Odes
“…can you see them? They’re swimming in your ambience. They want to be written, but only by you. There’s an everlasting valentine at the nucleus of creation with your name on it.”
- James Parker
Ode to God
Do not throw stones. Do not lie. Do not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Fuck thy neighbor's wife and repent.
Have you met him? Seen him? Spoke to him? Heard him speak? Is his hair blonde and does it fall around his bulging shoulders as he stretches to meet your fingers? Is her chin sharp? Does she have freckles?
Have you seen him walking down your childhood street in fall? Shining from your lover's hair at dawn?
You will not find her in one of their pamphlets or in the Louvre. You might find him six fathoms deep in the pit of your stomach, lodged in your throat, driving across Wyoming. You will have to look, to search, to question, even, perhaps, to pray.
Ode to Rain
Standing with my childhood friend on a soccer field, I look up to the stadium lights and watch the rain fall softly. It coats the field and the ball and my shoes and makes an excellent excuse for why my passes all went long. Rainfall exceeded 200% of the annual average in Southern California this year by March alone, but this rain whispers that I’m home. This rain says, “Come outside, won’t you dance with me? Can’t you twirl me?” This rain asks you to accept your damp toes and to pack an extra pair of socks. Next spring, when the crocuses and daffodils peek through the planter boxes on Wallingford, I’ll think of this rain. Le Guin writes, “True voyage is return.” And I know, in a month or three I’ll be gone again, but it feels so instinctive, so freeing, so youthful to be here, outside, in the rain. I almost want to weep, but God already is, so looking again to the lights, I pull out my phone and convince myself a blurry picture will do.
Ode to Bicycles
All the superlatives in my mind are not sufficient to describe the joy of a bicycle. I consider a thesaurus, but the feelings I owe to the two wheels beneath me are too childlike and primitive for big, fancy words. Besides, bikes can’t read. I could tell you some bicycles are better than others. I could tell you I like straight tubes and the aesthetics of coil shocks and double crown forks. But it would be useless, futile, unproductive. Bicycle joy is an outdoor feeling that cries to be lived. Trainers definitely don’t count. Bikes like to go fast, to rip turns, to be pedaled hard, to skid, to slide, to jump, to wheelie. My high school soccer coach used to say that a person experiences as many emotions in a 90-minute game as a normal human does in a week. My bicycle tells me it’s possible to leave despair and jump to exhilaration in as little as fifteen, sometimes ten if you pedal fast enough.
Have you transported on a bike recently? Been transported by one? Was the last time on a bike in your driveway as a child? Did it get hung up only to come down too small and be given away? Did you learn how to drive? Driving both requires attention and yet can be wildly monotonous, pedestrian even. Bikes can be too, but without a barrier. No removal from the outside world. This is not performative; you are the main character. Take control. Go as fast or as slow as you want. Cut off the cars, run the red light, tear down a back alley, accept the consequences. Who is going to stop you? You’re on a bike.
Ode to Powerlines
In Bolingbrook, behind my sister’s house, the lines are buzzing as I run beneath, and so too in Marblemount when the Hungarian joins me. Strung from pole to pole, arcing endlessly across the street, the plains, down the valleys, and over the hills, I watch them leap along in my peripherals. Like my head leaned against the tinted window, they bounce, rising and sinking and rising and repeating. A stretched sine curve full of life. Sometimes, we move slow enough to hear the screams of their signs: High voltage! KEEP OFF! Other times still, when their stilts stand directly overhead, I climb towards heaven, towards death, towards power, all one and the same. There is something serene about that noise, something innately human about the creation of a power strong enough to kill. When I sit below them, absorbed by their asynchronous humming, I am at ease. Maybe it is the soothing remembrance of those childhood memories, watching them from the car, that covers the burns of adulthood like a salve, or maybe it is knowing some evidence of humanity surrounds me. Regardless, the contentment they cause me is almost as boundless as the number of electrons oscillating inside.