Felicity, Cycling in the Rain or Not, Books, Gaslighting

I did watch the Oscars and, while I would have loved it if Brokeback Mountain had gotten best picture, I thought the only egregious miscarriage of justice was that Felicity Huffman didn’t win best actress for Transamerica.

I was going to ride my bike to work today, though it looked a bit damp out, but just as I was getting ready to leave, it began to pour, so I went out to the bus stop instead. I’ve more or less sworn off riding in the rain, for three reasons: first and foremost, my glasses get covered with water and I can’t see. If it’s daytime, I can take them off and see reasonably well, though it feels kind of odd, but once it gets to be evening, I could roll over an umbrella on the ground without seeing it.

I wear a baseball cap with a long bill underneath my helmet, and that does the trick if it’s a light rain that’s falling straight down, but that’s rarely the case.

The other two reasons are that motorists’ skills seem to diminish on rainy days, and that avoiding puddles at the end of the road (which might be very shallow or might be deep ruts; you can’t tell) makes me have to ride significantly farther from the curb, which makes me kind of nervous these days.

As I waited at the bus stop this morning, I saw many cyclists come by wearing glasses. They probably know something I don’t. I also saw a guy with a miniature bicycle attached to the back of his own bike; a little girl was on the second bike. The man pedaled right through a red light, and then wobbled along in the door zone—close enough to parked cars to be knocked over if a car door should open suddenly. (Doorings are the most common cause of injury to urban cyclists.)

Ten minutes later, I saw a cyclist coming from the other direction, up to and through a light that was just turning red. Cross traffic was present; I suppose the cyclist was thinking, “Sorry you can’t go even though you have the green light, but, as you can see, I am trying to run the red light here.” Turned out to be the same guy, now minus the little girl.

I recently finished reading Fast Food Nation, which is absolutely excellent and which of course made me feel like never eating chicken, pork or beef ever again. What I found most disgusting was that chickens are fed ground-up cow parts and vice versa, even though, as a friend pointed out, we eat both those things anyway. (Another friend joked, “Yeah, that book was fantastic. I couldn’t eat a burger for like two weeks afterwards.”)

Then I started a novel that I had to take back to the library after about ten pages. It was full of sentences like, “It’s me, years later, back then the girl in the story, writing this: in my pink dress: a gift from my grandmother Marietta, who owned the tobacco store on the corner; she did a brisk business there.” That is to say, there were too many coy asides, too many colons and semicolons, and too many references to too many relatives I couldn’t keep straight.

All those colons in a work of fiction make you feel like someone is poking you in the chest with two fingers just when you’re starting to get somewhere.

On to Diet for a New America, which so far I like very much. (My reading list alternates between nonfiction and fiction/memoir, plus I usually have a dharma book underway. I’m now reading Focusing, because Tara Brach mentions it in her book Radical Acceptance, which I found extremely helpful and highly recommend.)

The coworker who was driving me crazy is long gone, but the rumbling underneath my apartment is still happening. I can go to sleep without any problems, but it’s somewhat oppressive when I’m awake, and I find that I’m happy when I can go up to Tom’s and be away from it for a while.

I decided to run it by P., who these days often can’t remember what he had for lunch, but who fifteen years ago used to burst forth with a remarkable flash of insight now and then. I didn’t warn him that his advice was going to be sought. I said, “There’s a low-pitched rumbling underneath my apartment. What do you think it is?” “Radiator,” he said immediately. “You mean the furnace?” “Yes.” “But the heat isn’t always on when it’s happening.” “If it were serious, someone else would have noticed it.” And there you have it.

Actually, I’m not positive his latter assertion is correct. It wouldn’t apply, for instance, if someone were out-and-out trying to gaslight me, which I would consider pretty serious. (I can hear my building manager, after having disposed of her generator on Craig’s List, saying to some future prospective tenant, “The poor woman who used to live here was convinced there was something rumbling underneath her apartment.”)

My grandmother had two extremely shy cats that always ran and hid when all the ladies came over in their brightly colored suits to play bridge. None of my grandmother’s friends ever laid eyes on either of these cats, and they would tease her, saying, “Shirley seems to be under the impression that she has cats.” One of the cats now lives with my parents, where she is probably very happy, as no ladies ever come over to play bridge.

My grandmother really did have cats, and I really do have rumbling.