Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep a woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she still has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought.
Historical note: The Scarlet Letter was published two years after the Seneca Falls Convention.
*And yes, I read this in junior high but never understood the complexities of the novel. There is SO MUCH THERE. It’s way better the second time around.**
**Also, The Custom House Sketch, a kind of intro to The Scarlet Letter, is amazing for Hawthorne’s description of his own writer’s block. AMAZING. Who knew I was a Hawthorne fan?
My favorite class this semester is called Travel Literature and in spite of the fact that one of the assigned books was Eat, Pray, Love the rest of the class is fun, stimulating and interesting.
Right now I am in the middle of a book called Catfish and Mandala. It’s a travel memoir by Andrew X. Pham, a Vietnamese-American man whose parents immigrate to the US in 1977. He is ten years old at the time.
Twenty years later, after his finance leaves him and his sister commits suicide, he bicycles his way back to Vietnam.
It’s the best book I’ve read since The Road. Pham’s writing is intensely lyrical and moving, especially his passages about learning to travel by bike. Before the trip he was not a “cyclist” and he makes the passage on a used $200 clunker.
I’m not a “cyclist” either, but as a person who participates in endurance sports I particularly liked the following passages (emphasis mine).
His initial departure — Page 30
Thin strokes of clouds score a sky as blue as a blessing. A brisk wind washes across the bridge. I wobble through the throngs of pedestrians and cyclists with a ready grin for everyone I pass. A light-headedness buoys me as if ambrosia courses in my veins. I am intoxicated with a feeling of rightness, a psychological snapping together of mating parts, a lucid moment of geometrical perfection. A liberating bliss.
“Yes!” I shout over and over as I race away from San Francisco.
The euphoria lasts until I crank up the cliffs of Highway 1. I’m not a cyclist. The bike is heavy. My precious enthusiasm dissipates with every incline. My map shows an inland road meandering some way from the coast rejoining Highway 1 at Stinson Beach. Confident that it will spare me grueling coastal hills, I huff up the grade, too exhausted to venture a guess why this stretch of blacktop was named Panoramic Road. It steadliy get steeper without a sign of leveling out. I inch up the mountain, pulling over to breathe at every half mile.
Endurance euphoria — Page 34
Alon the Pacific Coast, I meet cyclists who lick their chops at the challenge of a six-percent grade or an eighty-mile ride. I am a distracted rider, the sort that thrives on flat roads without wind. I haven’t encountered a mountain I like — from the front side. The only mountains I like are the ones I’ve summited. And there are no mountains finer than the ones I’m coasting down. On the road, I find myself vacillating between elation and abject misery, my senses narrowed to the hundred yards immediately before me. Beyond this, I am solely concerned with my next meal and my next campsite.
I learn it all the hard way. From San Francisco, I curse my way up the California coast. Every fiber in my body balks aggainst the strain of propelling two hundred pounds uphill mile after mile. The second day out, I heel over again, this time halfway up another mountain. My loaded bike topples like a wildebeest felled by one well-aimed bullet. I crawl out from under the bike and try to stand, but my legs give out.
I roll onto my belly, my legs locked rigid — a pair of two-by-fours jackknifed by a stampede of charley horses. I bite my knuckles, tears welling in my eyes. High school kids in a red Jeep roar by, laughing. I begin to suspect the authors I’d read weren’t entirely forthcoming about the physical ordeals of bicycle adventures… Every muscle groans and complains with each movement. My back aches. I am so stuff I can barely tie my shoelaces. What was I thinking? My Baja trip could hardly be called cycling. I had dragged that bike through the desert like a crucifix.
Milestones — Page 35
The day my odometer registers 500 miles, just before coming into Eureka, I feel invincible. I’ve fixed plenty of flat tires, warped rims, loose breaks and broken spokes. Somehow through the torment, I have developed a taste for bicycle touring. Every time I top a big mountain, I dismount and dance a little victory jig around the bike, not caring who might see me. The coast is gorgeous. I cannot swallow, breathe, soak it up fast enough. At least once a day, there is a moment of absolute perfection when my muscles sing with power, full of vigor, raw and very alive — the air sweet with grass and pine, the whirling chain and the humming tires but extensions of me.
The idea in a gist: PowerPoint presentations unleashed. Each presenter gets 20 images of their choice to be shown for 20 seconds at a time (20×20). Presentations can be on anything, really, but the idea is to inspire, motivate and share ideas. I was interviewing organizer Tony Medrano after PK Houston #1 and he said he was interested in getting a writer to speak for the next event. Which was interesting because I’d recently been thinking about reading and performing some of my writing. We made plans to stay in touch, and then I spent the next four months trying to forget about it because…
OH MY GOD. Tomorrow I will be reading an essay and sharing pictures in front of prolly 200 people. I have never read my work in public before. I have never put anything I’ve created out there and stood in front of it so nakedly. I’ve always hidden behind printed paper and bylines. I am making special plans to go to yoga on my yoga off day just to mellow out before I develop a stuttering problem and a nervous giggle due to stage fright.
If you’re on Facebook, here is the Facebook page, but basically all you need to know is this: there will be a bar. The event starts at 6:30 p.m., with presentations starting at 7:30 p.m. at the The Atrium of the UH College of Architecture building. My co-presenters include Andrea Grover, founder of the Aurora Picture Show, some neuroscientist, artist, designers, a guy from Workshop Houston and more. Please come see me.
On a whim Friday I went to my local running store and registered for Saturday’s Rodeo Run 10, the one-year anniversary of the first race I’d ever run. CLH is out of town, I had no arrangements to meet friends at the start or finish line, and I hadn’t even really trained for it, having slacked a bit on my running since the half marathon, but it’s a fun race, starting at a breezy 9:30 a.m., and the weather was perfect yesterday. I even got a bit of a sunburn.
A month ago I signed up for Kenyan Way so I could discipline myself into working on my speed and endurance. Mostly speed. My goal n the race this year was to beat my time from last year, but my real goal, my secret goal, was to come in in under an hour. That didn’t happen. Here’s what did:
I never don’t get emotional at the start of a race. I never don’t cry at the end. I have a hard time starting off slow — the tendency is to flow with everyone around you, to keep pace when people are trying to pass you. One of the key rules of Kenyan Way is the negative split — start off slow, reserve your energy for the last few miles of the race. EVERY RUN, whether it’s two miles or ten, should be a negative split. I was conservative. I went to the very back of the pack, the 11-minute milers, so I wouldn’t feel the pressure of people passing me. And when I crossed the starting line, I had to go slow, sluggishly slow, because I made up my mind I was not going to stop. I was not going to walk.
Two miles into the race, the route goes over a long, sloping bridge called the Elysian Viaduct. In the middle, the viaduct sags where the columns hold it up over Buffalo Bayou. So the viaduct is two hills, one large and one small. Four miles into the race, at the north end of the viaduct, the route turnes around, and crosses the viaduct again, in the other direction. Four hills, the hardest one the last.
At that turnaround point I stopped for my first water break, four miles into a six mile run, and I walked a few feet while hydrating, and after that point, I was on. I ascended that final hill, WHOOO HOOOED as loud as I could, and hit the gas. My final mile was my fastest, less than nine minutes. I crossed the finish line at 1:03:46, three minutes and ten seconds faster than my time last year.
