These Things: Bicycling to Build Immunity Against Unwanted Accumulations
I think [bicycling] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.
- Susan B. Anthony, “How the Bicycle Emancipated Women”
As Paracelsus points out, there’s essentially no such thing as poison, or everything is poison, but that there’s only a too muchness of a thing. Another way to say this is that there is a tipping point into poisonous. Similarly, clouds do not exist so much as they are a process of the accumulation of water vapor to a tipping point of too muchness which we call rain. And from this there are many metaphors that we won’t get into. Understanding the tipping point of a thing into poisonous is what keeps us alive. For example:
Princess Buttercup
To think, all that time, it was your cup that was poisoned.
The Man in Black (Wesley)
They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.
I’m working hard to find antidotes to an uncomfortable accumulation of particular human feelings brought on by increasingly antagonistic ideas very different from my own about how we can work together to create a community where people feel safe, healthy, and successful. So if I see you out there and you hear me say, “on your left,” please know how happy it makes me to be out there with you.
Maybe like me, you’ll find some of these things useful, maybe even inspiring:
“How to rescue a wet book” - It’s ineluctable: summer, books, rivers...so I thought I’d go ahead and bookmark this article.
“The Pianist and the Lobster” - I’ve been fortunate to have met several professional concert pianists and they are a distinct class of person to be sure. This article on the pianist Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter, and the plastic lobster he had to have near him in order to perform, is more fascinating than inspiring maybe, but it’s really fascinating.
You gotta do something with those blank walls. You maybe already know this, but John Greene, young adult novelist, gives us “Life hacks my wife taught me” that actually work toward living a happier life. Really, I tried some of these and I’m happier.
If you need a Soul Vaccination and Tower of Power isn’t playing in your area, here are strategies “Nine Mental-Health Experts Use to Get Over Bad Moods.”
“Life of Pie - Pizza and Bikes Can Fix Anything” - I really enjoyed this short documentary, created by Patagonia, about how two ladies opened the minds of their conservative small town in Colorado by opening a pizza place. Evidently, “it’s really fucking good pizza.” I also believe that riding a bicycle dissipates all kinds of unhealthy physical and emotional accumulations.
I can’t not include this in relation: Sex is a lot like pizza; when it’s good, it’s really good, and when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.