Rereading old blog posts. i feel so much nostalgia when i do that. it's funny how things repeat. i was about to write a post about bikes and vancouver, and how much i love both of them, and how much they go together, and how one helps you appreciate the other... and lo and behold, i've thought all of this before. funny that.
It's good to know that i've been loving this city for a long time. but the more i use my bike to get around, or just to explore, the more i love it, the more vancouver feels like something that belongs to me, that i belong to... it's this sense of discovery, of finding secret places. there's a vancouver radio show i've been digging: (http://lifeafterradio.ca/), i really loved the episode about secret places. (especially the girl whose secret place is the changeroom at a department store, where she hides out and listens to people's conversations...i love that!)
it made me really think about how we gain a sense of community and ownership of a city by having places that feel like ours. because cities are big and overwhelming and impersonal, and we need to make sense of that a carve out a space that makes us feel less alone, less tiny. at least i do. i dunno, there's this sense of magic in having a place that is secret, that is ours alone, at least in our minds... a comfort to have places you go when you feel a certain way. i remember being a kid, and hanging out in the forest behind my house and feeling this sense of magic, being in this imaginary world that was both in my head and all around me... and at the ashram my house was right beside the orchard, and every night after satsang i would go lie down under these 100-year-old twisting silver apple trees and love the feeling of being hidden in the grass, with cricket-song all around my head... i dunno, it just felt like my place; it gave me a sense of magic and wonder that i haven't felt in a while, and it reminded me how important that is...
so yeah. i've been doing some late night biking, discovering places and routes and sounds in vancouver. there is a tunnel with the smoothest road, such a smooth bike ride, and everything sounds kind of distant, dreamy inside of it. it reminded me of 'lost in translation' for some reason. and there's a specific point in the tunnel that gives off a warm blast of fishy air. it's this mix of sound and texture and smell and all these sensations put together that make it feel like mine; like only i have noticed or felt these particular sensations in this particular order... and there are secret gardens everywhere... i went and worked at the cottonwood garden last week, such a great place! chaotic plots of this and that and little sculptures and winding paths... i climbed a cherry tree, high high up, me and the cherries and the bees. warm cherry juice and bare feet on bark. maybe all these places are special to me because they give me this sense of childhood - they remind me how it is to just be, just experience with my senses instead of thinking thinking and missing my surroundings. ("born he knows nothing and feels everything") and bikes are just so conducive to that - they really connect me with that sense of child-like excitement, connect me with summer days when i was little, connect me with my surroundings, because i can explore everywhere, and hear the sounds around me, and feel the wind and the weather and the rain and the sun, and i can smell everything, the good and the bad... and i stop thinking, i just experience. i love bikes!
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