Zen and the Art of Speedskating

My friend Jeremy, metioned in earlier posts has a story about him in the Raleigh NC NBC station. He’s a talented guy, and after 13 years living in New Orleans, is relocating to Boston.

as for me, I just came across this quote:

Here’s the new rule: Break the wineglass
And fall toward the glassblower’s breath
-Rumi, 12th century

In connection to this, I am back in Ithaca N.Y. for 5 days of reconnecting with friends, family, and recharging myself with that original/illogical voltage of origins. There is a place in each of us, a landscape that is home, no matter where we actually live. To my family, home will always be the rolling green hills of upstate NY. From Jamestown in the west where my mom spent her early years, to the boundary of Rockland/Orange County outside of NYC to the east, Upstate NY is where my direct ancestors have been since 1705 (as my brother talks about in his post “Ghosts”).

I certainly love the mountain west; I spent 8 years living in Colorado & who I am as an individual fits fully with life in the thin air & blue skies. But if I break that wineglass of the immediate me, and fall towards origins, that glassblowers breath is a cool, crisp day, shaping riotously green glacier-cut hills rising alongside the finger lakes. Hills wound with roads are so steep they make even the hardest bicycle racers weep and sneer, with trees meeting overhead in a tunnel of green. Yeah… home…

Sure, the weather in Ithaca is uniquely miserable 6-8 months a year, like living on the slopes of a receding, dirty glacier, but there are moments of clarity, Gimme Coffee, and days of astonishing beauty, especially in the early fall. When it comes to Ithaca, those days seems to be what lodges in the memory, more than the grey slush & bitter winds of March (well, it’s usually cruddy from mid-October to April).

Home is such a funny thing in people’s lives. These pictures were all taken today, driving around in the convertible Avis rented me (Avis rep: Mr Love, we are all out of the tiny cheap car you reserved, will a Chrysler Sebring convertible for the same rate be acceptable to you???)

The hills in this first photo rises a solid 1,200 feet from downtown Ithaca nestled between them to their true crest, in places it’s steeper than most can imagine. Just try….. did you?? not even close!! Unless you imagined 30-45 minutes on your bike, heart pounding like a jackhammer, out of the saddle clawing your way upward in your ego crusher tinyest gear.

Its soooo green here, lush & beautiful. Too bad winter hits so hard, & that for half the year it’s the beloved land of perpetual murk. Otherwise it would be paradise.

Filed under: on the road, from the coffee shop