And so, and so.  The creature needs exercise.  He gets wound up, anxious, worn out by the physicality of work.  How can he strike back, strike through, as Ahab put it, through the mask?

An exercise, in putting thoughts on the Tour together:


The Col D'Izoard is on TV, the first time I'm able this Tour to get on my trainer stand with the Cannondale road bike.  The chain is in the big front chain ring and the smaller cogs on the rear cassette.  The first pedal strokes are slow.  It takes the body a while to warm up, but warm up it will, and it takes its own pace.  Ten minutes in, fluidity, and the pace, the cadence of pedal strokes, increases.  The body stretches out, comfortably on the bike, and the deep breaths come.  It's a good feeling being on a bike.  "This is the good part of me," one says to himself, and it helps to think you're back at it, working out.  I cannot remember the last ride I took that wasn't a mission to get to work or get home, just for exercise, like one use to taking the trouble to get up and down into Rock Creek Park.  Long Saturday rides out to Garrett Park, or further out into Potomac.  Past golf courses, way out, a turf farm, stables.  The countryside, quiet roads, a general store, the peace of the road, horse farms...  Those rides are better, obviously, when you've done a little leg training.  The muscles and bands of leg remember, all those rides taken as a younger fellow, and the feeling of a general cleansing that comes with the building perspiration feels very good.  It would be nice to get outside, on the bike, but here, at night, this will do.  Training.

The body is heavy, not much exercise while on a trip, a lot of driving, 1700 miles or so, too much dough, unavoidable on the road, and the belly area is not svelte as it used to be, and a far cry from that of the pros on the television, offering inspiration.  July, The Tour, comes as a kind of vacation, inspiring, quiet, scenic.  History, as the human mind can only remember, can only go back so far, such as is comparable to the enjoyment of a silent film, that's going back pretty far, and Le Tour in its history is almost simultaneous with that invention of the moving picture.  No wonder then, that it is the latest in the technology of filming so far advanced now, looks back on itself as an homage, both for the Tour and the ability of the captured moving image to tell a story, just by holding up a mirror to nature, capturing that oddest of moments, "now."

The landscape of the Col D'Izoard stage is strange and barren.  The riders pass through the steep gorges of the valley of the Guil in Queyras.  There are no spectators gripping onto the sides of the road here, bare pines, glimpses of that moonscape that marks the Dolomitic mountain stretches further up on the slopes.   The roads have not changed since Fausto Coppi climbed as the legend he was.  Nature is silent here, and no caravans of spectators.  The road is paved, but here Louison Bobet, Gino Bartali, Coppi, the old gentleman of the classic Tour fought it out, riding like birds on dirt roads, with elegant simple steel road bikes, lugged frames.

After a timed forty-five minute riding session, coinciding with the coverage and the post-race report, with a good lather rom head to toe, considerably wet, a hot shower, releasing the spine, and then some yoga.  Meditation pose feels good after the effort.  A headstand, plow, shoulder-stand, warrior.  I am tired from the week, and find myself lethargic and in some form of depressed mood.  I've been back to work for five straight nights, trouble falling asleep several nights.  Heat, throws the guts for a loop.  A series of naps follows as afternoon turns to evening turns to dusk turns to night and cooler air.  The body wishes to get back into running, or to get out for a nice walk without having to get somewhere, but the bike on the training stand is quite helpful.  And the aerobic exercise, the free movement, helps the mind in no small way.


The first sentences are slow, coming tentatively.  One is almost afraid of the keyboard, the lingering thoughts, those that come alone, but sparks of the brain which mean something and ought to be recorded.  Reluctant to face their charge, the reality of feelings, the sense of how things are a cause for a wish to start all over again somewhere else rather than holding the old bit in one's teeth and pulling vainly forward.  It takes 'til the beginning of deep night for the writer to get started.  Forget trying to line up a date, with going out, even with grocery shopping.  Momentum, time is what you need.  One thought gotten down will lead to another.  One stroke, then the next from the other side, like Tai Chi.  No wonder Ernie Hemingway liked boxing, the back and forth, a left then a right, the real thing, followed by a glimpse of the metaphorical quality, often self-reflective, inherent in the act of writing.



You have to feel comfortable on the bike.  You don't need to start out fast, you just need to know that you'll be in for the long run.  And that by each ride, be it home on the trainer, or out somewhere, and then maybe further, once inspired, and the traffic of cars tamed convincingly, you get more comfortable.  Your own work might never make the theater, but in the great tradition you will document a kind of a life until the end, through a lot of things, non of it necessary stellar, but a thread, a system of some health.  Don't start out too quickly, don't flame out writing some brilliant work exhausting yourself and setting yourself up for fame.  No, take it easy, do it slowly and steadily...  again and again.http://www.velominati.com/anatomy-of-a-photo/anatomy-of-a-photo-fausto-coppi/comment-page-2/





When the Tour de France came around, it took a while to wake to it, meaning I'd not been riding the bike, thinking even those good old innocent days of focussed rides down in Rock Creek Park when Beach Drive is closed to vehicle traffic, even the sports match of the Tour itself, childish and unimportant.  Ride the bike to work, eh?  No time go out on long joy rides.  Not even the rides close by, narrow roads in quiet neighborhoods with steep climbs.  Time to get serious, here at age 52, no time to 'mess around,' to 'fuck around,' to goof off, to do anything that does not immediately acknowledge and attempt to rectify the economic reality of personal situations...

The Tour was on, and the inspiration slowly built.  I had to go to work, and then I got to get ready for the big trip, I said to myself, as I watched the noon rerun of the Tour's opening Time Trial stage in Dusseldorf, where a significant rain was making roads and particularly the painted road indicators, cross walks, lane markings, slick and high up on the list of the immediate dangers the Tour riders will face through 20 stages and more than two thousand miles.

Once a habit, as soon as the Tour de France started, to get home from work, put bike shorts on, get on the bike on the trainer, unwinding from a shift, getting in a workout, building up a good lather.  All while unwinding from a shift, often enjoying a glass of French red wine to help the overall soothing.  The time lost getting ready for bed as soon as manageable, worth the time getting back in shape.   It's hard, tough, when work is at night, and when the body has a hard time falling asleep, and a hard time getting up, at least with time to do much before going off to the bar again, to set up for another night, and another night closing it down.

Yes, it's an old story, something from some form of adolescent childhood's end, where you are trying to find a moral compass that reflects you and your awesomely true parents, kind of like King Arthur, kind of like, by extension, Wyeth paintings, of father, son, and grandson, Lord of the Rings, and along comes this long race through historical France, passing all major rivers, all major towns and regions (at least by the general idea of it), applauding those storied towns that are at crossroads.  The French people, regional as their cheeses, and more, characters linked to this landscape of natural human coexistence with nature...  France is not all Paris.  There are a lot of very small towns...  And on the television, castles, fortresses built on high outcroppings, the farms, the old buildings, houses, abbeys, vineyards, fields, roads lined with plane trees...


And so, I'd been doing my yoga sometimes, and then not sometimes.  A few stretches following a hot shower, to keep the spine limber, the legs loose, the upper body in some form of shape...  The red Saeco Mario Cipollini era Cannondale Caad5 road bike I'd ordered with Campagnolo Chorus had stood in the living room on that bike stand trainer with the roller bar and the radiator heat release attachment to it that got quite hot if you'd gotten a decent workout in.  And then, finally, I got on it, and started pedaling some, even if it was just after a shift and I was relaxing drinking a bottle of chilled Beaujolais.

And then, even better, I brought out the '98 Bianchi Velocé celeste green/blue bike, the last year of the lugged frame, and with the automatic easy finger Ergo shifter not working on the right end of the handlebar, the chain set in the rear cluster's smallest cog, unable to shift, plotting to find a down tube shifter mechanism like I always wanted, to go classic, old school bad boy back in the day Tour, I put that bike on the stand and found again what made me fall in love with a bike that was, to my budget, an ungodly sum of $1,100 back then in 1999 or 2000.  Back when I was making about, I don't know, $28,000 yearly starting out trying to be a grown man.




Back as a high school kid, and earlier growing up, there was no problem getting exercise.  I had a used Peugeot UO8, blue, not in the best working order, but fun.  As soon as the winter receded from the roads, I was out there.  And before, I'd been a distance runner out on those country roads, cross-country skiing in the winter, making trail through the woods through powder snow.  I knew how to handle my body, I made the time to go riding, and things went along well.

Is that the animal has a hard time focussing, a condition of Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, or whatever you could call it...  There are any number of shades of it, and we all have it, to varying extents at varying times.  Even just in our daily ups and downs.  Some of the work situations we face really do have ups and downs, just in their nature, just in the reaction you must have to them,

The Specialized Foundation has set up an ad campaign.  A kid tells us, having a hard time grasping a concept his teachers give him, riding the bike, here at night with headlights with a group of buddies, lets him catch up with the world that speeds by him when he cannot get his rides in.  "Outride ADHD."  "A bike ride a day helps set them free," the advertisement ends as kids have fun with a night right on mountain bikes, headlights finding their way, a group ride.

Seems like a weird connection to make.  You're in your fifties, and you still need that forty five minute ride, else you unravel into paranoia, anxiety, all that stuff...  I mean, not that bad at all, just that the ride turns all that might be negative into the positive, a lesson for us all to know and comprehend and remember and practice.

And here is the day off, and it's hard to focus, to clean the apartment.  I feel that need for quiet, to catch up with a world that has sped by me yet again.

I am sorry I'm that way.  I have had a hard time focussing.  This is true.  The world has come as a jumble, with lots and lots of thoughts uncaptured, uncultured, un recorded.  And so I needed the monkish life, and in the physical load of tending bar, which itself was at least some form of load-bearing exercise, a physical challenge, much more organically satisfying to me than sitting in an office being poked by the clerk's ringing phone line, the computer screen...  I needed to ride, I needed long rides.


And that was what I wanted to do, when I began at  the Old Gaul.  Work, say, three shifts, then take those long bike rides necessary for my spiritual and mental health.  That's not the way life is though.


Why does one find himself in some subtle form of anguish there on the first day off after a week of work, after all the efforts, physical and mental, all the people you had face time with many in some depth.  And along comes this little bird, here in summertime, when the days of light are longer, the old Tour, reborn afresh.

Blondin wondered out loud, why the feeling of wanting to chase the riders like the young boys he'd see by the side of the road as the Tour went by, wishing, as they did, to be one of them....


As the 2017 edition of the Tour wound down, I went looking through YouTube.  Battles of Coppi and Bartali.  Louis Malle's Vive Le Tour, excellent.  I come across a beautifully shot hour long documentation, done by a Dutch Crew, The Tour, 1953.  High definition movie film.  Who cares if it's in Dutch.  The map, like at the start of Casablanca, takes it counterclockwise around France and surroundings.  Each city with a bridge, a cathedral, a few of the sites.  I put a fan on my laptop to keep it cool, plugged it into the television, got some entertainment out of that, particularly, as always, the mountains.  It even starts out with an homage to the original edition, the riders in the gear of the day on bikes as old.

I rolled, and thought, realizing I that I might as well ride, as I can realize I have little idea what I'm doing now of any importance, significance, or value, other than showing up to work, as I suppose many a Tour rider has to do over the years, leave the glorious road behind and go back to work pumping beer or whatever, and the footage whatever you can find is not bashful about showing us towns and work towns, and work places, the old Bourinage still with its mines and factory chimneys there in the distance, no need to hide anything.

And who knows, somewhere within, off in that work place off the side of the road in the filmed distance, who knows, perhaps men would have remembered their grandfathers telling of a strange red-haired Dutchman who came to preach earnestly to them, wanting to go down in the mines with them, and like just like they did, and eat what they ate.  The organized Church, needing their business model, their high claim to high fundraising, would of course not liked this interloper, and banished him, shaming him.  And one day he would be a painter.  A painter of men and women, of meals, of rooms, of fields and fruit trees and olive trees, and ancient roads, drawn by the exotic sleepy-eyed women, one young Rachel, sent to Pasteur for a cure for rabies from a dog bite, he might well have met in Paris, and the light as well, of particular towns in the South of France...  The colors.  All feeding his creative bursts that went all day and into the night, apparently.



The day off, I reiterate, as this is just living in the present, and echoing Vonnegut's refrain, "and so on," I sleep and sleep.  The night before, wound up after the jazz night, the initial exhaustion that caused me a deep nap back on the floor of the wine room, the effort to get back home on my bike, I do laundry and organize the trash, run the dishwasher through.  A small cut on the back of the leg doesn't look so great, so I tend to that waking up finally, a quick ride, adjusting a new bicycle seat, old school, leather, good for the soft tissue of men's parts, then another nap while the fan keeps going. A run to the Rite Aid for odds and ends.  And then again, an odd time to be awake, for most.

But this is August, in DC.  The crickets are singing their background song in the dark vegetation, cooled by night and thunderstorm.

And one feels the energy, the wish to go out and run, who knows, run ten miles or so, to work that energy off, which otherwise would cause one's skin to burn almost with anxiety.  And lots of reasons to have anxiety, in this world.  A job one is never quite satisfied with, and often enough ashamed of, lacking professional ease and credibility.  The starkness of finances.  The distance, too far, to one's old mom.

The bike is a safe place, here in the living room, on this trainer stand.  It's worth the room it takes up, even if it might cramp a few yoga poses.  I can put the old Tour on, have my calming glass of vino, and seem to escape, just as I did as a kid, getting out of the house into the refreshing air  and nature.  I could not handle living in a big city like New York.  I like the nighttime.   The slow zen of my ride, one leg down, then the other, and then a circle coming, not unlike Tai Chi.

The beast was never made to sit still.  The animal needs miles, forests, streams and rivers to cross over, rocks to climb, landscapes to pass through, a vista of the natural, a kinship with the animals and fowl of the air.

And to not write, this too will drive you absolutely crazy, too much pent up mental energy, needing to run out like a fish caught on a line to break free from, to break free from.

Only then can one get back to that lotus position, the incense, sitting before the Buddha, breathing, still, enjoying peace.  The wild boy within, the hard man, is tamed, just barely, just barely.  Not confined like a circus animal, the pavement hot, the traffic, the noise of downtown, as the nervous person nervously heads to the therapist appointment.

Modernity, passwords, all the things one has to do, to be organized in this modern world, too much.


I take those long sleeps, body and mind not caring enough to get up, nothing pressing to do, why not just sleep, when seasons change.  Perhaps the original human being ran and ran, after game, and then, once enough was had, the workweek done, the party immediately following over, rest and rest, no alarm clocks, just peace in the dark cave under fur.  And when the beast wakes up again, he needs to run again, to leap, jump agile, to hold onto things and move them with accuracy.



My hours odd, with a new pair of Brooks running shoes bought on sale, after writing some of this, before having any wine, the usual reward, I go out for a jog.  It's dark out as I warm up with tentative steps down the street, and onto Massachusetts Avenue.  I venture alone, munching on an apple;  up the road a block or two, yes, the need to vomit rises in my gorge, and fortunately, it is mainly just apple, several heaves in the bushes, as I walk along the embassies of the row.  Crossing over the bridge, the rosy fingers of dawn approaching off to the east over Adams Morgan.  The traffic picks up now, and the quiet street of darkness is now unsettling me, a highway.  Up to Nelson Mandela, and then turning around, wishing to get back quickly.  Birds awake in the morning, and they have trees and wings where they are untouchable, belonging to the air which haves no highways, no noisy traffic of machinery, big trucks, dump trucks, police cars, motorcycles.  I wish to get back to my little monastery rooms.  Humanity would not have survived without a very good instinct and ability for hiding, for escaping being hunted for meat and whatever other satisfaction himself.


They will give you a hard time when you have such a life.  When because of having the Type O blood type, you need that long form of exercise, aerobic exercise.  And the nerves out on the road as dawn comes, what are all these people doing, having figured it out, going to work with such aplomb, fearlessness and discipline.   Are they able to conveniently turn their minds off?  Deficits of attention, I know, are widely diagnosed, but they weren't in my day.  I went from being the bright student, the deep patient reader, into some kind of person with difficulty "paying attention."

Who am I?  But if the rest of us understood, the plight of the organic creature trying to fit in...  And why should it be adulthood and full strength of maturity that it should be suffered even worse?  Couldn't you endure it through childhood, and then get over it?  And now you have bills to pay, and non-existent retirement, and the stresses make it worse, a real sense of life falling completely apart, even as you maintain, maintain, show up to work, do not mess around, do your yoga, see your therapist, take your medication, eat reasonably if not flavorfully.  Why, Jan Jansen, should it come upon you now, of all times?  You've done as little wrong as you possibly could, to your own knowledge, as far as being a decent human being, right?  Walking around feeling stupid and honestly beleaguered by a job, heavily.


At one strange point in life, you turned gentle.  You passed on that being a competitive kind of a thing  like the macho guy at the gym pumping iron, then going to work to make a lot of money as a financial advisor, or a high powered lawyer.  For you, that quaint college desire to "be a writer" became increasingly important, even as it descended quite remarkably as far as offering any real tangible usefulness.   Such are writings fated to be, a useless pile of notebooks four feet high, full of drivel.   Even that "book you wrote," even you want to hold out away from you, as Kundera writes somewhere, as if it were a bag of excrement.

Except the process.  The process always seems to offer some reward, down at a gut level, like Irish music, bypassing the brain.

Monkey mind, be calm and still.  Things will happen, as they will.


Looking around now at the apartment, what a marvelous collection of things.  Rocks from hikes, books, lots of them, cooking gear, tents, sleeping bags, jackets and gear to protect oneself from the elements.  Bicycles.  Herbal medications.  So many odds and ends, memorabilia.


I light some incense.  Frankincense and myrrh.   It does help calm.  There is the double edged sword: for to get better, you begin to see that you might be a depressive.  You've never labeled yourself as that before, you never really felt it.  There was always something at hand to take care of it.  The kid goes out for a bike ride, a run.  There's a calming glass of Beaujolais at the end of a shift that has tweaked you in a thousand ways, many small pricks.  And when you do wonder, well, maybe, maybe I am.  And then you say, well, yeah, yes, it looks like, it looks like, it looks like this could quite well be the case, given where life is no, habits, (all that not worthy looking into here for these purposes), looking at other people's lives, looking at them as homeowners, people able to function downtown in that pit--they must have some blinders on by habit, which in turn lets them be the kind of shitty people I am obliged to wait on that they act like, unless there is something that by my own minuscule holy presence leads them to see the other, the calming one, the one who does little else but wait on other people with a more or less pleasant attitude over a creditably long period of time, like twenty five years in this fisherman's bag.  Twenty five years, more, imagine.

But when you are diagnosed, or it makes sense, hmm, a kind of debilitating gloom sometimes, a seeming dissatisfaction, a nervous anxiousness that needs some physical outlet, like the bike, like I suppose living on Skellig Michael, like keeping a library, not to make money, but to have a truly monkish life of reflection and texts about the human condition and nature, and of the plants, the trees, the animals...

Is it just wintertime, the lack of light?  The holidays of impossible travels and responsibilities that other people seem to handle quite well and shine through with good humor...   What causes it all?  Too much effort to be social?  I mean, we always preach to other the importance of friends.   But for some of us, it's their hours, their terms, and you always have to go back and admit the state of shit you're in, how irresponsible you are, a fuck up, par excellence, but that you still show up for work, when work is unclear, and still write these haphazard little pieces largely as a device to ignore all the bad shit coming up humanity all over the world worth praying for, the terror people go through in many places, and what can you do, but try to be your own little point of light and lack of cynicism.  How awkward, how awkward.

Voices got into my head, telling me perhaps I wasn't doing all I should.  Whereas I was feeling like I could do all I could.  I just was focussing on the things that I could focus on, that were tangible to me.  And in all that I never disliked anyone who was not unkind to me.  My lesson to teach, not about somethings, but about other things, not about methods of writing or articles worthy of income, nor recipes, nor wine wisdom to cash in on, but a general one about liking people, a kernel in each one, not a judging bone, and loving--as Dostoevsky himself gives us in his greatest of creations, the dual character Father Zossima the master and his acolyte Alyosha--a love of common people, of people the more ambitious might frown upon associations with.



The Tour has passed, and for a while, there is nothing on TV.  I fall into the habit of constant CNN, broken by a nice piece of a nature photographer traveling Ireland's Wild Coast, beginning at the Skelligs with the limestone steps cut into the steep climb up to the beehive monastery, to break the mesmerized stare at all the upsetting things going on in the world, not the least of which is the man in The White House now, addicted to his takeover of self-promotion and Fox News tactics of the big darkening lie.  As one cabbie here described him, Mafia, of a real estate kind with lots of unsavory ties in his dealings, a lacking of moral sense.    The PR distortions of truth incite the actions of those precisely who feel they need some sort of action, some sort of standing up.  The actions of the incited are those of bigotry and lacking.

There was that break from it, The Tour, and I had trouble catching it, but caught just enough to remind of me of something.  Maybe it was the rare spectacle of the race in the old days, everyone in France on the side of the road, nuns, school kids, old people, priests, families on picnic outings, all participating somehow.  The historical landscape of France comes forward, the churches, abbeys, bridges, cathedrals, the bastides, the high-walled castles built on high outcroppings, the chateaux, the vineyards, one region different from another, the weather.

This particular Tour de France fades, as if I weren't sad enough about everything else.  But you can't make them keep riding around, riding around.  The only proposal would be to cover a bunch of normal joes, perhaps from different countries and cultures, covering the same route, left to their own resources, a really old school kind of a Tour, without the constant pressure of team cars and the race tactics, a bunch of guys, not even that kind of high fitness level natural athlete.  Tribesman, a group of restaurant guys, with the sound on, to catch their jokes and their foibles.  At the end of their shift, their ride, we could find them finally sitting down to a dinner of local fare, local wine, if so inclined, and with an emphasis not on competition but in the grace of being out on the road, the picaresque, the receptions back and forth between traveler and travelled.  Their might be specialists in lingerers, poetic types, the bull strong guys who are practically talented in making things work out, that group who might chat with the locals, some with eyes for the ladies.  The emphasis would not be on speed, necessarily.  Though of course, the effort would be mighty and be a measure of endurance.  No one is ever ready for the Tour.  As they ride, they get in shape, because they are not so completely professionals, but have other jobs, things like that.

The Tour de France, perhaps now particular as I go through mid-life, reminds me of the spiritual, of the balance we must keep in our own lives between the illusions, the illusions of ease and getting ahead, consuming things that on the ends of both parties, hopeful consumer and the illusions of the offering,  on one hand, bringing yourself forward presenting yourself in an honest way, and on the other, the offerings of comfort, the ideal lover match.  Come to find out, everything is a struggle, and sometimes it's best just to bear your own burdens without complicating it with reaching out for 'supposedly fun things' that leave you sad in the end anyway.  An honest tale, the endurance of life, and as they say, you need the legs for it, and yes, fortunately God gave us legs.

In the final, the Tour invites me to look again at the calling, the calling to look for those things which do have meaning, which are true, the things of poetry, easily taken in, easily remembered, the simplicity of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, by example, and he or she who could remember and place such words in some form of context is no common idiot in these burdens of being alive.  How do you soothe the soul at the end of the day, when you've run this way and that way, and feeling all the while that you just want to, seriously, go home.

Kindness, and that love spoken of, is super-human.  It does endure all things, seeks not itself.  And such statements upon the reality of our physical presence, they hold out a soothing cup of water or cleansing tea to a road-wearied soul, where small acts of kindness indeed go a long long way, the refreshing wine of some sort of sacrament closely tied to the deepest realities of existing in the world.  What Paul writes is true.  It stands up to study and test.  And to consider, in some way, the departure that those types of spiritual thinkers, Merton, Buddha, The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris.  The Tour reminds me of the sincerity.