Charles Olson’s bicycle (Comments: 2)
Author: Jason Crane
Date: 24 February, 2009
Category: Albany, Cycling Thoughts, Jason Crane
I found this essay by Albany cyclist Nathaniel Ward via Ron Silliman’s blog:
In many ways I feel like I didn’t really know the area in which I live until I started riding bikes seriously. Things are both much nearer and much farther than I had imagined them to be, more accessible and less, too. The immediacy of the Self to art, to politics, to society at large, as experience by the pedestrian is what de Certeau is getting at. From the perspective of the cyclist, though, it is different yet again in that the physiological transformation that equates to greater fitness allows spatial relationships between geographic points to become diminished. So my world is larger as a competitive cyclist in that I can ride my bike from Albany, NY to visit my brother in Northampton, MA, for instance–a ride of roughly 85 miles–and at the same time it is smaller. Smaller in the sense that an average day’s training ride has the potential to bridge a social and emotional distance, and larger because what this amounts to is a choice. And choice amounts to social mobility.
2 comments to “Charles Olson’s bicycle”