Weeks 15-16: Cycle

In which the podcaster starts a new chapter with blank pages, makes a foul shot, and has an in-body experience.

THE NEXT POD WILL BE CAST ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5. 

Transcript

MY 12-MONTH VIDEO FAST 

EPISODE 14 – WEEKS 15-16: Cycle

This is Richard Loranger and welcome to Episode 14, covering Weeks 15 and 16 of My 12-Month Video Fast.

One of the best ways to shut me down, as my doctor and therapist both know, is to say, “You know you’ll feel better if you exercise.” It’s like a magic spell: my cerebrum instantly evaporates in my skull; my eyes glaze in a catatonic void; my jaw slacks; and I gaze blankly for a long moment, hearing only the distant thud of my still-beating heart. Then my autonomic system springs to action and spits out a single word like a ticker-tape response, emitted from my glottis like air leaking from a tube: “Sure…” Generally they pause to decide if this has registered at all, which gives me time to lock down the discussion with my standard timeline: “I know. I just don’t know when.”

And that’s true. See, I’m a writer, as you know, and worse yet a creative writer, which means that I spend a viable percentage of my time not in my body. On top of that, I’m not a particularly physical person. And yeah, I know a lot of writers are, they’re not mutually exclusive; I’m just in the Space Camp. I don’t like team sports (that’s an understatement) and never played them, except – and few people know this – two seasons in a community basketball league when I was around ten. My dad coached a team and he insisted that I try out, even though I was clearly not the sports son – and somehow never ended up on his team. This isn’t a grievance (I don’t think); he just knew better than to pick me. I didn’t really care, and besides, I was always on the team with the black t-shirts. We usually lost, but we were the coolest. I played forward and I got the ball in the basket (the point of the game, I believe) exactly once, on a foul shot when my brother (who was on my dad’s team) tackled me on the court. I guess he forgot what sport he was playing. They gave me two shots, actually, and I got one in. Who knows how. So in two seasons of community basketball, I managed to score exactly one point. Don’t worry, I think it’s funny too.

I’m just not physically intuitive, and I sure wasn’t back then. My nun-infested Catholic grade school didn’t have a gym or any sort of physical education program, so I didn’t have a chance to develop that early on. And of course I had no idea. On the court I wasn’t quite coordinated enough to dribble the ball for more than a few seconds at a time (if I was lucky), and I didn’t understand what you might call “going all out” – you know, pushing myself. I never did, and it never occurred to any of the adults that I encountered in situations like that that any kid wouldn’t. I might have picked up a little more in high school under the stern gaze of Mr. Rodriguez, but my body was pretty set in its ways by then. I was destined to be a fumble-thumbs.

Which is not to say I was inert – far from it. I was in fact often in motion, just not competitive motion. I always loved hiking and biking, which you may already know if you’ve listened to the earlier episodes. Much like road-trips, for me they are ways of seeing the world, sometimes even in elevated ways – heightened. Because I am, in base and essence, an observer – which might be synonymous with writer. Even more, there’re ways of observing while being part of the world, amidst, on the planet. I think a lot of people enjoy them for that reason. And I still love them. Admittedly, as I move through my sixties, hiking has tamed a bit to walking in the hills or around the lake. And biking, easily one of my most beloved activities, was diminished by a knee injury when I was 50, damned meniscus frayed like an old shirt, forcing me to drag that mountain bike up the stairs instead and mount it on a trainer in my apartment for strength-building only. And I’ve had enough joint problems since then that it’s been a bit precarious to take it out into potholed stoned-driver Oakland, so there it rests, reduced from my beautiful way of seeing and being in the world to a vehicle for cardiovascular toil.

I’ve been thinking of my bike these past few weeks, mounted here in the corner and unused for most of a year, as I’ve been reevaluating the purpose and function of this podcast. The last few episodes have felt as if I was wrapping up a first…chapter, maybe, of this 12-Month Fast cast, covering a lot of topics, yes. I feel like I was focusing more than anything on “exciting things I’ve done in the past”, situations of agency and inspiration that had nothing at all to do with television, many of which took place in a decade when I didn’t really watch it. In some ways I think I’ve been using the past to inform and propel me toward – what? Hard to say, because that past is still very much past, and I haven’t really gotten anywhere with this – yet.. And maybe I needed that, maybe I needed to hide or escape there for a bit, or to recall what life without TV had been like, but now I’m feeling the need – urgently – to be present, and in the present. That’s not so much something to help sustain the video fast, that’s well underway and generally under control, in terms of staying away from streaming and gaming, the time-suck monsters of the universe. Maybe I’ve been hiding from that a bit, sure, but even more so I’ve been avoiding some harsh realities that I need to deal with, most acutely accruing income in Late Capitalist America, if I want to sustain, well, any of this. 

 I haven’t been entirely head-in-sand on that – I tried setting up a few writing workshops with an established local org, which didn’t work out due to terrifically bad timing. I wasted a month poking my nose into voiceover work (probably a terrible place for a nose, but still), expecting nothing to happen fast, but the service I chose was somewhat of a scam, expecting more and more money to even give me a chance to audition. I’ve been trolling LinkedIn for months – what a joy – finding temp or part-time gigs to be mostly scraps for offensively low pay, and I’ve got similar job listings crowding two different inboxes. (One place keeps sending me “the perfect position” – seeking a young married couple, hetero implied, to be a surrogate mom and dad for disadvantaged teens on-site at the Milton Hershey School in, you guessed it, Hershey, PA. There’s an algorithm somewhere that needs a stiff one.) So after months of false starts, I sank at some point into a malaise, where most days I’m not merely unfocused on all of this but actually napping through it, which ain’t getting me anywhere but up late writing podcasts (ahem). So when I say I feel urgent to be present, I mean urgent to stir up that chipper yang-energy whatta-ya-need and can-do enthusiasm that springs me out of bed at 8 a.m. and can’t wait to do it! And yikes.

So here I am taking steps toward a new direction and presence for this podcast and my workaday life, not really baby steps because I’ve stepped here before so maybe faux baby steps for a minute at least, that’s right, find your footing or at least your feet, you know the walk, and would you please put on your comfy shoes cause you’re gonna need em. And I’m thinking about that mountain bike, old friend, no, I’m actually looking at it propped up in what we’ll call the third corner of my front room. You’ve been here before: Clockwise, in the front left corner we have the angry instruments; front right the little makeshift writing desk, the music center, and the ghost of the TV; and back right, in front of a giant handless clock face that I dragged up here god knows why, the bike stands on end in that heavy triangular trainer, ready to be flipped down and ridden into the…nowhere; and, just to avoid leaving you with an unfinished canvas of my front room, in the back left corner is my bed. So now you know. There are doors and other rooms and such too, but they’re on a need to know basis, and…nope. 

So I’m thinking about the bike there on its trainer, and I’m thinking about training wheels and baby steps, and I’m thinking what is your problem, you need some fucking stamina like right now, and I’m thinking and don’t be such a baby about it, and finally, in one giant leap for mammal-kind, I think, Okay, doctors, don’t make a fuss unless you wanna stop me dead, but I think it might be just about when.

So I got on the bike this week, a few times, like every other day for fifteen-plus minutes – peddling hard, but still baby steps, baby bikies – first time in almost a year, and it never fails to blow me away how much I resist it. I mean, aren’t we supposed to want to do things that make our lives better? Dopamine Schmopamine, I say. But we all resist exercise when it’s been a while, don’t we? I know I’m not an anomaly in that! You want me to get up and what? ‘Tis entropy come to steal you away. Thing is I know this’ll yang me up after a bit. Last year I started biking for the first time in years; I was exhausted from many months of pandemic depression and it felt like bike-or-die. Worked my way up to riding hard for 25-30 minutes almost every day for eight months, plus some calisthenics and stretching, and smashed the hell out of that depression. Bye-bye! Then last fall I went on a five-week trip practically pogoing around the East Coast – we’re talking Yang City. Then I got home and was like, I think I’ll sit down for a minute – and here I am. So I know I can get back there. It’s just a matter of…

…getting on the bike. I put on some music – last year I was peddling to Rick & Morty and the South Park kids, but they’ve been exiled right along with that old 40-inch (I miss you guys) – so this time I’ve been putting on some of my brother’s old rock albums, mostly for the beat, and loud – Queen, Led Zepplin, The Who – and I climb on up. The first few minutes are always a grind [grunt…grunt] even if I like the tune, legs going Damn you! and damaged lungs burning and moaning but what if I can’t do this…, but I know they can. After a bit I start to catch a rhythm; peddling fairly fast on what feels like level ground, and the lungs catch up and maybe there’s a little schmopamine around at this point, and I’m digging the music (hopefully), and despite the lovely scenery in my apartment my mind wanders, often out the window at first to what scenery I do have, I’m on the fourth floor above the rest of the neighborhood and from the front windows I can see a spread of North Oakland, trees and houses and the Oakland Hills with a swath of sky above, and through the side window if the sun’s not too bright more houses and highways and the hospitals on Pill Hill and beyond leading to skyscrapey downtown, and maybe in the distance a glimpse of the huge white cranes at the Oakland Port along the Bay (famous for inspiring the AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back and we’re always waiting for them to start walking), and a good twenty miles off, the long ridge of hills along the San Mateo Peninsula across the Bay dark and hovering and a little haunted and misty in the distance. So yeah, I guess I’d call that scenery, but I’m also still sitting in my room. And as I pass fifteen-twenty minutes, which I’m starting to do again and should be doing every time soon, that’s when the endorphins kick in, not consistently but likely, maybe just a little squirt and maybe a full-blown trip, whatever this old lump of flesh can do, and then I begin to cycle, really, cycling my breath, in and out, cycling my blood, cycling my musculoskeletal, cycling my nerves and transmitters, and I close my eyes and breathe and cycle and the body memory starts, sometimes more than others, often first the legs find themselves peddling down country roads of Pennsylvania and Michigan, through fields and pastures and it’s nice to be out there, then they brace for a dart into the woods along paths well-known but rough – Watch that branch! Sharp around this tree! Whoa, here’s a jump, whoa, another and down that dip through the creek and these aren’t precise places documented like film but old knowledge of the thighs and calves and glutes, and of the skin and senses as well, I know the color and smell and motion of those fields, the cloud of gnats I sail through and the dashing rabbits and quail along the side, and in the open spaces all that sky and sun, and years pass and I’m flying all over San Francisco, in and out of traffic and full of right now, weaving between cars and damn that bus was close, up and down the hills, grinding up a steep one (how do you do that?), taking in the sea air and the queer shifting light and weather of that city, then soaring down, down long and steep Gough Street Hill for what seems ever, all timed lights, passing cars and standing tall on those pedals and howling. And yes I did that in the past, I was a messenger there for years and biked all over that city up Twin Peaks and all for pleasure, but I’m not telling stories here, I’m telling of the body. And body memory is different, works differently than mind-memory, at least it seems so to me – and no, I’m not expressing dualism here, I think things are much more complex (or simpler) than that. Experiencing mind-memory is much like watching a film, it feels patchy and without immediate life-force and different than actually being there, while body memory often seems like it’s happening right now, all around you. I think of it as much like what happens when you look at your face in the mirror and see yourself at every age at once. What? you say. That doesn’t happen. Well I think it does, and frequently, when you view yourself plainly and if you pay attention. Unlike the mind, which lives in the present and experiences the past distantly, the body experiences the past in the present.

So when I get on that bike, I’m biking in the present, but my body is biking in many moments of time at once and bringing those experiences together in the present. When I go walking along my favorite stream in the Berkeley Hills, I’m with that stream at that very moment, but I’m also with it in the expanse of states I’ve seen it in, in drought and flood, sun-specked and in rain, through all the seasons and years. And anyone who has been fortunate enough to move their body or propel it through space, in any manner, which I know are most but not all, and above that have had the greater fortune to enjoy doing so, has and does experience that as well, their body bringing the past with them to the present. They may or may not be aware of it, but might if they allow themself to. The aging dancer who can no longer, remembers dancing with their mind, sure, but still knows dance with their body. If they can allow that knowledge, they can experience it without actively doing it. With body memory, it’s all about allowing.

Now that I’ve gone completely Zen on you, or at least bicycle-Zen, let me back up onto what might feel like more solid ground. So, I want to be more present in the world and in my life. I want to be more in the present, and I’m using the bicycle as a tool to get there. Are there other tools? Yes! Do I know what they all are or which ones I might use? No! At least not yet, so they might comprise some of the episodes coming up, in Chapter 2, I guess. But the bike seems like the right place to start, because I know it and I’ve lived it and my body knows it. And I’ve always been an advocate for peddling, and got around that way for much of my life. 

Anyone who knows me now might think I’m a diehard driver, but I didn’t own a car until I was 26, and that one was given to me. Drove it across the country and it died. The next wasn’t till I was 36, when I bought a 1970 Toyota pickup in the mid-90s with an immortal engine from a kid in Austin for $400 (the most beat-up pickup in town and that’s saying a lot), and used it for a few years, but only for places I couldn’t get to on my bike. Put some work into it and sold it for $800 when I moved to Brooklyn. I had both a car and bike there but favored the car because peddling in New York involved gulping an awful lot of exhaust fumes. Then ten years later back in San Francisco I bunged my knee and that was that. And now? I don’t know about running errands in traffic, but maybe it’s time to go back to biking the streets, riding for pleasure out in the world, instead of chained to that trainer. Is it possible I could give that a try sometime soon? Sure, I might. I just don’t know when.

There is one thing that always pushed me toward biking as an adult. Y’all know I love roadtrips – you’ve heard a lot about that – but I never liked cars. How could someone not like cars? Inconceivable! I’ll tell you how.

Here’s the sound of a bicycle in action…. [SOUND]. That’s muscle and gears making motion on the surface of the earth.

And here’s the sound of a car engine… [SOUND]. That’s a series of explosions, nothing but. And that’s actually what I’ve always heard when listening to combustion engines, or at least what my mind registers it as: explosions. Because that’s what a car is. And that’s why, deeply, they’ve always creeped me out.

Okay! So less explosions, maybe, and more allowing. I like that theme of allowing, and I sure like the idea and the act of allowing. Here we’re talking about allowing the body to do what it does, but it’s not a bad mantra to keep in general, as in allowing yourself to be kind to yourself, allowing others to live as they will, and to make mistakes, allow yourself to make mistakes, just fucking allowing instead of, say, obstructing. Feels good, doesn’t it?

So maybe allow yourself to get on a bike here and there, if you can and you haven’t been, or put yourself in whatever motion you enjoy, and let yourself cycle, and cycle, and cycle and cycle…

You have been listening to Episode 14, covering Weeks 15 and 16 of My 12-Month Video Fast. The next episode will drop two weeks from today, on Saturday, October 5. We’re off on a new track, a new chapter, a new something! Tell your friends! And Happy Autumn!

Thanks as always for listening, and please enjoy a moment of self-propulsion.