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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #229: Sylvan/Arboreal
12.18.13
One or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations,
their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the
encounters they find there.
It's a bike ride.
Started by user nathansnider and user theroyalacademy.
It meets every Wednesday at 8:30pm at California Donuts #21.
We ride at 9pm.
We'll endeavor to return before the last red line trains (around midnight).
On the fifth year of this bike ride, you might expect:
- more inconvenient passageways
- more full moon picnics
- perhaps more "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- certainly more amateurish enthusiasm
- disorientation
- reorientation
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- dance parties
- karaoke
- imaginary histories
- scavenging for fun and sustenance
- more geocaching
- more oblique strategies
- more Oulipian constraints
- traffic median tea parties
Furthermore:
- A medium pace (maybe not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- We're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light.
- Maybe some distance;maybe some hills
- Victory donuts!
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This week:
Sylvan/Arboreal
So. We can relate to the trees. When planted and maintained by humans, they are sources of shelter and shade,
fascination and novelty. Growing wild, individual trees may even be assigned a variety of anthropomorphic traits:
nobility; perseverance; vigilance. Only rarely is this agency that we ascribe to them seen as something
malevolent.
Ah, but the forest is a different matter. It is not so much a subject as a setting, and typically a rather dark one at
that. Being outside the realm of human control, it is seen as a site of confrontation with something Other, on the
Other's terms. While we may be said to act upon the trees, the forest acts upon us.
This week, we take the opportunity to explore this divide, admiring (if not necessarily acting upon) the trees as
well as passing through the forest. And if you happen to miss the forest for the trees, well, that is your loss, but it
is perhaps understandable as the trees are so very pretty...
It's about 35 miles this week, with a long and (relatively) steady climb on the way out, a half mile or so of
offroading at the far end, and an equally long and steady descent on the way back. A Gold Line bailout
opportunity will be available at around mile 23.
Talk, talk, talk...
Check out our web site!
(and our tumblr!)
(and join the mailing list!)
The hacienda must be built.
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Ridazz Roulette!
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