I dream often of being a NYC bicycle courier again. Last night I had a dream with two of my old friends in it, two friends who, to my knowledge, have never met, though both were couriers in the mid 1980s. I relate the dream in first-person, to the first of these, who I'll refer to throughout as N.A. . The other, S.B., shows up later. The actual title is from S.B.'s response, which I've put up as a comment.
I'm in San Francisco; there is no place else it could be, a major American city with massively steep hills. I'm loitering at the bottom of one of these hills, somewhere in the Mission District. And you, N.A., come by pushing a very strange bicycle. It's a racing bike, very slick looking, white; maybe even a carbon fiber frame. The two most noteworthy things about this bike are one, the front wheel is very small, giving it an aerodynamic angle, and two, the bike has a set of colorful fiberglass wings growing out of the seat post.
You approach me and don't seem to recognize me at all - I am clearly a stranger to you as you offer to sell me this "flying bicycle" for a mere 200 dollars. To be honest, I'm pretty impressed by the care and thought you've put into this scam; it isn't every day that some crack head - not that I have any evidence of this, mind you, but it seems more likely than the alternative - takes the time to weld fiberglass wings onto a bicycle so that he can claim its a "flying bicycle". So I keep chatting to you, wondering if you'll realize that we know each other. You don't seem to. You just keep extolling the virtues of this amazing cycle, telling me that if I get it going fast enough it will "fly through the sky, like a fucking jet."
"I believe you, I believe you," I say, though really I don't. "Show me how it works, just one time. I'll buy it from you when you land."
You look around sheepishly and hop on the bike before pedaling furiously up the hill. I figure I've seen the last of you.
About this time S.B. comes around and asks me what I'm waiting for.
"Guys trying to sell me a flying bike," I say, pointing to you as you head over the crest of the hill.
N.A., you reach the top of the hill and suddenly turn around in a perfect curve. Without losing any speed, you come straight back towards the spot where S.B. and I are standing. There is a place on the hill where the slope flattens out before continuing on, and when you hit it you and the bicycle launch high into the air, rising like a rocket, 20, 30 feet into the air before exploding in a massive fireball high above our heads.
A front wheel crashes to the ground, followed by a few pieces of scorched fiberglass wing.
S.B. and I look around for a body, but there is nothing. S.B. pokes a stick into the scant wreckage, pulling out the small strap of a NYC messenger bag. He turns to me, and In a matter-of-fact tone of voice he says
"That guy was either the world's worst grifter, or its best."
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Courier Dream 1: Icarus unleashed
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Icarus unleashed, the massively powerful magnetic shell which contains his atomic chaos released from the command signal of gravity as he ascends to the heavens. The question remains: to whom can we ascribe the credit of his explosive beauty, his bright and shining dissolution? Did his modern Chanute-Herring decide of itself to be free of master and control? Did the young rider's exuberant belief in the beauty of both his machine and idea reach critical mass as the world shrank beneath him, gianting his self-image in inverse proportion to the shrinking humans, their puny accomplishments, their diminishing importance? Did Icarus himself, with his credulous innocence and endearing naivete, get suckered by a sharp-eyed scammer who got tired of waiting for fatherless bumpkins walking their family cows to market? Or was it maybe the modern world finding in our soaring entrepreneur a perfect vehicle for Wagnerian expression of the postmodern Weltanschauung? How reality has shifted; when the Wright brothers slapped wings on a bicycle a century ago they took their place in an ongoing expression of enlightened, rational, mindful action in which the unstable was increasingly stabilized, the unbalanced balanced, the uncontrolled controlled. A belief, then, that one can with practice master the art of control has morphed, has perhaps too predictably returned to legendary enactment. Balance and control - balance and control - balance and control - mean less than the art of the deal, the twisting, visceral release of ecstasy. To our soaring sailor, our boundless bumpkin, our grandstanding grifter, then: I salute you, and your smoldering ashes.
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