Cyclokairos

Early sixth decade, planet Earth. Should I be less perturbed? More at ease with circumstances? The thoughts prey—predating on quiet moments. What I have done to date—does it amount to much? Does it matter? How to fill what remains? Does that matter? In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera writes: We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. Kundera again, this time Immortality: …man, betrayed by the World, escapes into his self, into his nostalgia, his dreams, his revolt, and lets himself be deafened by the voices inside him so that he no longer hears the voices outside. Fine, fine, stop the navel gazing, but omphaloskepsis is such a difficult habit to kick, and having finally got round to reading ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius, I can’t help myself. Book 2, part 14: Even if you should live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thereby brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can anyone take this from him? These two things then you must bear in mind; the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that the one who lives longest and the one who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not. Is this telling us to make the most of the present, live in the moment? Not just the Buddhists then.

Spending the moment on a bike seems as good an approach as any other.

Riding the lanes and tracks; standing and staring; taking in nature, and admiring my mechanical botches…

And the difference routing the front derailleur cable correctly made? None. That’s the beauty of friction shifting—it’s very forgiving.

The reborn Purple Bike (that is also white) has also seen some use of late.

The paint scheme is a reminder of my first mountain bike from back in the late 80s—an MS Racing Comp XT. Ah, nostalgia for times past; another symptom of a mid-life crisis. Or is it Romanticism? Let’s go with that.