Bicycle Buddha

She is like a big muscular lover, overbearing but gentle. I tiptoe around her, still too shy to crawl under her belly. I can see big metal springs, shafts and pistons and tanks full of toxic fluids down there. Black dirt and rust. Massive tires as high as my shoulder. She is so ugly and yet, so lovely.

I try to disguise her automotive nature. Toss a rug over her massive steering wheel and put a pot of chives on the hood. I tell myself she is not so much a bus as a landlocked ship on wheels but really it is ridiculous to hide her identity. She weighs in at five tons. She’s my vessel.

This is the Universe grabbing me by the shirtfront and shaking me hard, throwing my carefully constructed identity back in my face like a glass of cold water. I stand naked in the face of my aversions. Nose to nose with the me I thought I was–Car-free Carmen, who rants about posessions and ownership, property is crime, yada yada yada. Not to mention cars – cars, good god! Wham! I now own both a home and a freakin’ enormous motor vehicle, keys in my hand and papers to prove she is mine.

In the shaping of heart’s desire I am learning to strike a balance between the general and the specific; to identify what I truly want without getting all caught up in details. In this way my options are many, my limitations are few, and my arms are wide open to receive.

I asked the Universe for just this: a tiny house among the trees. My wild imaginings did not envision an old Chevy school bus. The trickster Universe gives me exactly what I ask for but sometimes it comes in a funny wrapper. The price of the gift is small but steep–one stubborn crumb of self-identity that no longer serves me. Just one passing iteration in the lifelong fabrication, that I in my delusion imagined was me.

I am stoked and nervous as an expectant mother, waiting for everything to align so I can sail my vessel home. So much could go wrong, and yet so much feels so right.

The vessel has a wee brake malady that needs to be addressed before we take her up the steep hill to her new moorings, high on the bluff over Mansons Lagoon. My learning curve is as steep as the unpaved road, but at least I know I am well supported in this wild experiment in automotive home ownership.

I am buying her from Hannu, who is a fine carpenter and slings a mean om namah shivaya as leader of the local kirtan circle. Ali is the skilful driver. He plays tabla for the kirtan and has piloted the vessel many times, but he just got back from India and has a spotty relationship with space and time. Richard, the mechanic, cannot legally drive because his Barbadian drivers’ license just doesn’t cut it, but he’s a sweet man with a big hearty laugh who is said to be good with engines.

It’s a good crew and I know everyone is on it, working to get her safely under sail. But this must happen on island scale, in island time. There is shmoozing to be done at the market, a rare length of cable to be located (rare that is, on a small island), and the weather is notoriously fickle.

Word has it that if the part fits and the brake repair goes smoothly and the wind blows from the east and jupiter aligns with mars, we will sail tomorrow. In the meantime I am practicing patience and trust, and sleeping at Moonhill in my little red tent.

I appealed to the Universe for a tiny house surrounded by big trees. Said the Universe: “Voilà! Yours. On wheels.”

My new house is a 1979 Chevy shortbus, remodelled by a shipwright. She is  rat-proof, watertight, and fully seaworthy. The curved box behind the drivers’ seat is a built-in guitar case. She even drives.

I have a home, and it is mine.

By the time I landed on this tiny wee island three weeks ago I had managed to slightly psych myself out. The Project (previously known as “the Book”) seemed by turns foolish and daunting and trivial and overambitious, narcissistic and deluded. I was calling myself all sorts of names.

Then, I remembered that commitment is a process of perpetual self-forgiveness. Commitment to a relationship, or a project, or a practice. Commitment to myself; to my own integrity. I will succeed and then I will fall down and I will fail, and then I will get up and dust my knees and start again.

I decided that the Project would be an experiment in being kind to myself. I only need to do a little bit, every day – but I need to DO it, not just think about it. I don’t even have to quite know what it is. As Romina says, all you need to do is roll out your mat and you will have succeeded. The rest is gravy.

Every morning I sit zazen on the platform high above the ocean. If it is windy or raining I sit in the garden with the frogs. Each day I do some yoga: a couple of lazy stretches or a vigorous set, no matter. Every day i write, or edit, or paint, or draw…something. Anything. Every day I turn over soil in the garden or I tidy the house. Every day I walk in the forest or scramble barefoot on the cliffs, stepping between sumptuous lichens and tiny clumps of cactii.

It doesn’t matter if what I do is big or small, short or long, enjoyable or excruciating. It doesn’t matter if it is brilliant or it is shit. Who cares. It is about the process, not the product. The process is the product. I think this is what is called “practice”. It occurs to me that this process could take a very long time.

Tomorrow the process will includeI four sea journeys: first in the itty-bitty boat from the teeny-tiny island over to Lasqueti, then the yawling tinpot Centurion over to French Creek. Truck lift to Campbell River, ferry to Quadra, cross Quadra and one last ferry,  to Cortes. Proceed.

Once in New Mexico I decided to go for an adventure to Albuquerque, and I asked if anyone had recommendations for what to do there. “You want to go to Albuquerque? Albuquerque is an armpit! Just move on through,” replied one car-dependent resident. Undiscouraged, I put my bike on the train in Santa Fe and rolled off into downtown ABQ. I threaded my way through the hidden neighbourhoods of Nob Hill, and over a magnificent pedestrian bridge across the Rio Grande. I paused at a Mexican bakery and a funky old theatre, and a hidden downtown alley where street folk sang soul tunes in the sun. An ancient black man in a straw hat offered me a hotdog and invited me to sit for a while, and I did. Had I driven through Albuquerque I probably would have found yet another crumbling American metropolis; just another armpit between the Interstates.

I find pockets of paradise in every place I explore by bike.

When I’m riding my bike through drifts of cherry blossom on the bikeways of Vancouver I sometimes try to imagine the view from behind the windshields of the cars in the parallel universe just one block away, speeding along Kingsway in the morning commute. Or not speeding, rather fuming, as once again a collision brings the blur of strip malls into focus as traffic grinds to a halt. The view of endless bumpers, infinite gray concrete, all filtered through a bubble of metal and dirty glass. No wonder drivers often hate the city. They see only the ugliest parts of it, under stress and at speed.

I have heard tell of the pleasures of the Great (North) American Road Trip, but for me the ferry or the train, the bike, or my own two feet is the way to travel. Go slow, enjoy the journey. It’s all about the ride.

A year ago I went to work at The Bike Doctor as a humble pedlar of pedals.

I had never worked in the retail end of bikes, and The Bike Doctor is a big store. I was shaky and a little intimidated. There are hundreds of models of bikes and thousands of products I was supposed to know about, and although I’ve done tons of bikey stuff through the years the fact is I didn’t know jack about parts or accessories, or bikes. My abilities as a mechanic didn’t (and still don’t) extend beyond fixing a flat, and half the time I could not even get the damn tire off the rim. I was the only woman on a staff of 26 men. And since I hadn’t worked in a store since I was a teenager, the workings of the modern cash register (remember cash?) were utterly strange to me. I made a lot of mistakes.

The job called for an immediate ego smackdown. Working basic retail isn’t exactly high on the social prestige scale, and a woman my age with a resumé isn’t ‘supposed’ to be mopping greasy floors and making change for inner tubes. The pay barely cleared minimum wage, and my ‘supervisor’ was half my age. My bigass ex-clients would come in and raise amused eyebrows as I tightened their saddle or scrambled to find them a tire, but there I was—humble shop clerk and pedal pusher. Clocking in and clocking out. Read the rest of this entry »

Bodhisattva Vow #2:
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them.

This is about cutting through the bullshit. My own bullshit. The bullshit that started the moment I was born, when I was a tiny perfect baby and someone said, “don’t cry!” And somewhere in my little baby brain the thought formed, that I should not be crying. That I was somehow less for crying, and that my mom and the world would like me better if I stopped. That other babies, who are not crying, are better babies. And so I stopped crying before all my tears had been shed.

That little baby notion of wrongness gets shoved into the closet at the back of our minds, and unless we empty the closet and turf that baby bullshit out, it can stay there and fester for the rest of our lives. It leaches a little poison out, that says I am bad, and you are bad, we are bad. We deserve all the pain that is coming to us, and we can lessen the pain by doling out a little retribution to someone else. Read the rest of this entry »

Bodhisattva Vow #1:
Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.

Save all beings? Whoa. That’s just a bit over the top. The word ‘saving’ makes me squirm, visualizing Jehova’s Witnesses at the door. Superheroes flying down from the sky to scoop up the sick and the downtrodden. There’s a lot ego wrapped up in saviorhood, not to mention martyr complex. Should I go to Africa and found an orphanage for AIDS babies, put out a press release, die on the cross? Have you ever been in a relationship where you tried to ‘save’ someone? Yup. Nope. We can help, we can serve. But is it truly possible to save anyone, or to save anything? Can we ‘save’ the world? If not, then what can we really and realistically do? Read the rest of this entry »