greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2011-05-04 09:56 pm
greenstorm) wrote2011-05-04 09:56 pm
Entry tags:
Counterpoint: Not A Winged Horse
When I say "I ride my bicycle more than anyone" it's for a laugh at the ambiguity.
When I add up the hours, flying through the streets, I know it's true.
When I was little I wished so hard for a winged horse but no living being could be so responsive, so permanent, so gracefully challenging and so silently forgiving. To achieve that you must surrender, not a soul for I am certain that on our night flights we are awakening a soul in you, but self-will, consciousness, and judgement.
You have surrendered these to me.
When I speak of you to others I speak of mileage: twenty-kay a day, I say, or one-hundred-kay-per-week. If I'm feeling ballsy I'll tell them I'm ramping up to one-hundred-fifty just for work and school. Sometimes I'll admit it feels like flying.
How can I evoke the magic of your reliability? When I was little I used to stand waiting by the school gate for my parents to remember to pick me up, sometimes an hour, sometimes two. The teachers would worry. I was always heartsick. How do I tell my friends I can get myself home now after school?. After so many broken relationships how do I say I can see when the pieces break, I can feel what's wrong, and I can put them back together so it works?
When living my life feels like standing on a train watching the scenery flash by, everything there and gone before I can really see what it is, I can console myself: at least the train is coming with me.
In the nexus of reliability and freedom happiness is born. You never know me as anything but happy because after five minutes with you the world is always okay again. When I come to you I don't crumple into tears after a stressful day, demand hugs, get quiet, need distractions, want conversation. I come to you as one soul to another to exist in our best capacities.
Tonight we flew home from school. My legs are getting tired, they started to get tired at the thirty-fifth kay in two days. Tired feels like heavy and like stiff, a tiny little pull on my willpower which, quite frankly, thrives on such an uncomplicated drain. Somewhere past the highway off-ramps the evening faded to night. We rode hard, fighting the tired because such simple challenges are a glory and a triumph after a day where I've spilled chili on my schoolbooks twice, contemplated a breakup, got mislabelled specimens in lab class, and passed up a dream job in favour of steady work- and that's just this afternoon.
We came up the hill through the dark, by the hillside where if you stand very silently you can hear the whisper of water trickling through saturated soil. You warmed me there, turning spring into the kind of summer where I had to stop and strip down to a tank top. We cannonballed home after that, half-naked (someday I will take my clothes off for you) through such velvet-soft air that the world could have ended there and I'd have been happy.
I've had two dozen walks with lovers in my life as nice as the time we spend together nearly every evening. I know you'll never leave me. Do what you might for me, I never question that success with you is my own personal accomplishment. My independence from you is a given.
Take what you can get is my life philosophy, and enjoy what you're given as much as you can.
So I ride my bicycle more than anyone.
When I add up the hours, flying through the streets, I know it's true.
When I was little I wished so hard for a winged horse but no living being could be so responsive, so permanent, so gracefully challenging and so silently forgiving. To achieve that you must surrender, not a soul for I am certain that on our night flights we are awakening a soul in you, but self-will, consciousness, and judgement.
You have surrendered these to me.
When I speak of you to others I speak of mileage: twenty-kay a day, I say, or one-hundred-kay-per-week. If I'm feeling ballsy I'll tell them I'm ramping up to one-hundred-fifty just for work and school. Sometimes I'll admit it feels like flying.
How can I evoke the magic of your reliability? When I was little I used to stand waiting by the school gate for my parents to remember to pick me up, sometimes an hour, sometimes two. The teachers would worry. I was always heartsick. How do I tell my friends I can get myself home now after school?. After so many broken relationships how do I say I can see when the pieces break, I can feel what's wrong, and I can put them back together so it works?
When living my life feels like standing on a train watching the scenery flash by, everything there and gone before I can really see what it is, I can console myself: at least the train is coming with me.
In the nexus of reliability and freedom happiness is born. You never know me as anything but happy because after five minutes with you the world is always okay again. When I come to you I don't crumple into tears after a stressful day, demand hugs, get quiet, need distractions, want conversation. I come to you as one soul to another to exist in our best capacities.
Tonight we flew home from school. My legs are getting tired, they started to get tired at the thirty-fifth kay in two days. Tired feels like heavy and like stiff, a tiny little pull on my willpower which, quite frankly, thrives on such an uncomplicated drain. Somewhere past the highway off-ramps the evening faded to night. We rode hard, fighting the tired because such simple challenges are a glory and a triumph after a day where I've spilled chili on my schoolbooks twice, contemplated a breakup, got mislabelled specimens in lab class, and passed up a dream job in favour of steady work- and that's just this afternoon.
We came up the hill through the dark, by the hillside where if you stand very silently you can hear the whisper of water trickling through saturated soil. You warmed me there, turning spring into the kind of summer where I had to stop and strip down to a tank top. We cannonballed home after that, half-naked (someday I will take my clothes off for you) through such velvet-soft air that the world could have ended there and I'd have been happy.
I've had two dozen walks with lovers in my life as nice as the time we spend together nearly every evening. I know you'll never leave me. Do what you might for me, I never question that success with you is my own personal accomplishment. My independence from you is a given.
Take what you can get is my life philosophy, and enjoy what you're given as much as you can.
So I ride my bicycle more than anyone.
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