A moderate breeze is pushing east across the lake and I’m trying to create and hold a peaceful scene. Casey’s tail wags slowly, and I wonder if it’s just the idea of being outside that changes her day, and I simultaneously envy her and feel a little revulsion at my inconsistent attempts to be a little more. Sunlight flicks off of rhythmic, rounding crests and I think about sand dunes and also mounds of snow and diagrams of wavelengths from an introductory physics text and wonder why I won’t just wake up in the morning or go to bed at night trying a little bit harder to be a little bit nicer. I wonder if there is a cartographer’s map of what level of energy passes through me before I allow an imbalance in quadrants one through four to disrupt what should be harmony in the vivisection of what constitutes me (see figure 37.4), this alleged vessel. Phil sent a Bukowksi pic, and I think about all of the times ol’ Chuck must have sat down with a bottle or five and poured his guts into a short story, and I wonder whether he ever felt better about any of it, or if he was just grudgingly satisfied with the way the weathervane pointed. It’s going to be record highs this week, and I can’t remember what I read earlier this week about how habits can build or destroy you, and I wonder if I can slow my thoughts down enough to match my breathing. I’m picturing towns from a travel article describing the forested northwestern corner of the state, and Casey’s left eye winks at me when she looks back and up at me from a dandelion-dotted shore. Earlier this week I followed or liked or saved a bunch of VR software companies, and I’m fairly certain Brautigan would kayak right up to us as we stand here for just a minute, calmly place his paddle across his lap, and tilt his head while holding eye contact until I say, “I would like to think of” and my thoughts break off. He’s probably more of a canoe guy. Rust and gold and even lavender are a little more insistent than last week in the tree line opposite us, and I hope autumn lasts as long as promised.

King wrote about Ka being a wheel in such a way that anyone who followed the gunslinger knew it was cyclical. I did not like all seven of the books, but those that spoke to me did so in strong fashion. There are 4,250 pages in all, and each book reads like an epic; each story could stand on its own–but then we would not see the full scope of Roland’s quest. King wants us to appreciate the full circle, even though it is painful at times. He kills a lot of darlings, and sometimes parts of us go with them.

My dream is not to write thousands of pages. I want to leave a crater in just one strike. I do not mind if I have to gather energy for months. The act of completion would be more than enough to warrant the investment. If I would be fortunate enough to revisit the site of impact and expand the effect, that would be more than I can imagine at this moment.

I delved back into the Law of Vibration and positive energy and reframing thinking and dozens of similar somewhat DIY-centered schemata, but I am wondering how many people routinely realize the futility of daily enterprise, only to explore surface-level alternatives and then eventually slide back into the same passive routine. I’m guessing the numbers are impressive. How many times I have done in the last several years is not something of which I am proud.

On the drive to and from my day job, I think about the brilliant energies of the people in my life for the last twenty years, and most especially, the last five. Not all of us are artistically talented in traditional senses, and not all of us are able to pursue passions, but not one of us wanted to succumb to routine. The great defiler. We didn’t shelve our imaginations just to become consumers.

I think that I have kept thinking that passion alone will carry me, as it has certainly directed me more faithfully than just showing up. However, the signs show that lasting peace or something approaching satisfaction requires dedication. For most of my adult life, my dedication to self-improving or any type of evolutionary cause has wavered, to put it mildly. I have no excuse for this, other than weakness of will, and a disappointing disposition to submit to stress. Some days I cannot allow myself to spin the Wheel at all. I get up, halfheartedly engage in Sisyphean tasks, commiserate with other pushers, and the days pass.

Sometimes we get a rare opportunity to burn it down, though. Currently the days are passing, and certainly the challenges are never-ending, but now we can help each other glimpse past the boulders, and–behold: how much of us we left out there. I have counted suns for too long, and I rarely watch the moon.

As the year’s last, loveliest smile finally stretches for us, let the Wheel turn again.

The GT had an oversized frame, so I grabbed a Schwinn mountain bike, and Matt picked a Raleigh hybrid. The sun was out, and the cool edge of a slight breeze insisted itself through the streets. We pushed the bikes out of the front doors and aimed north. People were milling around the River Market area casually as we adjusted our seat posts, then coasted half a block closer to the river. I angled into an open-air pavilion and flicked the thumb shifters a few times to gauge the gearing. I was already smiling. Matt rang his bar-mounted bell a few times and grinned. We pushed out of the city proper and onto the winding concrete path of the Arkansas River Trail.

Matt had already put in a mile or two in a run earlier that morning, but we laughingly acknowledged that our fitness was inconsistent at best, and that this ride would be more than just a throwback to fun. It was necessary, even moreso for me. Satisfied with our pre-flight check, we startled peddling on the trail, which was a twisting concrete sidewalk here. I grinned as my beer gut jiggled and I picked up speed and moved the handlebars to weave and adjust my balance, calibrating myself to the long-dormant, yet quickly-remembered feeling of two wheels. Where the sidewalk undulated, I pulled back the handlebars quickly and jutted my legs forward to lift off of the ground, ever so briefly. The kid inside me said, “Didja see that? We can still get air.” I shook my head at myself (I’m sure both wheels were in the air for all of five inches) and we rode on, weaving in and out of smiling couples and little kids acting as moving markers. 

A few blocks west, the Broadway Bridge demolition caused part of route 10 to be closed, including the trail. We squeezed brake handles, shifted our weight to one side, and dismounted quickly, hoisting frames to shoulders to ascend stairs below the Doubletree. Pausing briefly at the empty street, we saw piles of concrete two blocks down grow as machines dropped off chunks of the former bridge’s foundation. Remounting,  we coasted into an underground parking garage, only to circle back out and push back up to street level. I didn’t have anything mounted to my bike, and soon we were starting to move beyond the boundaries of the street grid in Matt’s handlebar-mounted gear bag and map. We pushed west for several blocks; one uphill push was an absolute monster. I tapped out immediately, butcMatt shifted gears in a slow-motion machine-gun burst, and I could hear him exhale in determinations that sounded like “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” as he pumped his legs furiously to reach the peak of the hill. It took me at least another minute and a half to join him, and I secretly marveled at the heat and growing tightness in my legs. We rested for a minute, and Matt passed me his water bottle. We looked around us at a few dead-end streets, then zig-zagged westward, eventually passing behind the capitol building. I almost forgot I was on a bike as its neoclassical architectural commanded most of my peripheral vision on my left. Another gentle hill or two, and we stopped to check the map on my phone. In the sunshine, it was difficult to see the screen at all. I cupped my right hand at the top and pinched the screen with my left thumb and index finger to zoom into a section of Little Rock. “It looks like we have to go at least five blocks before we have another chance to push north to the river.” Across the highway, the Children’s Hospital rose impressively. I nodded to point at it. “That’s bigger than I thought it was.”

Matt looked down the roller-coaster hill arcing out below us. “Let’s head back toward the city that way,” he said, motioning with his head, “because if I do that hill and we have to come back up, I think I’ll be done.” I smiled in agreement and laughed, admitting, “There is no way I’ll make it through two more hills like that last one.” We peddled east. 

The terrain was much more friendly as we  ramped off and on sidewalks along 7th Street. We took Broadway back north toward the river, and snaked back into the River Market area, eventually carving toward the Clinton Library. I stuck my left arm out like a wing to make sure Matt saw the wooden boardwalk snaking below us, although there was no way he could have missed it. We circled in front of the mirrored glass of the library, then pushed up the gentle slope of the bridge in front of it. Stopping halfway across the Arkansas River, we took a few photos after I fished my phone out of my left pocket and pushed the home button: 1:30. “We’re good,” I offered. “That was hour one.” 

We coasted off the bridge and onto the north shore, picking up the trail again via Harper’s Loop. Construction dotted the landscape in the blocks around Dickey Stephens Park, and I mentioned I was looking forward to spring to see baseball again, lamenting how quickly summer accelerated away from us after The Move. We took a pic outside of the ticket box, and looked through the bars at the green field, then pedaled east. A darkly-tinted late model Accord almost smacked Matt as its texting driver ignored the crosswalk and a red light at Washington and Main, and we agreed that indeed, that would have sucked, getting run over. We crossed the Main Street bridge to head south for the final time, and rode a few more blocks erratically, with no real direction. Above the trail, thirty or more kids and adults surfed the grassy, hilly landscape by sitting on cardboard sleds.

I felt tired and happy as we rode the final blocks back to Bobby’s Bike Hike, and as we returned the rental bikes, I felt that this was the perfect way to spend the first half of Saturday. Matt said it best: “I saw more of Little Rock today in two hours on a bike, then I would have in weeks behind the wheel.” 

Sometimes all we have to do is move a little differently from A to B.

“To dullards!” I smirk and raise a glass to my reflection from the bedroom mirror bounced into the bathroom mirror reflected back into the bedroom mirror. It reminds me of those perspective drawings from grade school, and as I tip the glass to you and me and me and me, I’m thinking about M.C. Escher’s works, and how they might be roadmaps to Insanity or Truth, and as I finish the glass and pour another, I’m wondering, “Is there a difference?”

Daylight. I constantly add and subtract hours to the digital clock displays around me. I think about who is doing what, and when. I try to slow the constant buzz in my head. I delineate five simultaneous high-speed conversations created by and featuring me and at least eighty-seven Parallel Universe versions of me and I attempt to pick which one is the best Logical or best Illogical path to embrace wholeheartedly. The answer is blurry, at best. Again.

Quick subtraction, and I have how many hours (or minutes, if you really dig anxiety) are left before the alarm goes off again. Each day is one step closer to the finalization of a signed contract. It’s a ticker-tape waiting line until the Last Day of this most recent Hell. I’m excited to find a new way to burn. Another toast to my reflection. Another empty glass.

Relaxation. Two warm lights: a candle, half-spent, and the small lamp on the other side of the bed on its lowest setting.  

Nighttime. There is less light pollution here, and I’m one thousand miles from the last nineteen years of a twenty-mile radius. The Little Dipper reflects over the lake. I’ve never lived next to water, but I always wanted to. I even managed to forget for a few weeks that it was two blocks away. A morning walk and an evening walk to calm the mind. Deep breathing. Lower blood pressure. An hour of peace.

Dreamtime. A final toast, to you and yours, but mostly to me. It’s been a hard road, but not as hard as others. I focus on a soft hum outside the windows after I turn off the TV, blow out the candle, and switch off the lamp. Tomorrow is a new day. Another opportunity we will never have again.

While decompressing (wine works better than IPAs these days) and attempting to put the day behind me, I saw an awful “thank you” to teachers. “Thanks for all you do,” read the post, followed by a trendy hashtag: #worldteachersday. 

Before I continue, a disclaimer: I consider most trending topics to be vile these days, but that particular hashtag flipped a kill switch in me. See, I’m a “teacher.” Why is that in quotation marks? I’m ashamed. That’s why.

I never bought into the nobility of the profession. I also never signed the oath of the pauper, but apparently my finances didn’t get that memo. I spent seven out of ten years working multiple extra jobs just to get by. 

Another disclaimer: I’m not that great of a teacher. I loathe paperwork. I don’t have a high tolerance level for bullshit, and my God, if ever there were an entire twisted Industry fully committed to self-deception at a dangerous rate, it’s education. Here’s where I excel: I love learning. Sometimes I even do it well. Sometimes I can even be helpful in helping others learn. For me, there really isn’t anything better than when I can be a part (just a section) of a construct that affords new understanding or the doorway to a new opportunity where previously there may have not been one. 

So, what’s the catch? Ten years in, it’s getting worse. I’m not going to pour all of my fury into an indictment of The System. That would be trite. Clichéd. If you don’t teach, you won’t care anyway. That’s fine. This is for me. 

On any given day, any one of us can get up in the morning, decide to be honest and say, “I’m tired of living like this.” Then we can do something about it. Most of us don’t. A great many of us have cleverly trapped ourselves into a bullshit existence, punctuated by consumerism we willfully embrace, only to whine about its detrimental effects on our lives. “Can’t quit The Job–I’ve got The Car Payment. Got The Mortgage.” It never really ends. Those with kids have an even longer potential Suffer Cycle. Hopes and dreams are paused for the brood. Not always, but shit…show me a handful of twentysomething or thirtysomething parents doing what they want to do. Rare.

Career-jumping has risk, too. Make that “Risk” to emphasize the anxiety. Capitalize that shit. Google “How to Change Your Life.” Yahoo it. Mozilla. Use a Microsoft search engine to do the same thing–whatever the hell their latest search engine is. Be like me. Rinse, repeat. I’ve now reread all the books on positive psychology and Mind over Matter that I own. Guess what’s not doing the job? The same old stuff that didn’t help me in the first place. Next up? I’m going to make some excuses. Let Fear guide me. Trap myself beneath a large purchase or two. Piss away another year.

It’s weird, though. I think it could be different this time. Work long enough, and hard enough, and all of the forces at play to erode that former Self have mysterious side effects. I have gas in the tank. I know where my next meal is coming from. I may not need much more than that.

But yeah, happy World Teachers Day. Assholes.