I don’t think I have much time left, so I’m going to say what I want to say. Even if nobody’s listening, it won’t bother me any. I just want to say what comes to me, the way I want to say it. Because I really don’t think I’m going to be thinking or saying anything for much longer.
— Mieko Kawakami / “No Flowers”
my emptiness has a lake in it deep and watery with several temperaments milk cola beer
— Deborah Landau / “Dear Someone”
Populations of bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) that feed on humans boomed approximately 8,000 years ago — around the same time as the first cities started to form. The findings hint that these insects were the first urban pests. “When we started to live in cities, we brought all these people together, and they all had their own bedbugs with them,” says entomologist Warren Booth.
— Ian Sample / “Humans moving to ancient cities sent bedbug numbers soaring, say scientists” / The Guardian
Hands in my pockets, I came up with nothing but keepsakes of dust, a dulled archipelago of air stretching past my arms
— Christopher Buckley / “Desire”
The brazenness of [Donald Trump’s] self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.
— David Frum / “The Trump Presidency’s World-Historical Heist” / The Atlantic
my emptiness has an aqueduct in it selves rushing through channels
dissolving washing away in streaks
— Deborah Landau / “Dear Someone”
Death means not being able to come back to this place, to this body. It’s the inability to ever come back, the goneness, that makes death death. But I’m not afraid of being gone, and I’m not afraid of death.
— Mieko Kawakami / “No Flowers”
What I’m Listening To:
Never tips over Stands up on his own He is a blockhead Thinking man, full grown He comes well prepared
I got some popcorn and chips and a little dessert type thing.
I would’ve gotten it the day that I came to do the oil change but I couldn’t get anything cold. I didn’t know how long it would be, right?; so now you’re not doing anything until Saturday afternoon.
I’ll do laundry.
Give me a chance I have the bike I bought at Walmart of all things that had white lightning—a degreaser and and lubricant that they sell at REI for $16. They had it for nine dollars so I bought it. I degraded and lubricated the bike put the fenders back on what for a ride.
Nothing perfect sounds perfect!
Brakes are working?
Don’t know?
It’s supposed to rain tomorrow.
You’re gonna have to have a reminder for myself without picking up the prescription. I called the pharmacy and I said I may not come till Saturday and she’s like that’s fine. It’ll still be here cause I don’t know if we’re gonna get it tomorrow.
I’ll make a point of going to get it for you tomorrow, you don’t have to deal with it and we won’t deal with it on Saturday.
I’ll drop you off here and get the mail open at seven on Monday through Friday 7 AM to 8 PM.
I was wondering if you want to go to rose tomorrow for wine and cheese…
Whine? Oh, jeez, I think it’s recording our conversation…
What I’m Reading:
Turn off the factories, ground the airplanes, stop the mining, junk the cars. But they won’t, and even if they did, it would still be a catastrophe. It’s going to break wide open. Within the next couple of years, David, it’s going to break. . .There’s going to be the biggest bust since man began scratching marks on rocks, that’s what!
Clodomira’s legs are whirring pistons. She’s up over 100 revolutions per minute on her bicycle. The countryside streaks by her and in these few seconds there is no revolutionary struggle, no ultimate leader, no great leap forward.
The fervor of the People dissipates and all is still. She is frozen in the moment, and the moment frozen all around her. The landscape a stilled blur of streaks. In this instant all of existence becomes the object of her consciousness.
Life in this infinitesimal moment is bearable — worth the battle toward transcendence.
A flash and the moment is gone.
The bicycle, a humble 1956 Rabasa, feeling greatly misused upon resuming at that diabolic speed rebels, and disengages its chain breaking into a dizzy wobble.
They jackknife.
Clodomira is thrown into the sugar cane detritus — the edge of the field heaped with the sharp husks of post-Marxist labor. Now in mid-air she pictures herself as the radiant spear point of the vanguard, but as she hits the ground a shard of cane husk pierces her abdomen.
Clodomira rises to a sitting position. Our Lady of Charity hovers in the distance in an alcove of roiling cumulonimbus. All manner of birds and land animals are swept into the funnel and disappear.
Clodomira seethes. Oh, to be swept into that vestal vortex. Then she feels her father’s leaden hand on her shoulder, his grip tightening and constricting the blood flow to her head. Then his other hand under her shirt and rubbing her belly.
She is earthbound.
What I’m Reading:
We all came from refugees Nobody simply just appeared, Nobody’s here without a struggle, And why should we live in fear Of the weather or the troubles? We all came here from somewhere.
I have surgically-reconstructed knee swelling galore…
I had a surfeit of Bike MISERY…
I was not enjoying myself…
Mostly, I was following a tour of the East Coast Greenway (ECG) that was not riding on the East Coast Greenway…
I was not enjoying the 8am to 4pm regularity of “working” within the structure of the tour — I knew this would be my greatest challenge going in to this group endeavor. And it proved to be my Achilles…
I knew that as an early riser — I’m usually up at 4:30 am and ready to go at 6 am (especially during these nearly 14-hour long spring/summer days) — I was very impatient and unhappy not being able to leave until 8-8:30 am when everyone was done with breakfast and washing the group gear.
I knew as someone who likes to ride late into the day (6-7 pm) — in order to take longer breaks during the day and do longer mileage if necessary — that having to be in camp by 4-5 pm, so all the shared gear might be put to use in cooking dinner, would make my day feel rushed and confining.
I knew these were my challenges going in, and I tried my hardest to live within these parameters… but I just don’t believe that bike touring should be (or at least feel like) a forced march.
Then, add the inability to reschedule a riding day due to schedule inflexibility that required us to bike during one of the worst recent nor’easters in the region — a few of us were in the verge of hypothermia, nearly hit by careless, half-blinded by rain, drivers on bike-unfriendly roads, and on difficult terrain — and you have the recipe for a mass exodus.
A near mutiny, according to one of the co-leaders of the tour.
Four riders out of the original twelve have left the tour for various reasons. Most, I would say, due to the inflexibility to reschedule around severe weather (this wasn’t a mere passing thunderstorm—it was a historic storm), deviation from the declared route, and difficulty of terrain.
That’s a high attrition rate (33%) for such a small group. No one thought it would be easy — but no one thought there would be so much thoughtlessness about it.
As you will note above, my right knee (left of frame) is chronically swollen, but I’ve dealt with that for years after reconstructive surgery. Not major though, but quite uncomfortable especially when first starting to pedal. One just swallows the pain, and copious amounts of ibuprofen daily.
What became more problematic was an ostensible stress fracture in my left foot. Over the course of a few nights I had shooting / stabbing pain, keeping me sleepless, radiating out of one of the metatarsals.
Then after the 82-mile day (the 9 bonus miles where my fault) into Providence I was certain something was wrong when I woke up to this:
I was just swallowing the pain (and the ibuprofen) but when I saw this I was taken aback. And then we proceeded to bike 56 and 33 successive mile days in deteriorating weather and terrain — away from the ECG — and I hit my limit.
Especially when I found out that we were deviating hundreds of miles away from the ECG.
My intention was to ride the ECG from Key West, Florida to the Canadian border at Calais, Maine. We were not going to do that.
I was bummed. I was pissed. I was dazed, pained and confused. In short I was out.
I was thrown for a loop and loopy!
So were Jim, Glenn, and Dave.
Best of luck to the 8 remaining riders and their trek to Washington, DC.
I will: reasses, recover, recoup, and finish the ECG this year!
I have yet to pedal the 1,328 miles from Georgetown, South Carolina to Putnam, Connecticut; as well as the 32 miles from Ellsworth, Maine to Searsport, Maine that I’ve never pedaled.
If I subtract the roughly 50 non-ECG miles I pedaled from Putnam to Stafford, Connecticut, I have covered 1,364 miles of the ECG this year. So I’m just a hair over half-way done.
I intend to cover those remaining 1,328 miles this riding season. I’d like to be one of the hundred or so that have finished the trail in a calendar year.
I will do it. I’m halfway done. I’m better off as a lone trekking cyclist.
1,364 Miles on East Coast Greenway February 28, 2025 — May 22, 2025
1,360 Remaining Miles To Pedal on the ECG Coming sometime this Summer / Fall of 2025
What I’m Reading:
In April and May of 2024, hundreds and hundreds of students gathered on campuses across the country to demand their schools divest from companies that manufacture weapons used by Israel in its decades-long apartheid regime over Palestine. In response, university officials and state governments turned their weapons—fitted in riot gear and armed with batons, mace, and assault rifles—against the students. This is but a microcosmic example of how an empire such the U.S. weaponizes its military and utilizes propaganda against its own citizens, just as it does to those abroad . . . The purpose of an empire’s propaganda is to affirm and then re-affirm the empire’s continued existence.
— Aaron Boehmer / “Defying Empire: On the Perennially Relevant Political Message of Wicked” / Lithub.com
Dream old pay phone ringing in hospital I pick up receiver voice says “The answer is awe.” Still don’t know what to do with it last September right before I was diagnosed and the dream is still irritating
— Alice Notley / “The Answer Is Awe”
No relief… This morning the floor of the shower appeared somehow both lower than it felt to be in standing on it, and higher than it appeared in my perception, as if I were trapped in two phases of myself standing in the same place, some crux of touching eras. I found myself thinking again about suicide.
— Blake Butler / Molly
Salam to Gaza The refugee camp lacks bread now But it is enriched with blood The camp lacks land and bread But now it ascends to the skies
— Hussein Barghouthi / “Salaam to Gaza”
Chomsky has been relentless in reminding society that power takes many forms and that the production of ignorance is not merely about the crisis of test scores or a natural state of affairs, but about how ignorance is often produced in the service of power. According to Chomsky, ignorance is a pedagogical formation that is used to stifle thinking and promotes a form of anti-politics, which undermines matters of judgment and thoughtfulness central to politics. At the same time, it is a crucial factor not just in producing consent but also in squelching dissent. For Chomsky, ignorance is a political weapon that benefits the powerful, not a general condition rooted in some inexplicable human condition.
— Henry A. Giroux / “Introduction” / Because We Say So
The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.
— Hannah Arendt / The Origins of Totalitarianism
Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are more persuasive in online debates than people are — especially when they’re able to personalize their arguments using information about their opponent. Researchers pitted 900 people in the United States against either another person or OpenAI’s GPT-4 for 10-minute online debates on a sociopolitical issue. When neither the human nor AI had access to their opponent’s background information, GPT-4 was about as persuasive as a human. But if the basic demographic information from an initial survey was given to opponents before the debate, GPT-4 out-argued humans 64% of the time.
— Chris Simms / “AI uses people’s info to persuade them” / Nature
… life’s gone by … like I never lived…
— Anton Chekhov (Stephen Karam adaptation) / The Cherry Orchard
What I’m Listening To:
If you go down to Hammond You’ll never come back In my opinion you’re On the wrong track
Biked the entire day through a nor’easter — mid 40’s for a high, feeling like it was 30 degrees all day in the high winds and absolutely soaked through early on and all day.
Absolute MISERY.
Shades of hypothermia on a couple of occasions when stopped. And did over 3,000 feet of climbing. Too cold to eat. Too cold to drink. Just wanted it to stop.
Absolute MISERY.
Almost hit — within inches by a boat trailer on a shoulderless stretch of steep road. The shocking moment when I dove shoulder first into a rock outcropping continues to loop in my head. Insanely dangerous.
Absolute MISERY.
We’re not even biking on the East Coast Greenway. For some mysterious reason — probably to swing wide of New York City — we’re on the very steep rolling section of the Atlantic Coast Route that parallels the perfectly sane and well constructed rail trails of the East Coast Greenway in Connecticut. Those trails are a mere 20-30 miles to our south.
Piss-poor routing choice by the Adventure Cycling Association.
Why call this an East Coast Greenway tour if we depart the trail for this dangerous traverse made orders of magnitude worse by cycling in a nor’easter.
Absolute MISERY!
On the positive side… at least I wasn’t killed on the side of the road.
Start: Providence, RI End: Putnam, CT Miles: 57.17 / 1,381
From Providence, Rhode Island to Putnam, Connecticut. Too tired for more than a few pictures. We expect wall to wall rain from a Nor’easter all day and night tomorrow. Taking a shelter tonight to stay out of the rain.
What I’m Reading:
you’re home. eating lentils. talking to your loved one. you’re abroad. eating lentils. talking to your loved one. you’re not yourself. you’ve been stolen. you’re talking to your lentils. you’re not a knife, not cotton.
An auspicious start turned quickly as 5.7 miles into the ride our tour leader, Joyce, called me to ask if I was missing anything. Upon check of pockets for keys, wallet and phone I said: No.
Then she said don’t you feel lighter? And I immediately realized I left my backpack in camp. Not only was Joyce thorough in checking the campsite and finding the backpack on a far bench in camp, she was also willing toneide with it out to me about a mile and a half.
Which for me resulted in bonus miles and pushed my riding miles above 80.
Too tired to say more—or even think straight—enjoy the pictures of crossing from Massachusetts in to Rhode Island…
I rode with Steven most of the day.
The group is staying at the Providence Guest House and Hostel tonight.
Day 82 Start: Rochester, MA End: Providence, RI Miles: 81.12 / 1,324
Today was only a 72 mile day on the mapped route, but my back and forth to retrieve my back pack added 9 miles to my day.
No one in their right mind plans an 81 mile day, they happen as a result of desperation or stupidity.
What I’m Reading:
Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade . . . The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.
— Margaret Atwood / from a speech at the British Book Awards
thee istsfor manity reader 