This week was right on. I went for a ride early in the week. I aimed my velomachine at the mountain and rode like I meant it. I planned a few papers and a project. The project should be interesting, and perhaps I’ll share a few pieces here on white blazes. I’m going to create an EP exploring the idea of lament. I have a few songs that I need to rerecord and one I intend to rewrite but the rest are unexplored.
Lament is a grounding reality. I would like to think that tears grow the ground around us but perhaps this misses the point of the lament. Lament calls out the lie, the facade and allows us to feel the present in its fullness, even when the present is the place we would be tempted to run from. To name where you are, how you feel, is like crawling. It is dirty and sometimes feels childish, as if we want to deny that just moments before we learned to walk, we crawled.
I was approaching a feature spot in Zion NP a week ago. The trail was steep with several thousand foot drops to either side of the trail. Four people a year die out here and I can see how. The toughest sections of the ascent are safeguarded by chains bolted in the rock. These chains suggest two things: hold on & keep going. We as people, I suppose, we were created to progress. I am not so sure this can be said of history in its entirety, but if our lives are a microcosm of history’s narrative, perhaps progress can be seen as a steady clip toward a mountain. A kites progress into the sky is determined by its rootedness, connection to the ground, its fixed point. My position on my bike, as I aim upward toward a hill, will determine how long and far I might be able to spin.
Do lament and honest community function in a similar way? We are for each other a series of kite strings, postured in such a way that we are able to hold on and keep going. To love and be loved.
