3.29

Please don't shuffle me back into the folders you've so carefully arranged by chronology. Put me in my proper place, at least: at the head of the pack, your latest failure, the last great attempt before the cabinet rolls closed with a loud creasing sound of metal and paper.
I want what I deserve, at least. Give me that much dignity.

3.28

Sampson shrugged his clothes off a piece at a time until, nude, he slithered into the kitchen. He stood in the musty cold air that drifted out of the open fridge and laced itself around his toes until he finally selected a delicacy. He ate standing up in the living room, staring at the empty wall.
"I've really got to finish unpacking," he said out loud.
The wall appreciated the sentiment.
"I've got to get my act together."
The fridge was exceedingly grateful.
"I've got to grow up."
Well. Let's not get carried away, Sampson.

3.27

He made direct eye contact with her as she walked briskly from table to table. Her speed didn't carry itself up from her feet, though. Her face was serene and settled, like a mountain over a pressure point, a fault line. She looked his way and for a moment saw him looking at her. He looked away immediately. She was just trying to wait tables, and the young man had been examining her face, waiting for her to look at him, expecting it but not wanting it, because it would mean he would have to glance away. Just then, she walked straight to him. Soft panic.
"I noticed your loyalty card. You'll get that discount when I total your bill."
"Oh! Thanks."
"Of course!"
Oh--there it was. He had been waiting for it. She smiled at him, and it sort of broke across her face and shook through her the way you would expect an earthquake to ripple through the crust of the earth. She turned away, and he kept looking at where her smile had been, and he fell for her the way a house stands through the initial quake and slowly slumps over in the aftershocks.

3.24

Chocolate milk at one in the morning is like a tryst that produces an illegitimate child who you love better than the children from your wife, howling shrew. The sweetness of the chocolate, sugar, and cream have a tenseness and a depth that pull you up out of the seat of your battered old BMW and into the driveway of that child's mother. I can confirm that despite it tasting better than any other thing while you drink, it leaves your teeth tasting like regret and humiliation and holding the baby and realizing that your entire life is designed explicitly around never being discovered as this child's father, and unless something goes painfully wrong, this beautiful bastard will live without you forever.

2.23

I didn't fall asleep yet, because I wrote something I hated today. I wrote it while falling asleep at a tiny desk with my fingers sometimesddddddddddddddropping onto the homerow and justssssssssssssstaying there. It didn't make me happy and I didn't like it, but as I read its meanders and holes, I thought to myself: this must be what bad writers feel like when they read what they've written: like the whole time they were fighting a nap that never seemed to take them, and now that they've woken up, their writing is really bad.
I have more sympathy, and less.

3.23

I need time to process white noise. Sometimes, I sit and stare at fans and lightbulbs, trying to understand which vibration, exactly, is making the burr-like softness of a tonal hiss I like to call white. And what use is it to me that I can understand exactly that noise? Why do I take the time to examine fuzzy minutia? None. I gain nothing. I just lose time. More clock-defined seconds than you could find in a single day; these I swallow with my obsession. I spend my whole waking experience trying so despondently to fathom a useless phenomenon. I gain nothing.

3.20

I told a friend about my poetry, last night. He didn't lean in and shiver, the way I do when I hear tinsel phrases drift ethereal through a roaring crowd. He didn't look away, either. He just listened, as I recited line after thudding line in increasing panic, praying for something to strike him. My memory failed in places and the drumbeat faded across the still waters of the Aegean, the oars of my intellect hanging, dripping. He always sat in silence for these. The clearer part of honor/is the organized defeat./You start the war in dignity;/you end it in retreat./But when you run away from me,/you've lost your only friend,/dear, for/when you pick a fight with me/it's your life that will end. He was unmoved. Perhaps I should have expected nothing less, because I wrote the lines for him.

3.19

I woke up again last night after falling asleep folded over on my knees, suspended in air by a clever arrangement of ropes and fabric. I woke up again with my face pressed against the nylon sheet, my toes pressed up uncomfortably, my head full of blood. I woke up again last night shivering because I underestimated insulation. It's too important and my body is too cold to keep going. I dip my toes toward the earth so I can curl up on the couch underneath the cat.

3.16

Just recently, I decided to ride a bike from Massachusetts to California. Actually, come to think of it? I decided a long time before that. But recently I realized I could finally do it.

When I was in grade school, our teacher read from a book at the end of every day. I don't know how he chose these books, but he seemed to choose things that got at the very soul of being alive, somehow. I know that sounds hopelessly romantic, but unless you're in sixth grade and hanging on every word of Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place, you don't know what I mean. In between books about a boy on a farm and a woman in Southeast Asia, he read a book that hangs with me. A young man took his bicycle and some camping equipment and set off to ride across the United States, long before it was cool. On the way, he found friends, jobs, and a dog. That dog--I grew to love that animal without ever having met it. He and the dog travelled together from Virginia to Mississippi until, without warning, the dog died. I think I cried. In class. I lost the love of the story, and our teacher switched books on us.
I can't find that book anymore. There are so many stories about people bicycling across countries and continents that it's been forgotten by everyone but me. I've looked online, but fruitlessly googling "man on bike rides across America and his dog dies" gets really sad, really quickly. Yet that story itches right between my shoulder blades. I can't get rid of it.

I bought a touring bike last July, and I got perhaps the last 2015 Salsa 3 ever sold. The store rep, Ben, who laughs at his own jokes in the most infectious way, phoned around trying to find out if anybody had the bike in any size but this one. My wife, Delight, wanted to see if she could have the same frame as me. No dice. She bought the more expensive Salsa 2 and crowed at me about how smooth it was to ride. Honestly, I make the whole process sound so easy, like we walked in and purchased some bicycles, like normal people. I'm lying to you. The first time we went in, we barely even looked at bikes, just wandered around reading about what kinds of frame styles there were. We had a two hour conversation with Ben spread out over three visits that led, almost magically, to the most emotionally charged purchase I think the two of us ever made. I named my bike Jalepeño. I turned it over almost immediately after I rode out of the store and gave it the first ceremonial scarring all good machines need before they feel broken in. I hopped right up and gave it another go.

The actual second time I rode my Salsa anywhere, I was on the city's most well-trafficked bike trail, the Katy Trail spur; it's a path towards the state-spanning once-railroad turned state park. Delight was spinning happily behind me, trying to figure out her gear changes on a new bicycle. I was just trying to avoid the middle-aged joggers and the young couples on a romantic stroll, when a tremendous bang nearly stopped my heart. I stumbled off the bike, nearly dropping it, nearly falling over. My front tire was entirely flat. I was two miles from where we had begun. Honestly, I was mad, but I laughed it off and just hefted my Jalepeño on one shoulder and took off towards the car. You never truly appreciate how sturdy the Salsa frame is until you're underneath it, not on top. They do not play when they make a frame out of steel. Delight rode back to the car to drive it closer, and I had a lot of time to think as I pushed my finger into and out of the gaping hole in my front tire and tube.

My mother is losing her mind over this idea of riding across the country. I can understand that. If I were a mom, I would be worried about me too, and not for the normal reasons that most moms worry. There's more to worry about: My wife left me a few months ago. That feels so bad to just vocalize, to say out loud like it doesn't rip at me every time I open an old drawer and see her jeans all neatly folded, forgotten in her frenzied rush to leave. I think about her every time I ride up the first big hill near my house. She hated that hill. In addition to losing a wife, I've decided to quit my job and go to graduate school, and in between to ride the byways of the nation on the Jalepeño. Mom has her worry work cut out for her.

For Christmas, I bought myself some ludicrously beautiful black hammered metal fenders from Velo Orange. They didn't fit, and now I have squeaky plastic top-of-the-line maddening replacements. I have a rear rack, and clipless pedals, and some chamois purchased for half price. I'm slowly building a tolerance to bouncing thirty miles an hour down gravel hills. I'm essentially ready with everything I'll need, but for one thing. Me. I remembered from the book my teacher read that the hardest thing about the bike trip was just getting used to being on the bike for hours every day. The farthest I've ever gone was forty miles, and by the end, my sit-bones were pushed up into my lungs.
Now it's spring. I'm preparing myself. Today after work, I rode sixteen miles on a course I created so I could look at the creeks that run past my house. It's a route I've taken before, but never with this level of optimism. The precipitous drops lined with golf-ball gravel didn't stop me. My cold toes churning in cold wind didn't stop me. The waning light didn't stop me. I'm going to ride across this whole country. This sixteen miles is just an appetizer to a main course that might take me months.
When I pulled up to the end of the long leg jutting from my loop, I stopped to watch the sun go down. My whole life up until this has just been an appetizer of books that spawn dreams and marriages that dissolve, leading up to a main course that will last me, hopefully, a long time yet.

My view from the corner of Highway E and Benedict.

3.14b

The tips of my fingers are thin. My skin is ragged and torn. The edges lift and curl and peel back. I chew the edges I chop the sides I tear and tear and tear.
Maybe I'm nervous today, but I've done my laundry, the dishes, the chores, so explain that.

3.14a

[Welcome back. I'm going to try situps and pushups and blogging every day. The first two will get me in shape for the MR340, and the third, for life.]

Gyres are my constant mode, circling close and banking swiftly to stay in the rising air. I hope to catch the current as a participant, floating without effort to a higher plane. I'm terrified, though, that I'm losing altitude, so I check the ground on each mental beat, ticking like a metronome between flight and floor.

3.2

Stare at a sunset.

Wait for light to fill your eyes;

Flow over your lids.

Drink a volcano.

Tip the damn thing back and draw

a mouthful of self.

Hold your breath, dear one.

The surface is miles above;

The floor waits below.

Drink hemlock, eat lead.

Trip gaily from high cliffsides.

You’ll be eternal.