her. If she was aware of what her teammates were doing for her.

Monday night we listened as they described Beth's last hours in her body, and the pain they felt was too much for me to bear. I was selfishly grateful for my scheduled rehearsal and I left as the evening shifted gears to remember Beth as she lived, not as she died. I wish I had stayed, however, as those stories behind the photographs in the picture gallery on the team website may have helped lay the dust of the dry desert in my mind. Desiccated after hearing such a harrowing tale, the anguish of watching, first hand, a friend die right in your arms.

I have stared up at my dark ceiling also dwelling on my own racing, my own riding, and if it's worth the calculated risk we all take. I can't speak for everybody, but it is worth it, of course, until it takes my life - or the ability to live my life. I can only hope, however, that the disaster that struck the cycling community last Saturday can help spread light on cyclists' safety. Maybe it will help those who allow our racing events to be staged realize that a one day road closure isn't going to kill the economy of a farm community. That the inconvenience of rerouting traffic is a small price to pay to ensure the safety of people doing something they love and celebrating it to a level that can only be described and beauty and poetry.

To many we may only be a bunch of weirdo out-of-towners with shaved legs and tights invading their quiet town to ride expensive toys. But we all know that bicycling is so much more than that. And as we move forward with this sport - short-term and long - we need to make others see this.

Bicycling is independence. And Freedom. From everything to boredom to poverty, depression to debt, apathy to spiritual emptiness. The freedom to go and do whatever we want, and the only boundaries are our body's limitations. And racing, by riding as fast and as hard as we possibly can, constantly pushes those limitations farther and farther, widening those boundaries and horizons with them. The more we ride, the more we can do, the faster can do it, the farther we can go.

Beth Kobeszka went far too early. A woman as beautiful on the inside and out as she was had far too much to give. I Googled her name after hearing the news in order to find more information on the accident, and instead found pages and pages on her charity work and her years of athletic competition. I read that she was an Academic All-American. I only knew her a week, yet, her smile and kind words brightened up a dreary, rainy day. I need only to look at her friends and teammates to see the influence she had on them.

Whether you decide to keep riding or not, think of all the people Beth was destined to touch, to affect, to change for the better with her positive attitude and competitive spirit. However, don't keep riding because Beth would've wanted you to.

Ride because it will invigorate you, inspire you, to touch as many people, and affect as many lives as Beth Kobezska would have, and did.

Sturm und Drang (Lightning and Natural Light)

It was hot.

The dog met us out front as we got out of the van. His usual full body wag was clamped down and muted to a few lethargic tail circles, his energy mostly concentrated on panting. It was the kind of hot, where when the wind blows, it burns your skin. He looked up at us, putting on as pathetic a face as possible in hopes this might be one of the rare afternoons we breech flea protocol and let him into the air conditioning.

The parched grass crunched under my feet as I walked toward the porch with a bag of groceries in one hand, and Styrofoam soda cup in my hand - long since drained, it's last drops among the quickly melting ice slurped noisily, like ants, up the straw. The dog followed close on my heels, his eyes never leaving the sliding glass door within the screened porch.

I set the cup down, and slid the door open. The air conditioning meeting my wet skin was like falling down, naked, into the snow. The dog stood with me at the icy threshold, front paws up on the linoleum, his rears still on the concrete step, enjoying it with me. He held his chest high, closed his eyes, and sniffed. He immediately came back to life, turning a couple of circles between our legs, tail wagging. I looked at my dad over my shoulder.

"Can he?"

"Yeah, let him in. Make sure he stays on the blanket." A southern dog needs to stay outdoors, no matter how many times he gets a bath. Fleas and ticks are a way of life.

"Come on, Le Mutt!" and the French Bouvier/Labrador mix happily bounded into the kitchen. He laid down straight away on the blanket, eschewing the unfamiliarity of the rest of the house and opting to make the most of his time in the AC.

After putting the groceries away, we settled into the afternoon. At my dad's house, those North Carolina summers were spent on the back porch. On the wicker furniture, scratching the dog's ears, and watching the horses mill about, twitching away the painful bites of the horseflies (I swear to God, lying dead behind the plastic cover of the fluorescent light above the tack room in the barn is a mummified green-eyed monster at least an inch long. I could feel the searing heat of it's sting between my shoulder blades, out of my reach as I ran around in circles, screaming and trying in vain to stretch my arm behind me to scrape it off, every time I looked at it). But with the heat outside, it looked to be a day indoors watching Tour De France coverage or Oprah, or maybe a video if we'd stopped at the rental place.

As my dad stood in the kitchen opening his first of many Natural Lights that afternoon, he noticed a breeze hitting the trees, and dark clouds building up from the west. "Storm's comin'. That'll cool things. C'mon, turn that thing off. Its porch time."

I stepped back outside through the sliding door and definitely felt the new breeze stealing away the heat from the back of my neck. It had a heavy dampness to it. I breathed in and felt, I knew, the sky was about to let loose like a soaked sponge being squeezed by a large hand. The leaves were rustling steady now, and though there was plenty of sunlight coming through them on our side of the house, the tobacco field across the road was quickly being covered by a gray blanket of shadow. The wind picked up and with it the spirits of everything around us. The cats came scampering back to the porch door, and meowed to be let in. The horses out in the pasture galloped and then walked, galloped and then walked, their manes waving like flags along with the trees. The new life in the air felt as good to them as it did me, stealing a sip of my dad's beer, it's salty, yeasty foam breaking the heat as much as the breeze did and I watched him scratch his shirtless, hairy chest, waiting for the show.

The first crack of thunder came like a car crash as soon as the last of the sunlight was blotted out, and it sent the horses into a full out run. Huge, sloppy, boulders of rain began to fall, hitting with a visible splash and spreading out within the dry blades of grass like thick ink on newspaper. Faster and faster until I could no longer make out the individual drops, until it was a curtain of water, until it was swirling down from the banging clouds, riding the wind to the ground.

I sat in safety on the porch in my tank top and shorts, and shivered almost sexually when a cool gust hit my skin. I laughed over the thunder, along with my dad, at the horses running, zig-zagging in the field, nipping at each othe,r as they made their way back to the barn. I laughed harder as he dared my 11 year-old brother, Duffy, for 50 cents to take off all his clothes and streak out into the field, touch the second closest horse jump and run back. "Tim! He'll get hookworm!" my stepmother warned as my dad howled while my brother's pink bare ass bobbed up and down as he made his way out to the jump. I could feel the splash of the rain through the screen and it was just warm enough. It must have felt like going for a swim out there.

It stormed until just before dinner, I took a few more sips of dad's beer, and when the sun came back out, it felt as though the entire outdoors were now freshly clean and hanging out to dry on the line. I took the dog out to play fetch and stretch my toes in the wet grass. Summer evenings in Central Carolina are about the closest thing to heaven I know. As the sun dropped toward the horizon, the pine trees began to whisper and seem to glow golden as the thunder faded away to nothing.

Dad finished his beer, and went inside to start making the hamburgers for dinner.

I'm sorry

I'm sorry if you feel I've changed.

That I am not the Wolf anymore.

But I'm in the shadows, watching

and will show myself from time to time

I need to do this, see how far I can go

The late nights around the fire

Drumming, screaming, dancing

Paint streaked faces and howling cavorters

Were killing me.

I want to be able to risk it myself

While reaching for the Sunrise instead.

There's nothing worse than regret.

I wanna be on a bike

I actually wrote this last year, in the dead of winter...thought I'd post it here, finally. This will be the first of several archival posts from my old myspace blogs.

------------------

I wanna be on a bike. With no shirt on. Just shorts and sunglasses. Flying.

I want it to be summer. To be hot outside. A hot, humid dusky evening. Really hot, where you get sweaty from moving just a little. I want to see a storm in the distance. With big grey feathers of rain coming down from it. And see the red/orange light from the sunset reflecting off of it. I wanna feel a breeze from it coming up behind me, pushing me gently, easing the pain in my legs and cooling my wet skin. To look down and be hypnotized by the white line passing under my circling feet. And look up and not recognize where I am.

I wanna hear my breathing, smell a barbeque, see a big dog, feel leather on my hands, and taste cold water.

I wanna be on a bike.

The Car Whisperer

We flew down Augusta, east from Oak Park through the Austin neighborhood, no blinky lights so as to keep a low profile. Taking turns pulling into the wind with this year's Tour Da Chicago winner and another former messenger, we covered almost ten city miles in under 30 minutes.

The disappointment of the previous night had already begun to wilt as I wrote down my feelings, but was nearly dead upon finally waking up to the sun and warmth outside today. I sat on my back porch drinking coffee and reading, feeling every pore in my skin fill up with the light. The day ahead promised action, new friends, and knowledge.

You just sort of blend in with the area when you are riding with others, because you are focused on staying together. It's confidence, not cockiness. Alone, in a rough neighborhood, you might be a little more worried about who is approaching you, and you are not pushing as hard, so you aren't making as many lights. Tonight we glided with traffic, communicating wordlessly with it, flowing through the intersections in synch with the city's heartbeat. Being pushed from behind, as if by pressure at our backs, down the arteries, carrying much needed energy and nutrients to a body clogged by laziness and apathy.