The Body Politic

In an attempt to rigorously test and chronicle my own thinking, I have decided to take up this blog once more.  The topics covered previously may crop up again, but the posts will likely take a new tack and become more engaged with my lived intellectual endeavors and concerns.

The title of my blog still fits.  I still believe the bicycle to showcase the most noble traits of human ingenuity and potential.  Bicycles are elegant machines: lightweight, ingenious, and adaptable.  They produce no waste,  the skills to use and fix them are easy to learn, they multiply human mobility tenfold, and they help individuals achieve freedom of mobility.  Bicycles let us be free, they are cheap, they last, and they are egalitarian. Bicycles embody the best of "progress".

The other object in the title, the lariat, then, embodies "tradition".  Still the best way for a cowboy to catch a calf, bull, or even horse, the lariat is simply a stiff rope.  It is the learned manual skill of the worker that makes his tool so effective.  The individual must perform within his inherited culture, must understand how to navigate the physical world, must do well.  The lariat requires the craftsmanship and care of the user--it requires respect for one's place in the larger order, and individual achievement.

The tension between these two values, progress and tradition, is at the core of my path through life.  On this blog, I hope to explore a wide range of topics, issues, and philosophies which I encounter as I try to make my unique way through life.

Frühling

The trials of winter are melting off. The cold that kept the world looking pure and clear in brilliant contrast, but punished it in darkness and drove life to ground has lost its grip. Green has again risen and draped the city in mercy. My window no longer looks out to empty dirty walls and sticks. Now a soft and soporific verdure spreads itself further everyday, relaxing its way out and down and settling. The parks are carpeted and cushioned and canopied. The leaves have burned from pale yellow dusting to a full even hue, pulling in rain and breeze. Pulling creatures out and up.

The city is again full of people. So full it makes one wonder where they have been. To walk through the old town on a sunny afternoon is to see the city by its face and not its facade. Shoppers, ice cream eaters, people watchers, peddlers, dog walkers. Old women in high heels and cheap shimmery tops that seem to defy categorization with glittering gold lipstick sip coffee in the middle of the pedestrian section. Flocks of school children dressed in neon clothing made for people three times their size blur around and through the crowds like swifts around chimneys. Old men in lederhosen with hats and canes carefully rummage through the town, watching the young sharp lined business men stride by seeing nothing and arguing into a cell phone.

Pears swell where two weeks ago blossoms sang next to the southwest walls. A soft rain tints the mountains a deep indigo and pearly clouds tear off the slopes in downy filigrees. Every where the promises of summer are visible. Promises I will not be here to enjoy, for my promises lie elsewhere.