The Bourbon Logs

i wonder what it’s like being normal
doin normal things that people do
holdin hands and walkin in moonlight
singing every color but blue

does church really happen on sunday
do people still watch tv
do family’s still sit down to dinner
is that anyone’s reality

i hear people still rise in the morning
put their pants on one leg at a time
have coffee and read a newspaper
and then marvel at all of the crime

was there a time and a place
where every disgrace
was hidden far out of view?
did the old-time values
add up to more than nostalgia
was there a time when a good man knew just what to do?

is it true that men can be married
do people get rings through their nose
do you think that some people get it
do they know where all this stuff goes

The vaguaries of life and time
have fallen through these hands of mine
a watershed sign
a thread of a line

and the more that i endeavor
to see through all this weather
i find
i’m really blind
in the dark well of time

and the harder that i struggle
to hold onto the bubble
time and space
slip away
and only smoke and ghosts remain

and then i’m left with a notion
never written never spoken
that time and space
can be interchanged
and i’m all out of range

Having recently rode past the historic marker known as age forty, it is interesting to take stock of where i’m at. For the purposes of this piece, when i look at where i’m at i’m talking about philosophically and politically. Contrary to the standard path that most seem to follow - liberal when young, conservative when middle-aged, liberal again in retirement - i find myself growing increasingly liberal as i go. I flirted with conservatism in my youth, read Ayn Rand, studied economics in university, and even voted for Brian Mulroney once. Now i am a card carrying Green, i voted NDP in the last provincial election, and i consider Stephen Harper a cousin to Attila the Hun. Which brings me to my habit of running red lights.

Red lights, stop signs, turn signals: what is their purpose? It is to direct traffic. To control the flow of cars and trucks. To make the streets reasonably safe for the humans riding in these machines, and for those humans who interact with these machines. They do a decent job of it too, at least for the most part. So why do i hold such disdain for these obviously beneficial things? Why do i flaunt the rules of society so flagrantly every morning and every evening during my own personal commute to work?

Well, it’s not because i’m a lawbreaker at heart. I can assure you that the opposite is the case. I am a model-citizen really. I have a fundamental respect for the rules of society. I have taught my children as best i can the things most people want their children to learn: stealing is bad, honesty is good, crime is bad for the soul, etc. I am no anarchist: i participate in civic affairs, am involved as much as most in the political matters that affect my city, province, and country. I am willing to discuss politics with almost anyone almost anytime. I vote every chance i get, more than once if i can get away with it…

I guess the main reason i don’t respect the standard rules of the road (green light go fast, yellow light go very fast, red light stop) is that i have come to understand that these rules are meant for cars and trucks. When i participate in traffic as a car these rules make eminent sense to me, and i follow them to the letter. I obey the speed limit for the most part. I stop at red lights. Signal to change lanes, shoulder check, and keep my tire pressure in tune with recommendations. I am a good driver. However, i often participate in traffic as a cyclist. From the pedal-perspective i have come to govern myself by a different, personal set of rules. My governing imperative is to stay safe, to keep alive, to arrive at work in one piece.

Lights and stop signs are signals to me to be sure, but they don’t tell me to stop or slow down or speed up. What they communicate to me is: be careful. Danger ahead. Slow down, look closely, proceed with caution. And this is exactly what i do. Pedestrians crossing take priority. If the way is clear, i proceed through. One of the benefits of passing through a red light in this fashion is that it is somewhat safer than waiting for the green. I know what traffic is against me when i’m going through the red light. When the light is green there’s no such luxury as i have to contend with traffic in my own lane gunning their engines when the light changes and ripping up pavement in their haste to get to the next red light, where i’ll pass by them again. Riding ahead of the traffic gives me a head start on the mad rush, and allows oncoming cars, once the light changes, to have a good look at my position in the lane. It is simply a safer way to go.

Moreover, on several occassions i have come close to being struck by cars running red lights as i proceeded through a recently turned green light. Maybe i was riding up to the light as it changed and continued riding through, and wasn’t seen by the speeding motorist, or maybe i simply watched the light change, and then proceeded, without checking for cars running through the red light. These close calls have taught me that the safety of my ride has no relationship with the color of the light and everything to do with the clarity of my own senses.

I must say that my riding habits are an expression of my growing disdain for car-culture. I reject the system of rules designed for large, destructive machines. They do not apply to bikes and when i’m on the bike they do not apply to me. In a way this is an expression of where i’m at right now, philosophically and politically. As i said, i’m getting crankier as i go. As i ride i imagine an alternate world where cars were not invented, a world where cities are dominated by mass transit and bicycles and the rules of the road are far different. Traffic lights are unnecessary. Eye contact and civil discourse are enough to regulate the roads. The air is clean, the cities quiet, people are healthy and happy, and there is hope, not smog in the air.

In the meantime, i’ll keep sailing through the red lights when the opportunity arises and dreaming of that alternate universe. If it pisses off the automobiles so be it. Up the revolution!

First siren today:8:45 am. That’s a record for the office i believe.

Beautiful Vancouver morning today, overcast, misty, hundreds of cyclists on the bike paths. Very nice. Chris rode with me this morning. We had dinner at friends who live just off of Commercial Drive. We drank a few bottles of wine with them and cabbed it home so Chris came with me to pick up the car.

I carried on downtown via the Adanac bike path. There was a wait for a train on the other side of Clark. The bikes were cued up for half a block. That was cool. Turned right at Gore and then rode down Pender, right through the heart of Chinatown. I love riding through Chinatown in the morning, when it’s just coming to life. I rode past a fish-monger shovelling ice out of buckets. The fish was black and gleaming like scrubbed rubber….

At the corner of Carrall and Pender i was faced off by an angry looking individual. He was walking across on the light and stared hard at me. I broke eye-contact faster than you could say ‘free crack’. That’s the secret down here: avoid eye-contact.

Ah, the daily commute. A time to prepare for another exhilarating day in the competitive, challenging, kill or be killed work environment. The buffer zone between home and family and the corporate reality. A time and space that is more about time than it is about space - most of us measure the commute by duration rather than distance. It’s also an opportunity to display who we are really, stripped of any pretense that social structure places around us. The existential truth is rarely more evident than on the commute: we are truly alone.

By anecdotal evidence, the daily commute reveals to me that most people are pretty much beasts when it comes down to it. Shielded from social constraint by metal, plastic, and glass; secure in the narcotic cocoon of the car’s cockpit; lulled with factory air, leather, sunroof, and high fidelity surround sound; and possessed with an overbearing sense of power artificially boosted by a high-performance multi-valve fuel-injected turbo-charged nuclear power plant rumbling under the hood…well lets just say that with all that to occupy us it’s no wonder that our sense of humanity is relegated to the backseat. “We’re driving an SUV anyway, hell, there’s plenty of room back there.” Conviviality flies out the power windows. Hearts are iced by dual-zone air climate control (climate control! imagine…). For the time of the commute people are in fact more machine than human, an extension of the automobile, a necessary component to its prime directive: go somewhere fast. In a car the commute is a brutish affair, a loud, smelly procession of stupid vehicles jockeying for position, a race to the next red light, a waste of space and resources.

Think about how cars communicate: signal lights, brake lights, the roar of an engine accelerating to catch a space and advance its position by ten feet at the next red light, the obnoxious blat of the horn. That’s about as intelligent as it gets. And what is it about a car that “inspires” people to be so rude to one another? The light turns green, the lead car hesitates, the car behind sounds its klaxon horn. BLATT!! BLATT!! BLATT! Thanks for sharing… Occasionally the communication is embellished by the occupant. The human puts its stamp on things with hand gestures: sometimes a wave, from the rare specimen civil enough to maintain a sense of composure and decency despite everything, more often than not the flash of the middle finger, the exclamation point that punctuates the whole sad affair. You forgot to signal: FUCK YOU! You were distracted and didn’t go as soon as the light turned green. FUCK YOU! I perceive that you just cut me off. FUCK YOU! Thanks for sharing. You have confirmed my worst suspicions.

I have become aware of the madness of the morning commute because my participation in it is radically different. I cycle to work. Everything is different when you are on a bike. For one thing, you are more aware of your surroundings. For example, it is a matter of self-preservation that i have memorized every inch of the road from home to work, to the level where even drunk as hell i’ll still inch over to the avoid the pothole in the intersection of Kingsway and Fraser, northeast lane. I know the route so intimately i don’t think about it. My senses are free to take in the unfolding of the ride while some inner system deals with the mundane task of avoiding known obstacles.

The mind is free. Think about that for a second. The body engaged in a steady rhythm, the autonomous nervous system taking care of business, the mind free to follow its nose down whatever pathway seems most interesting. I am rarely as creative or inspired as i am when i’m on the bike. Co-workers have joked that they should put a stationary bike for me in the office. Intractable problem? No problem: Pete - ride the bike. Ideas and notions come to me like passing smells, phrases knock at the door, sometimes timidly, so that i don’t answer, sometimes hammering to be let in. Conversations are begun, continued, finished, invented. Songs are extemporized, lyrics float by like balloons, melodies are found lurking on the tip of my tongue.

It’s a helluva way to begin – and end – the day.

All of it taken at human speed too. Somewhere between the lurid pace of a motorized commute and the slower pedestrian walk is the bike commute: a perfect blend of man, machine, and environment i’d say. Distances are manageable, yet you can still hear birds singing in the trees, snatches of conversation at bustops, smell bread baking at Uprising Bakery at Commercial and Venables, and a few blocks up you can have that with coffee too as you roll by Continental at Commercial and Third. You can make eye contact with pedestrians at crosswalks, and even with drivers as you pass them at the red lights. Awareness of your surroundings is remarkably increased: the city is alive to you on a bike, you can feel it’s pulse as you roll along. I say hello to other cyclists. At a red light sometimes a short conversation even: where you coming from? How far is your ride? Nice bike, how long you had it? It is a rare morning when I don’t exchange a “good morning” with at least one other cyclist. Cars do not say good morning to one another.

It’s easy to wax poetic about riding a bike because riding a bike to work is an act of poetry. It is a creative, soul-sustaining activity. In a time and age where everything seems to move so fast that the soul itself is out of breath, I find that the bike is just the set of lungs for me….

My daughter graduated today and it was an excruciating ordeal to watch. While one tries to do the best by their daughter and her school, the event is really geared for those kids who were positively engaged by the academic/social/athletic aspects of high school. If your kid was one of those then I’m quite sure graduation is a ball for one and all. On the other hand, if your kid didn’t really have a great experience at high school (and by anecdotal evidence many don’t), well, in the interest of being charitable let’s just say the event will try your patience.

It took well over three hours, and it was warm in the theatre, so it seemed half-again as long. You do your best to maintain an active interest in the proceedings, but let’s face it, with the A’s slowly passing through to the B’s, and the B’s languidly surrendering to the C’s, and then the C’s lugubriously ceding to the D’s, and meanwhile you notice your daughter is sitting in the back nestled between a bird named Wakefield and another named Yu, and she’s making faces and yawning, well, it’s all bit much.

In the meantime we were entertained by an endless round of awards. There were awards for academic excellence and awards for civic responsibility; for athletic achievement and artistic output; for creative writing and mathematics; and more and more ad infinitum. There were awards for for best baked cookies, most turds picked up during the lunch time cleanup, largest booger found under homeroom desk, most beers drunk at some guy named Sid’s birthday bash, most dope sold in a 24 hour period by a first-time dealer, most tires slashed in an evening of riotous fun. It went on and on and on. There was an award for almost every kid, and many got more than one. It was a feat not to receive an award in fact, and our family celebrated that aspect of the event.

Some speakers were lame, some appeared drunk, some were real and funny and sincere. The Valedictorian was an impressive young fellow who could probably give Anthony Robbins a run for his motivational money. Some of the scholarships were huge. One kid received a single scholarship worth $20,000.00. She also took several other smaller awards and honors. This was really her day, and it was nice we could be there to clap for her.

They had a banquet dinner after and a dance to follow. Our daughter was resplendent in her new grad dress. We splurged and bought her a designer piece. I can’t remember the designer at the moment but we know she’s from New York and was married to someone famous. I can’t remember who the famous person was either. There are many things i’m not remembering and i’m starting to get concerned that maybe it’s early onset Alzheimers. Ah well, in any case the dress is a flattering sort of a sheer pink number that has cocktails written all over it, and she looked fabulous in it. That was enough to make it all worth while.