Feeling, Smelling, Tasting

I’ve started reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cycling, and I have been somewhat surprised at how much I’m enjoying it.  I particularly liked the following passages from the first chapter:

“The first real bike racer I ever met was a man who I was surprised to learn was then in his early 70’s.  He had been an Olympic seed skater in the 1930’s and later pursued a bike racing career … Of all the valuable things he taught me about this wonderful sport, the thing I remember most is when he said, ‘Time spent riding a bike is not deducted from your lifetime.’  As I consider all the people I’ve known in this sport who have had health, attitudes and appearances of much younger people, I see how true his words were … 

“The fun of riding has to be experienced to be understood … Experiences are what make life interesting.  It takes a personal experience to discover cycling in the first place.  So the next time you meet a wafo [someone who doesn’t get why you cycle], don’t waste your breath explaining because it’s like trying to tell a stranger about rock ‘n’ roll.   Instead, invite them to experience a ride.  Let them experience the fun for themselves.  Let them understand what it’s like to not just view the scenery through the window, but to feel it, smell it, taste it and be a part of it.”

One thing I didn’t write about in yesterday’s post was how much I enjoyed riding down Millcreek Canyon.  It was exhilarating.  For the first time, I felt the joy of cycling, of feeling, smelling, tasting and being a part of the beautiful scenery around me.  I knew by the time we rode out of the mouth of the canyon that I was hooked.

I was introduced to the writing of Rainer Maria Rilke by our family physician in Vancouver.  Over the years, and particularly since coming out, I have read bits of his work but have never made a sustained effort to plunge into him.   The other day, I picked up a book at the library, A Year With Rilke, which is comprised of short passages that can be read every day.  Here is today’s passage:

What kind of courage is required of us? 

Imagine a person taken out of his room, and without preparation or transition placed on the heights of a great mountain range. He would feel an unparalleled insecurity, an almost annihilating abandonment to the nameless. He would feel he was falling into outer space or shattering into a thousand pieces. What enormous lie would his brain concoct in order to give meaning to this and validate his senses? In such a way do all measures and distances change for the one who realizes his solitude. These changes are often sudden and, as with the person on the mountain peak, bring strange feelings and fantasies that are almost unbearable. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must accept our reality in all its immensity. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible within it. This is, in the end, the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to meet the strangest, most awesome, and most inexplicable of phenomena.  

I made a decision 20 months ago to accept my reality - the fact that I am, and always have been, gay.  This brought about sudden changes in my life which resulted in "strange feelings and fantasies that [were and still are, at times] almost unbearable."  I continue to learn to accept my "reality in all its intensity," having faith that "everything, even the unheard of, [is] possible within it."