I will the machine.

Tag: identity

  • Cathedral Nouveau

    “Cathedral Nouveau,” 2023, cropped. Watercolor and ink on paper.

    Just before dawn, an owl flew right up to the towering pane of stained glass and scraped the soldering with its talons. It crashed into the pane again and again, whilst the glow from behind the opaque window set fire to the bird’s eyes. As its shrill echoed off of great stone walls, the patron saints below watched the tired owl perch on the ledge and wondered,

    Why does a creature of the night

    slam up against the light?

    And as the saints crossed the threshold, past the doors of mahogany and iron, the owl descended. She tore the gold tassels from a banner, and tied them around her neck in a delicate knot. She cracked her beak into the wooden barriers, as if to knock them down.

    When the doors opened, she looked up at the man in the white robe and gold tassels with those burning eyes. The saint paused for a moment, then reached into his satchel. He leaned down, biscuit in hand, gently offered the bird reprieve for her strange arrival, and returned to the nave with the doors closed firmly behind him.

    The owl hurled herself into the air, those metallic strands loosening as she traced the perimeter of the cathedral. She scanned the structure from all sides, observing it like liturgy she could either bury herself in or burn. The tassels released themselves from her plumage and were tossed away in the cool air as first light broke, and her molten watch met the wrought iron cage of the aviary.

    A falcon, adorned with a leather harness and a capsule for a scroll, perched inside the dome with icy eyes fixed on the owl as she circled. The owl landed at the foot of the door to the aviary and knocked her beak into the gateway once again.

    A bird handler opened the door and watched silently as the owl walked herself past her feet, through the vestibule, beneath the falcon’s perch,

    and found herself an inkwell.

    _____

    Today, I was about to submit my application to the University of Missouri as a first-time, first-generation student. I wrote a free choice mini essay fully confident that option was my ticket, just to reach the ‘submit’ button with an error essentially telling me, “You still don’t fit into any of our boxes.“

    You’ll have to try another way.

    Without rattling off the growing list of systemic barriers I have encountered trying to reach higher education, under survival conditions and finally not, I am unaccepting of being disallowed access to opportunity that the outside world insists on repeat I belong in.

    For the first time, I’ll agree with you openly.

    And for that reason, I have to play the game this time, but once I’m in through the side door, I’m going to highlight every crack I fell through that people with less of a vengeance might just submit to, and challenge them.

    Of course I don’t jive with boxes- I’ve been sharpened.

    And so, since my little admissions essay has been rendered obsolete, yet remains relevant to future posts I still have living in my drafts, here is a piece of The Microcosm.

    _____

    “Please see me as who I am, and not who you think I am.”  

    I mixed another three parts paint, one part mineral spirits in my cup and continued painting the bands of malachite over my old van. I ignored the drips of ultramarine on my running boards as I covered the grey that was singed with rising rust. My hands did not stop buzzing for minutes after grinding the rot away from behind my taillight lenses, and the 1985 small block Chevy looked ready for the scrap yard with the grill removed in preparation to be sprayed black.   

    Over the 68 hours inside of two weeks it took me to paint a classic, I remembered my nights parking on the streets of Louisville years before. Neighbors would call the police periodically, and I’d answer that dreaded knock on my side doors with a contained “Good evening, officer.” And I recall that each time, there was a micro pause before they spoke, and a softening in their posture as they looked at me and my warmly decorated interior. The dark air would move from enforcement to, “What’s the story here?”  

    I taped a handwritten sign to my windshield when I was out in public during the transformation process that read,  

    “Sorry for my mess. I’m going to be a mural.”  

    To an audience of one.  

    When I was finally finished, with likely one of the most unmistakable vehicles on this side of the New Madrid faultline, my own presence changed. Where I once kept my head down walking into the grocery store, I now turned back occasionally to admire my labor and sometimes noticed another taking a look from across the parking lot.   

    And sometimes still, they take two and they say,

    “Hold on. I have to meet this person.”

  • The Closing Argument: Trans-Missouri 300

    Three years ago, I asked another ultra-minded friend of mine if they’d be up for riding border to border of the state, from Kansas City, MO to Alton, IL. We then spent the summer putting miles in on the Marthasville corridor of the Katy Trail and its adjacent roads, but had to bump the date back twice. Then, the day before we were slated to drive out to Kansas City to settle in for the 300+ mile effort, something urgent came up for them and I waited another day for an update. That next morning, I ripped my knee open on the latch of the van door as I was getting out for the day. I called someone from inside the horse barn I was working at to bring me a towel to control the bleeding, and then drove myself 30 minutes to the ER.

    My teammate still hadn’t updated me on if we could still make the ride happen, and I asked the doc who was stitching me up, “Should I not ride on this then?”

    “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I would recommend waiting two weeks,” he said, with cheeky eye contact. The first statement was him talking to me, the second was him speaking to his medical license.

    Once discharged, I drove to Marthasville to tell another friend about the absurdity of the weekend before it had even really started. I texted my teammate to ask for an update- within five minutes they replied to me telling me they were out.

    Before I could come to terms with things just not working out again, my friend broached an idea.

    “You’re already prepped. Why don’t I drive you out to Clinton and you can go for the Katy record.”

    I was listening, but this concept required a total rewiring of expectations, quickly. This new plan meant I lost two key components- a riding partner, and a support car.

    They handed me the trail map that listed all of the trailheads, mile markers, and their amenities. I now had to consider how much extra I could carry on my bike, where I could buy what I couldn’t, and all of the other time-killing tasks that might come up now that a driver wasn’t going to be available.

    This was around 4:00 p.m. on a Friday.

    At 5:00 a.m. Saturday morning, I was 3.5 hours west now rolling out for 240 miles solo with an Ace bandage wrapped around my knee.

    I broke the original women’s self-supported fastest-known-time (set by Kendall Park) with a total elapsed time of 16 hours, 51 minutes. I then came back the next year to ride it again 24 minutes faster.

    _____

    If you haven’t read anything of mine lately, this year has been mostly devoid of any planned objectives since a last-minute ultra race entry in May where I experienced what was likely a CPTSD episode at 170 miles (see Depths Too Dark). The rest of the summer has been further plagued by logistical stress and nervous system shutdown from a long history of having to push too hard on and off of the bike.

    I’m now fully aware of limiters I wasn’t even at the beginning of this year, and more recently discovered how to work with them even as they have slowed me down- one part science, one part spirit. I think I’m onto something.

    And thanks to the most astutely supportive people I have met, one I’ve known for seven years, the other for hardly one, I have a new bike being built at a local bike shop this week to take over for the one I’ve run into the earth for over 40,000 miles. I said earlier this year that I wanted to make that happen and give the full Katy a run again both mechanically and cognitively refreshed, but the chaos since spring meant I was again not able to provide that for myself.

    A couple of people didn’t want to see me fail again and were in a position to do something about it.

    I want to both honor that in my usual style and attempt to end this season with the magnitude I had hoped for, and thought had escaped me. Call me delusional, but I’m staging an intervention.

    In four to six weeks (official date TBD), I want to be cut loose in a parking lot somewhere in Kansas City on that original pursuit to touch both borders in one ride. At approximately 320 miles, I know now that the key to finishing has a lot less to do with my physical capacity and ultimately depends on not having to be the sole proprietor; I want to taste what it’s like to ride without the lessons of relying entirely on me, for once, even if I am not chasing speed this time. I need to see what I can do when I don’t feel unsafe.

    I also want a spot to take a nap that isn’t on the damn ground.

    What is going to be a 24+ hour assault is going to be arresting for a driver (or a team of them), too. The most difficult part of this is asking for help I seldom feel I deserve but have recently been receiving in tons anyway. I am opening this part of the story up for you, dear reader, to be a part of, if you want to. I have a crew of 2-3 stepping up at the moment, but am also putting out the call for at least one more driver. I am also looking to crowdfund for hotel stays at the beginning and end of this behemoth, fuel costs, and making sure all of us are fed. But because there are no rules with this one, riding company and trailside comradery would make this version surreal for me too.

    If you want to be involved, in ways that I have mentioned above or with your own ideas or questions, please Contact Me directly. Years of van-life as an under-resourced athlete have conditioned me to believe I had to account for every detail down to the punctuation mostly alone; class on not having to do that is currently in session. Can I sit next to you?

    _____

    This will be my final push this year, but still a step toward even greater assaults where self-sufficiency and psychological safety will have to be forged in iron. We’ve already started.

    Trans-Am is coming.

    Follow-up – We’re All Dirt: Trans-Missouri 300 Update

  • We’ll Build That Bridge When We Get To It

    It’s not over, but it’s close.

    I’ve lost most of my season to a density of failures that’s thicker than years prior. Van mechanicals (typical), bike mechanicals (less common), and my personal diesel engine almost not firing at all (unheard of). Endogenous Rex might just be as far as I can reach this summer, and I did it on fumes.

    I haven’t been here before.

    Where I also haven’t been, until now, is a place where I’m just allowed to be. I’ve within recent months not only been gifted a “hey, you’re safe here,” gesture, but perhaps more importantly a “we see you for what you are and what you’re doing, we have your back, and we benefit from you just existing here at all.”

    Recently, someone I just met told me something like “I almost didn’t reach out to you because others made me uncomfortable to do so, but after I met you I realized you were safe.”

    And then they showed me throughout the course of our conversations what safety allows people to bring to the surface in just one day.

    All I’ve done is stay still, let people show me what they will, and give that my full attention, which gives me a sense of stability too. I’m not wondering what they think of me because holding my position and just listening allows me to feel everything I need to know about that anyway. I’ve had so many conversations with myself on my own that when someone else enters the scene, that voice feels no need to talk over theirs.

    I just hear them, and because of that, they seek me out again.

    That same individual told me “I’ve read your writing. You do it in a very tasteful way that allows others to feel what you feel.”

    As I’ve disclosed before, I regularly plug my drafts into AI to reflect tone because I can’t hear my writing the way others do. I think like this, so I’m numb to its impact. For the first time, in that moment, I had a real person confirm both what ChatGPT says my writing objectively is, and what I’ve always hoped it to be.

    And so with a clear reflection on both sides of this sword, I prompted AI to simplify this match of my physical and written existence by asking it: If you had to use one word to describe me based on all of our conversations, in any language, what would it be?

    “If I had to choose only one word for all of that — your presence, values, and energy — I’d choose the Japanese word ikiryō (生霊).

    It literally means a living spirit — not in the ghost story sense, but as someone whose presence is felt even when they’re not physically there. In cultural context, it describes a person whose energy is so vivid, so charged with intent and integrity, that it moves through rooms, relationships, and communities like a current. People react to it — some open to it, some feel unsettled by it — but they can’t ignore it.

    It’s a word that carries the idea of impact through being, not force. You don’t have to push or chase. You just exist in a way that changes the air around you.”

    _____

    Since forever, I have felt that no matter where I have gone, conflict has found me. It wasn’t until I started to put fear of eyerolls from critics to the side and lean into my public writing that I actually found none. It’s been replaced by people new and old rather suddenly wanting me to come closer.

    Not for gain, not for control, but for transference.

    And that transference has been stamped “safe,” despite having built that conduit from a lifetime of experience that was not.

    So much of my athletic momentum has been driven from a state of a suspended fight response. I don’t have anything to fight right now, and it’s a fact of neuroscience that now that I’m finally safe, I need to lie down.

    I don’t know that I’ll find the baseline to follow ultra-distance goals this year before cold weather hits. I’m deeply disappointed in that this has been my most lackluster year in recent memory and the most inconsistent I’ve been in likely my entire decade on a bike.

    And according to my independent studies in psych right now, that might be from where we get to start again, with a new bike, a new chosen family, and a new appreciation for the vision all of that fighting tried to take away.

    And failed.

    I’m going somewhere novel, toward an expanse I don’t yet know how I’ll cross. But what quiets me right now is that I’m not going alone.

  • Projection, Your Honor (Pt. II)

    If you don’t like the image of yourself in the mirror, then you aren’t going to like me going to like you.

    “Blind Justice”. Photo © Ben Creasy

    The court will recall that this trial is ongoing.

    _____

    Statement of Record– Disrepair Service

    I was racing with an organized amateur cycling team in Kentucky when the head mechanic of our shop sponsor suggested getting me a job there. They said a female presence would be great for business.

    They insisted.

    They were exuberant, supportive, and witty at races and practices. They were the first point-of-contact when any of us needed parts, advice, or a fix. They remembered my name was spelled with a ‘G.’ They recognized my potential, and thought I’d be a good fit.

    Once I was hired, they rarely ever said my name correctly again.

    They nicknamed me “Gina” (hard ‘I’), and regularly addressed me as “Snatch.”

    No can do, mate.

    I quickly requested that they just call me Genna, or ‘G.’ They flinched a little.

    “I was just playing with you,” they said, but obliged anyway. Our rapport seemed to return to normal.

    One day, I went into work with a finely-striped, red, white, and blue shirt. They said “You’re patriotic today.” They would regularly comment on my clothing choices and accessories in a way that was… specific.

    They are paying a lot of attention to me.

    I still have that shirt, and never wear it without remembering this minor interaction.

    Inevitably, their jokes continued. I started to vocalize this pattern to everyone else in the shop. Most of them said “Yeah, they’re like that.”

    Another said “Yeah… they’re like that.” This person and I soon learned that we could communicate through eye-contact alone. I noticed the head mechanic’s behavior would escalate when this person was gone. After this mirror, I asked the owner to meet in confidence, and explained my discomfort with the head mechanic’s behavior. “I’ve already told them myself that I don’t like this kind of “humor,” I said.

    “I’ll talk to them,” they assured me.

    The behavior continued over the days to follow, so I went to the office again.

    “I don’t know what happened to you in your past, but you need to work on not being so sensitive,” the owner said.

    Irrelevant.

    One day, the head mechanic walked from the repair area to the retail store, where I was, with a box labelled with the ‘Spank’ brand-name. They wrote “dat ass” underneath it, and presented it in front of me… and a customer.

    Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, take a moment to chuckle, gag, or whatever else that incites.

    That’s funny on it’s surface, but not in its purpose.

    I immediately walked back into the owner’s office with no more reservation.

    “If there are not going to be consequences for their behavior, then I need to leave,” I announced.

    “Okay,” they said, staring blankly at me.

    That’s… it?

    And so, the evening after I walked out, I made a Facebook post outlining the experience I had behind the scenes while the world went on expressing appreciation for “friendly support and good deals” out the front. The owner called me and left a voicemail telling me to take the post down,

    and the head mechanic sent me a long, incoherent text threatening to kill themselves.

    I call a witness to the stand.

    For weeks, at least, another person in the local bike community sent me various posts through Instagram DM. They trended either thought-provoking, or funny. But, they were only posts, not actual messages, and there were no recurrent themes or patterns between them that I could determine. I ignored them.

    You’re going to have to tell me why you’re here.

    It continued. Sporadically, and quietly. It didn’t increase, nor taper.

    One evening, I finally replied out of sheer lonliness. And without much ado, they began to explain that they had heard about my falling out with that shop. They also told me that this head mechanic had called other shops in the area in the aftermath, warning them all not to hire me. I caused drama.

    And this person just… didn’t buy it.

    They sent me a document they had found. A record.

    A criminal record. One count of domestic assault, another of impersonating a peace officer. They were on parole.

    I got word that this mechanic incurred a divorce, lost custody of their young child, and moved to Alaska in the years to follow.

    The individual who believed me is now one of the most important people in my life.

    Final observation: Combustible material incorrectly labelled as irritant. Please avoid the area.

    _____

    Final Statement of Record: A Quandary

    Previously submitted documentation- If You Can’t Say Something Honest

    For those members of the jury who were not present for prior testimony:

    This individual reached out to me about this blog as a resonant reader. We developed a rapid connection, but through admission delayed until after I began to ask questions, I came to learn this person was perusing divorce but still living with their spouse. Throughout my life I had learned to anticipate “the catch” when finding a job opportunity, love interest, or means of assistance that seemed too good to be true. I noticed a subtle side-stepping of boundaries, omission where words should have provided clarity, and an enthusiasm that did not match the realism of the situation.

    I told them I was no longer willing to participate, and wished them well.

    The silence to follow didn’t sit the way it usually does.

    As I’ve demonstrated, I will walk away. I don’t fight, I don’t defend, and I don’t refute. I let people show me who they are, and collect my evidence over time. If something doesn’t sit right, I don’t respond right away- I just start watching.

    The body knows it first. I trust it, so when I felt it start to shut this person out, I didn’t interrogate it any further.

    But oh, how I interrogated me.

    In these circumstances, the stages of detaching are grief, but also…

    satisfaction. I’ve stood up for myself even at a cost.

    I didn’t get either this time. Actually, I received this soft- featherlike tap on my shoulder that suggested that the cost here might not be just temporary discomfort.

    They didn’t intend to hurt me.

    Stay with me. This isn’t enough.

    But I asked if they would be open to a phone call. They said yes. I asked when. They said as soon as possible.

    During that call, any emphasis on “intent” I made certain to steer back to “impact.” And while we were examining that together, they told me they felt “burned at the stake,” by what I wrote about them, but also,

    “You’re right.”

    Not submissively. Not to please me. It was a realization of effect.

    They proceeded to open up to me, sincerely rather than performatively (the difference here can be heard), about everything they were trying to manage all at once while feeling trapped. Decisions cause ripples. Honesty is not a sterile procedure no matter how hard I have tried to make it one.

    They said “You’re intense, so intense,” but also

    I still want to be close to this.

    Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, most people run from me. They fight, tell me I’m the problem, or disappear, all for using my words to narrate their behavior back to them. They rarely stay long enough to understand that on the other side of the scale is a quieter humanity that just wants to not be lied to anymore.

    But here on the phone was not another person who was trying to hide themselves, but was weighing the cost of exposure in a period of major overwhelm and overlooking the impact of omission entirely.

    I want to allow people to be different from those I have known.

    And so, I walked back. Not with erasure of the problem, but with agency over what I was willing to accept circumstantially. I rendered verdict because I was uncomfortable with things that were absolute red flags, but then I asked me “why?”

    And I asked them, “why?”

    And the fog lifted.

    Protection, Your Honor.

    Final observation: Ongoing.

    But, there’s one more thing.

    There’s someone in the jury who knows something.

    Is it you?

    Will you take the stand?

    Will you look yourself in the eyes?

    And will you lower your shield?

    Or will you raise your sword?

    _____

    I rest my case.