Disgusted

While waiting for John and mattio on the Lower East Side yesterday (we've moved from the Monday bar crowd to the early afternoon bar crowd. I think its time for a detox week.) I bumbled around for a little while, admiring graffiti, bikes, thinkin' 'bout stuff... And I happened upon a set of advertisements that absolutely disgusts me.

These ads for the SteelWorks Lofts in Williamsburg have pictures of steel workers from 60 some-odd years ago, with slogans like "Built by Williamsburg's Finest" and "They Work Harder so you can Live Better"

um...?

Sorry, can you try harder to take advantage of the working poor in your attempt to sell a yuppie paradise condo to MBA's and trophy wives who are pushing out those very working class folks? I'm not sure you've crossed enough lines yet.

Bicycle Musings

It has been far far far too cold to train here, which is sad, because that one difficult Monday at Central Park was enough to whet my appetite for more riding. So this has left me, as always, with tinkering. I was going to show you some pictures of my recent tinkerings, but my digital camera is, well, actually frozen. So just visualize all of this. Unmitigated geekery ahead.

The Raleigh is getting closer and closer to race trim. My dear dear friend has helped me acquire some much needed parts (some free clipless pedals that I'll pick up tomorrow) and some much desired parts (very inexpensive Cinelli Criterium handlebars). The goal is to have the more curvaceous bars matched with more modern aero brake levers and a properly long stem (I am very tall). This will give me many more comfortable and aerodynamic hand positions and let me stretch out like I ought to. The clipless pedals will link my feet to the bike and do all sorts of wonderful things in terms of power transfer and efficiency.

Malcom also sent me home the other day with a few lightly used dérailleur pulleys in order to spruce up the Raleigh's old VGt. Included was an arcane old pulley that uses bearings rather than bushings (little steel balls in grease rather than slippery metal just rubbing against stuff and hoping for the best, which is what most pulleys are) I cleaned and re-greased the little gear, and I think I'm going to put it in the Shimano 600 that's on the Raleigh now, just for kicks. It's heavy, but soooo smooth.

Same friend as scored me the bars and the pedals found me the Peugeot frame, which I picked up last night. It's a bit smaller than the Raleigh, and a worse frame in terms of the steel used, but it will definitely make for a fun fixed gear. It's a beautiful green color, and while it doesn't have the beautiful lugs that the Raleigh has, nor the light weight, it will most certainly be a beautiful machine put to good use. I'll post pictures once the camera thaws, I promise.

Jeff Lewis: kinda awesome.

Some thoughts very much in progress

Object-signifiers: Objects whose purpose (purpose?) is to define other objects and thus they are held to the same real-world rules as the objects they define, even thought they are not beholden to real-world rules themselves for any other reason save this intentionality. An electronic schematic is just lines on paper. If it has a short circuit in it, it is not a schematic in the same way. It gets relegated back to lines-on-paper status. Yet it is still somehow distinct from babel, gibberish. In a certain sense, the only difference between an object-signifier and it’s intended target is one of material. In this case, ink versus copper. In the ink, the electricity flowing through the circuit is (only) implied. What is the role of intention in all this anyway? Do signs exist in the absence of intentionality?

Direction of signification: And what does direction of intentionality (writing or reading, transmitting or receiving) matter? Must both transmission and reception occur in order for there to be signification? (re-read Peirce)

Location of translation: a place, physical or logical, wherein definitional acts occur to encourage the use of a particular family of signs. The legend of a map is a location of translation.

Justice

There's justice in this world, it just sometimes happens through jokes. I've recently made friends with the expert mechanic at a bike shop that I enjoy frequenting. He and I sit around, talk shop, he tosses me spare parts and expert advice. He's a really great guy and a veteran cyclist, and I enjoy our little conversations when they happen. Last time I saw him I was collecting the pieces necessary to rebuild my wheel. L was with me, and we started talking about our plan to build her a road bike around one of my old sub-par hubs. My friend the mechanic (we'll call him Malcom) digs around through one of his hundreds of parts-drawers and pulls out a pretty nice quality sealed-bearing rear hub and hands it to her. "Here," he says. "Merry Christmas."

So today I go to him to shoot the shit, ask him about rebuilding the VGt, and just say hello. L comes up in the course of conversation and I bring him up to speed. Malcom stops a beat after I tell him, as though trying to figure out something very difficult, and then goes, "A Triathlete?! He'll never have time for her!"

Justice comes into play again, in that tomorrow, I am picking up a free bicycle frame. It's an old Peugeot, probably a low-end paperweight, but I have this nice set of wheels that was a Christmas gift to L. She left them here because she couldn't fly home with them. Do I get them back to her somehow? Or do I bolt them to the Peugeot? Right now they're under my bed and make a terrible noise any time the bed shakes. I'd like to do *something* with them.

Good Behavior

The current draft of the story I wrote this weekend:

She was late. And that was familiar and reassuring.
Jason turned the coins idly in his pocket, wondering whether they were heads or tails and their denomination.

-heads or tails relative to what?

The wind kicked up his coat and, his other hand preoccupied with the luggage, he resigned himself to the whirlwind of wool.
Taxicabs were leaving taxistands, there were kisses goodbye, kisses hello, and amidst this every permutation of his current situation he felt strangely detached, as though he would not become the person waiting for her until she had arrived.

-heads. nickel.
He glanced down at the coin in his cupped hand. Five cents off and wrong by one hundred and eighty degrees. Damn.

This wait was good. He could recalibrate. Remember things like which side of the road was used for driving and how many miles he could drive over the limit before she took her hand off his thigh.
He took in his surroundings, reacclimating. He gave names to the things he saw, little nodes of familiarity. Terminals. Skycaps. That was the roar of engine noises. That was called the sky.
He fumbled with another coin.

-heads. Eisenhower
Dime. Tails.
Huh. Broke even.

Thus establishing himself in space, he moved on to time. History, to be accurate. It had been about thirteen months, and he struggled to conjure her outline up from memory. He started with her hands, wrapped firmly around the steering wheel, guiding her path to the airport. He began to work his way simultaneously up both arms to her elbows when his mind caught on an almost forgotten snag - a small scar on her forearm, from stealing apples through a barbed wire fence when she was twelve. It had bled for hours through her bandanna while she’d tried to hide the cut from her mother.
He tried again, starting from the feet up. Only to be thwarted again by a childhood of playground scratches located about the knees.
He stopped.

-quarter. tails.
Too easy.

Her scars were like town names on a map. He thought of where she’d been cut by the sprockets of her bicycle on a rainy trail in Oregon. He remembered cleaning the wound, gingerly wrapping her calf. He recalled gently unpinning her hair in the tent later that night...

He’d cast his eyes upon many maps in her absence, many towns and many names. She too, he assumed, had done her fair share of traveling, adding names, scars and memories.
He tried again, hands to elbows, feet to knees. Every inch of her body beyond these borders was impenetrable. Unimaginable.

When he’d left from this terminal months prior, the parts had been the same. But the individual pieces-the luggage, the jetplanes, the ticket agents-had all been different. His mind held the memory of an airport that no longer existed. In the same way, her body’s marks and memories were those of thirteen months past, inaccessible for want of existence.

-dime. tails.
Shit; wheat-penny.

Up ahead there was an aberrant spot in a long line of taxis: a steel-gray Ford, late and reassuring. The queue worked in pulses as the cars pulled up, let off, let in, and went out. The Ford advanced slowly and without rhythm. As it approached he counted the rust spots, let his eyes trace the scratch from the rivet of his jeans. There was an unfamiliar dent above the front right wheel. Nothing broken, just a change in topography.
The car slowed to a stop with a familiar sputter. She reached a long arm across the long bench of the front seat and let him in. She was wearing long sleeves and a turtleneck. He took his hand out of his pocket, finally patted down his coat, hoisted his suitcase. Where could he have gotten a wheat-penny?
He ducked his head down and got into the car.
She’d left her lanky arm laid out across the old car’s sagging seat.
He followed the sleeve up, up with his eyes to her face and said, “hello.”

The weekend upstate was fantastic. John and I developed a game. We call it "Danger Shots".

To play Danger Shots, you need, (1)a bb gun, (2)a target, (3)a bottle of beer and (4)a flask of whiskey. You set the target up so that the bullseye is a half inch above the top of the beer bottle. The object is to hit the bullseye. If your shot lands anywhere outside the inner target ring, you have to take a drag on the beer and then put it back. But if you get the bullseye, the other guy, specifically John, has to drink the beer and the whiskey. All of it. If you break the bottle in your attempt, however, then you have to down all the whiskey.

The game should never be played twice in a row.

You may also need health insurance.

Charity

I had this great interaction today, while running down the street to purchase a CMOS battery for the dying Mac G4 in the office where I am a staff writer....

Dude on street: Do you have a minute for the Save the Children Fund?
Charlotte: No, man, I'm sorry.
Dude: It just takes a minute, it's really important.
Charlotte: (slows to a stop) I know. Look man, I'm a freelance writer. I'm barely making rent.
Dude: (drops his sales act, pauses.) Me too. Good luck. (dude offers hand. I shake dude's hand) Maybe next time?
Charlotte: Next time.

Blogging Vicariously

Ha.
Jay sent me this link while at work. I am now letting other people blog for me, just on their own blog.

Writers retreat Part Two Redux

So the Writers Retreat #2 never happened because a certain someone, who was also supposed to be in attendance, decided to break up with me and run off with someone else (a non-writer, it should be noted) just days before.

Terrible, terrible way to deal with writing anxiety, in my humble opinion, but to each her own.

So, finally, the second writers retreat is actually happening this weekend, and it should be much fun. Be on the lookout for postings from the retreat, and eventually another collection.

Training

First training run today... a day at the office turned into me writing pieces from home (longer story there rife with exasperation, but I don't want to go into it), turned into me making my first training run since my accident.

I should say recovery run, because I'm trying to get back to the baseline of fitness I was at before I crashed and dislocated my wrist. But training run makes me feel more useful.

It was an unseasonably beautiful New York day, and after I sent in my articles, me and the Raleigh took the PATH to Christopher Street and I biked the 60 someodd blocks to Central Park for what would be the bulk of my run.

They say you never forget how to ride a bike, but that's only half true. The mechanics of the balance are simple for your cerebellum to hold on to, yes, but the intricacies of knowing the frame and its reactions to forces, of knowing how to maximize your output, of understanding weight transfer and agility... what little of that my brain and body had started to learn were, at least initially, nowhere to be found. I was clumsy on the bike, unable to even dream of the zipping through traffic I was doing just this past November.
Then there was my body's inability to adapt to the bike... I am consistently amazed at the simplicity of a bicycle, and how much modifying it amounts to adapting it to be a better mate to your body. Well, my body had totally forgotten things like how to gracefully mount and dismount (which affected only my pride) and where to place my butt on the saddle (which massively affected my power transfer until I figured it out).

So I got to Central Park to do as many laps as my body would allow. My legs were strong, if lacking grace on the pedals, and I felt reasonably confident, keeping a high cadence at a lower-than-usual gearing. As expected, though, my lungs gave out a third of the way in... I was gasping, trying to control my breathing while keeping cadence, other bikers passing me by. It was the same feeling of helplessness (though of slightly lesser magnitude) that I'd had when I got out of the hospital post-pneumonia, trying to do tasks that were familiar to me and being completely unable to sustain even the breathing required. But I powered through and completed the loop of Central Park, not once coasting, but spinning regardless of how low the cadence. By the end of my one single lap I was crawling, passed by a fast couple on ultra-light bikes with triathlon-style aero bars. (jerks)

The ride back down to the WTC PATH involved a stopover to drink beer with John, and over the course of the night I regained my familiarity with the bike, sitting back in the saddle, getting down in the drops, sprinting between taxicabs for fun...

Central Park was cathartic. I have a lot of work to do. At my worst moments I thought of the great times I know L's asshole-triathlete has gotten, but even as I passed places in the Park that were important to our relationship I managed to push all of that aside. I've been planning to train for months. This is mine, and I own this.

The bike is dirty, and my muscles are electric with that tension that pervades after a hard ride. It feels good. Both to be riding again, and to be following through.

I have a lot of work to do.

exasperation

If I have to write one more fluff piece of any kind this month, I just may break every pen, typewriter and computer that I own or have access to.


Just sayin'.

Fragment

I used to think, often, in terms of saving the world. Capital w. This was as young and bright and inexperienced in New York City, surrounded by the young and bright and inexperienced.
I still largely think that this is one of the few noble goals.

But as I sit here in my room, surrounded by the things that occupy my time, a half-assembled bicycle brake, a wounded old turntable in need of repair, shelves of half-read books, a drawer full of paragraphs on loose-leaf, a drawer full of screws and parts, I realize again what I've learned since then: wholes are just collections of parts, parts are just made up of elements.

If you can't fix that turntable with the attention due the world, you can't fix anything any bigger. And if you try to fix the turntable with the stated goal of doing so to fix the world, you will never fix either.

From the one to the myriad things and back again.

Labors of Love

Used to be, whenever my heart was tired, I'd find a project to occupy my hands and mind... Rewired a few guitar amplifiers in the space of a long distance relationship, gutted a bunch of houses when I was single... Labors of love.

This weekend was a busy one. An intense two-day recording session with the band garnered many hilarious photographs and led to some real hard work that's been a long time coming... some stellar takes, and really just a great time, tedious as recording can get. Interlude on Saturday night for John's birthday, which lead to some old friends reconvening on a rooftop in Clinton Hill, polishing off a bottle of wine. It was superb.

There was another labor of love this weekend, however. Having Friday off, I took my beloved 1979 Raliegh-Carlton Supercourse racing bicycle back to Bayonne and put it under the knife for some much needed repairs.

It's been a while since unmitigated geekery took place on this blog... Skip ahead to the next paragraph if you hate technical information.
I put some new tires on, a pair of Continental trainers -- up until this point the front tire was still the original from '79 (there are no words for how hard it was to get that front tire off. Except maybe "ouch"). I fixed a few odds and ends that needed fixing, like getting a real seat binder-bolt (instead of the manifold bolt from my uncle's '73 Porsche that had been keeping the seat post up until now), and I took off the fantastic but quite worn out rear dérailleur (a Suntour VGt) and replaced it with a sleeker, shorter-caged and newer Shimano 600. The Suntour is still the better piece, but is far too worn-out. Maybe I'll rebuild it for fun and put it back on. The major work however was taking a drill to my classic racing steel in order to mount a pair of Campagnolo Athena brakes, a very sleek set of brakes that, while slightly heavier than the originals, are %1000 better at being brakes.

So, my beautiful racing bike is now in sexy racing trim. And while she will never be as fast of a machine as, oh I don't know, say, a triathlon bicycle, the Raleigh is in great shape, quick, agile, and still manages to look classy as hell.

The same, however, cannot be said for me. Those keeping score from home might recall that an accident two months ago did enough damage to the Raleigh to keep it off the road, and enough damage to me to keep me off the Raleigh. And while we're both healed now, the bicycle is in much better shape than it's rider. Granted it's a pretty cold rain outside, but I was unable to keep my test run up for more than ten minutes before my stamina started running out. I knew this would happen, as cycling was my only regular cardiovascular-supporting activity...
Interestingly, though, my exercise regimen intended to keep my strength up while injured must have worked, because my legs are powerful as ever... dug in to a sprint and got the bike up to speed with a healthy cadence without much effort at all. It was just all the cold air in the lungs that I couldn't take.

So, the bike's back on the road.
And better looking and better riding to boot.

And not a moment too soon... I've gotten myself involved in a series of races coming up in April.

Spotless Mind

My housemates have been ill, one, then the other, staying at home watching whatsoever's been netflixed on the couch. And so, one, then the other has been watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And then I have been in and out with meetings and deadlines and band practices, and so I have seen Eternal Sunshine, which I have never seen before, piecemeal and in a distorted order. Fitting, I think.

It calls to mind complicated thoughts I've had about therapy and love and how the latter is so much more real than and dangerous to the former.

And really, I don't trust anything the former has to say about the latter.

And I probably never will.

When I think about the love I've had in my life, it's always been irrational... Love is a leap of faith. Love leaves you wide open to kinds of unhealth and pain and to a rational mind I feel like its often the first ballast to be cast off if it's not working...

fixing is an act of faith.

Coffee Break

I may hate the day, but I love love. And I was thinking, en route to get a cup of coffee during a bout of writers block, that there might be a pretty cool project in my head...

A few years ago I was on the streets in Soho, and for no real reason, wrote the phrase "I just called to say I love you." over and over again on a piece of paper, until the paper was filled, then started again at the top. This went through several repetitions, and i rather liked the look of the finished product.

This came to mind to me again as I was getting my coffee, and I thought, what if I have an audio project, where I ask people to think about someone that they truly love or have loved or think they love, and say the phrase "I just wanted to say 'I love you'" several times, as though they are saying it directly to that person's face. Call the person to mind, then say it. I would collect a bunch of these, then overlap them in layers so that at any given point there were at least four voices, saying, all in their different timbres, accents and sincerities, "I just wanted to say I love you."

How's about it, anyone want to volunteer?

----

In other news, handed in my first freelance piece last night and just received confirmation about payment happening soon, and, en route to the coffee shop, discovered that I have more money in my checking account than I had previously thought. So.

More at ease than previously, me.