How I Learn

Summer Links (June to August 2009)

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Against the grain

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wind filled

of whole cloth

legs fading

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Falling hard

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tire cut on

broken drain legs scraped

on the street

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Pushing

..

wind sprint

till ribs crack

again again

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Heading south, 6:00 PM

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on Mass. Ave.

each engine stinking

in the heat

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Summer drizzle

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rain chilled

sweat it off on

the first sprint

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Summer rain

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water on the road

in the air in the lungs

coughing

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Up Mass Ave.

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exhaust harsh

lungs tight in the heat

holding a line

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Marginal

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vine whipped

along the road edge

raising welts

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Going hard

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something cracks

in the drive train

going softer

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Flowers

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road kill

attar of rose blossoming

fear

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Dehydrating

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worm tube

from mouth to anus

clamped to the seat

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piss thick

condensed with effort and

acid burn

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Charles River Light 7:00 AM

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water blinded

mind in pieces as

breath rasps

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On hot streets

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cerebellum balance

in some time place

just this one

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white matter

jittering with bike

arms eyes legs

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grey soothed

motion hyped

reaction time

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Reaction time

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car shear

sharp hot metal

much too close

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River ride

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water blackened

mind blackened the wind

eating strength

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light dappled

green always moving

with breath

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leaf tannins

pooled in quiet

between roots

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Road work

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tar’s off

bitumen pitch in the road

sticks

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exhaling carbon

the world warms

muscles rest

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Charles east of River Bridge (Boston Side)

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gorge choking

on small flies still

having to breath

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No rain

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trail dry

dust hangs a moment

in the wind

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Clean ride

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wheel balanced

around the spokes

singing

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Sullen weather

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thunder lurking

in the drenched air

pushing in

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A change in the weather

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cooling soft

across the bridge

fine rain

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Hard, Hot

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lungs full

not satisfied trying

to breathe more

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fresh sweat stings

eyes half blind

going uphill

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Fatigue

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going slowly

into the wind

ground down

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Distant storm

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sullen heat

dripping from the sky’s

slow static

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Summer passing

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some limit

of applied force

turning the wheels

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tired on the bike
even the slightest hill
dulls the edge
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sun shorter
as the distance home
fades away

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Most of these were composed as I rode around Boston, in to work along the Charles and home up Massachusetts Avenue, or on longer rides to the west. I struggled on the bike this summer, never really built up good endurance, as one can see in the lines. Not sure why. I need to ride more of course, always need to ride more, but I am aging and distracted. Cycling helps me to centre and at the same time to open up and drift on lines of thought that get woven into the rhythm of my legs, lungs, heart. Crossing distance increases the duration of my life and let's me bring more into each (longer) moment: moment, movement, momentum all share the same root - to move, which traces back to push, but also Kamah-Mutah (to be moved by love) - all extracted from Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language.

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Photos by Yoshie Hattori 2009

Longer Rides

Things learned through thought and conversation often need to be consolidated by some type of physical activity. For me this can be cooking or washing up, the hot water over porcelain or glass is curiously restful, but many weeks I use a long ride on my bike to push thought down into the background rhythms of my body and make it my own. Friends who run long distances say that running performs the same function, but I prefer to get out and ride. I can go farter and keep up the effort much longer. For me a long ride is anything over 80 km, but preferably longer, 120 to 140 km, and occasionally I will do a century (100 miles or 160 km).

I generally set up some themes for each ride, things I want to have in the background as I push my legs around in circles. This could be a bit of math or logic, Cantor's continuum hypotheses and Zermello's axiom of choice are themes I have used on rides in the fall of 2008. Or it could be a business problem or personal issue I am working on - how to grow and support the people I work with or how to knit deeper my relationship with Yoshie. Sometimes I will try to blend two different themes on the same ride and then use a line from a poem or song as a prompt or point of distance reference, something to come back to as the pedaling begins to wear me down or a hill gets steeper. When the themes are something I grasp poorly, as is often the case with mathematics, logic or certain algorithms, or when I want to be precise and need a memory aide, I will often jot them down on a piece of paper I can shove in my pocket. If I need to I can take this out and glance at it while I wait at an intersection for a light to change, but often just writing something down is enough to fix it in memory long enough for the ride.

I can't say I am thorough or methodic in the way I think while riding. That is not really the intent. The goal is to get things working in the back of my mind, and as the effort grinds on, usually about 80 km in, ideas begin to drift and associate and become part of the sensations of the ride - the wind or rain, sun, sweat, road grit, in the summer bugs, in colder seasons the sting on my face and slight pain in my lungs. This let's loose coalitions of ideas from, how the axiom of choice implies a kind of freedom in infinity, or how my own growth and performance depend on the people I work with. I sometimes see images from Yoshie's photo blog flash up and blend into the textures of the road surface or flow beside me in the light flickering through the trees or off the water. It is not just the way ideas drift together and form new connections that is important, or the way the sensory flow smoothes things together. Riding helps me to think by linking ideas deep into the repeated pattern of movement, the muscle effort of pedaling and guiding the bike around the small dangers on the road surface - loose gravel, pot holes and ruts, the car brushing by too close or coming out of a blind corner not concerned with cyclists. It is the drifting thought, the physical work, and the peripheral flow of sensory information that calms and let's the ideas come together in new and deeper patterns that I can use in my work.

In Vancouver I like to ride from Kitsilano out to Deep Cove and sometimes up Mount Seymour. Or if I am too tired for this, I go south down to the fishing town of Steveston, where the ride along the Richmond dyke is especially lovely. In Boston I tend to head west, out the 117 past Bolton and down the 110 to the Wachusett reservoir. Or on some summer weekends I will take a train north to Beverly and then ride up through Ipswich to Newburyport and out to Plum Island then back down through Essex and around Cape Anne. These are all good roads, long enough to get into a rhythm, enough variety to keep the mind alive, and the car drivers on these roads tend to accept the odd cyclist.

For me, learning requires the integration of many different modes - physical and sensory as well as abstract and concrete thought. Cycling is one part of how I do this. Of course I need to talk to people as well, and conversation is important, but at times I need to be alone with my body in the world.

Urban Cycling: Harvard Bridge to Columbus Avenue

I have learned a lot about urban cycle commuting in the two years since I moved to Boston. I commute by bike pretty much every day, save only days when there is deep snow on the streets or I am going to go from the office to the airport. I thought I knew something about urban cycling from my years in Vancouver, where I have cycled all over the city and go just about everywhere I want to go by bike. But cycling in Vancouver, with its well-paved streets, bike lanes and relatively heavy bicycle traffic (though not compared to a European city, or even to Tokyo) is relaxed compared to downtown Boston. In Vancouver if you know how to dress, follow the rules of the road, and pay basic attention to where you are and what you are doing, you will get home most days. Boston requires a different state of mind.

My morning commute is more relaxed. North on Dartmouth and over Storrow to the Charles River. Then up the river on the Boston side for as long as I have time, then back down the Cambridge side and into the Canal Park complex by the Lechmere canal. Most of the time I am on cycle paths (well mixed use paths, with massive bumps where tree roots are growing under the pavement). The most dangerous thing tends to be random dogs or, in late summer, swallowing bugs.

Coming home is a different story. It is usually late, I am stressed and tired, and I want to take the shorted route home, especially when my wife is in town (she travels even more than I do). So I take the direct route, which takes me along the Charles to Mass Ave. and then over the Harvard Bridge. This is a relatively long bridge, the longest to cross the Charles, and the buildings of Backbay glitter to the left with the river stretching out on either side. The water is generally black by this time of night, and has a coldness coming off it. It can feel like a tunnel of cold leading one into the lights across the river. And there is a bike lane on the bridge (probably courtesy of Cambridge, which in general treats cyclists better than Boston). so I like to dial up the speed on the bridge. I ride a fixed gear, and can accelerate pretty quickly to 45 plus kilometers per hour (just over 28 miles per hour). At one point I used to carry some of this speed and aggression with me into the city. But after a few scares I learned not to do this, and on the last 200 meters of the bridge I reset.

As I enter the Boston section of Mass Ave. I turn the aggression way down, open my peripheral senses as wide as possible, and ride a clear line just out of range of car doors (I have gotten doored twice in my life, once riding in Tokyo and once in Vancouver, I have no desire for another encounter). It has taken a lot of mental training to get into this zone that combines maximum calm with maximum awareness. At this point in my life it is not really something I can maintain for more than thirty minutes or so. It seems to be similar to the condition aspired to when sitting Zen, something that I also do from time to time. Calm, alert, open to what is happening, ready to respond instantly to what happens - a car veering, a new hole in the road (Boston has truly dreadful road surfaces), a person stepping out into the street. I need all my senses on to do this - peripheral vision, hearing - you generally here a change in the underlying thrum as something happens and the micro traffic patterns change - the kinesthetics of the bike and the road - even air pressure plays a role.

I have some confidence that I can slip into this zone, at least for a few minutes, anytime that I need to on a bicycle. I am now trying to extend this in two ways - to stay in the zone for longer periods and to call it up in other situations. In some ways this zone is like the mental space you need to be in to walk safely on dangerous streets, where the trick is to project confidence, belonging and an absence of threatening vibes at the same time. Being non-aggressive and alert is also the key to active listening in business meetings. When tensions are running high in a meeting, or just in the office overall, as when we are trying to make a new release available, it helps me to walk around and just listen to what is happening. I don't necessarily take any action, at least not at the time, but the sense that one gets of how things are working can be the ground for later decisions. It will be interesting to see if and how this can be translated to a more distributed working environment, something I expect my team will need to do over the next few years. Meanwhile, I work on learning how to slip seamlessly from zone to zone, how to listen (with all senses) and keep myself lightly bound by dependent phenomena.