At home with staying home.

On Monday I was riding around town jacketless, toqueless, gloveless, sockless, trying to soak up the last of the year's warmth. Today I rode around town with slits for eyes, gloved, scarfed, toqued, helmeted, layered, rain geared, spandexed, trying to dodge tidal waves and car doors and gale force winds. I have never been as psyched on biking as I am today. Just to spite the weather, I suited up and hopped on my freshly tuned bicycle and ripped around town all afternoon before heading down to Martha Street studio for a few hours of printing.

It felt damn good to waltz into the basement soaked to the bone, everything messy and splattered--my cycling shoes near ruined--and receive two curt nods of approval from the anarchist enthusiasts in my class who also rode down, considering the treacherous conditions. Approval is not the reason I cycle. It is charming, but I ride because the rush of whipping in between traffic during rush hour and skidding effortlessly in the fresh slush blanketing our city behind buses and being pulled forward by the wind while riding fixed is an addiction. It is always an upper, no matter how close to death I come. I usually have a pretty solid course mapped out in my head when I leave Martha Street and head for home, but today I chose to let the wind take the wheel. Besides, doing corners and cutting through alleyways on my summer slicks in the snow is never a good idea. A fierce south tailwind took me all the way down Main and I felt every bit a salmon swimming against stream. People laughed at me from the inside warmth of their cars but it felt really nice to know I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Learning bike mechanics and being able to talk shop with fellow enthusiasts has been the best thing to happen to me this year. There is such a sense of placement and self worth that comes with owning and riding a fixed gear bicycle. If you ride one, you know that feeling. It springs and swells from a foreign place deep down. Sorry to get all uppity over this, but really, the fluidity and oneness that comes from riding direct drive is different from anything I have ever experienced.

There was just something that came over me today about. I am not sure if it was the arrival of snow that triggered something inside of my brain or if it acted as a reminder of the fiscal year to date. Shit went down last winter and cycling was my form of therapy. No bones about it. When I lost majority of (who I thought were) my friends and my reputation along with them, my appreciation for moments of happiness and lightness that came out of that season of absolute solitude sky rocketed. Even though those stormy swells have long calmed, that appreciation for time spent alone has remained.

Two or so months ago I dumpstered this giant black framed white cork board as wide as my arm span and as tall as my sister. I carried it home from the Village on my back and propped it against the wall above my couch. It didn't take long for me to run out of pins. Slowly but surely it has been filled with bits and pieces that make me laugh aloud, photos that I have printed under the watchful eye of Jane, letters sent to me from my gal Loco in Montreal, a feather, clippings, letters from Beth, negatives, one-offs of prints that I have made at Martha, a prized love letter that a mysterious bike courier tucked into my back spokes of my bicycle, a childhood Swiss necklace from Janique, things that remind me of Rabbi, pictures of Erin and I, a tape measure, things that remind me of JJ, pictures of Janique, Will, James and I at Falcon Beach in summer; things like that. Looking at it when I wash dishes or just pass from room to room in my apartment makes me smile. It has been a year of growth, rejection, heartbreak, laughter, missing, sadness, inspiration, rebirth, learning, love, understanding, creativity, production, drama, healing.

I am twenty two and I know myself. This has been the first year that I truly know myself. My personality is no longer a grab bag and the roots of my values, work ethic and beliefs are winding deeper than ever before. New, but strong. I don't know if it took being broken open in a cafe and humiliated last Winter, or high tailing it to Switzerland with the only goal being to become a nameless, reputationless, faceless, languageless ghost, or if it was being heart broken by a man who I was ready to move mountains for. Whatever it was, all of these things were humbling and good for me. Five months ago I never would have thought I would be wearing an apron and inking up phonebooks making art in a studio, being bossy at Art City, eating pad thai in a warm dining room with a woman who singlehandedly changed my life in a single night, having breakfast with another woman who has also changed my life by being gracious, curling up beside a lady who has been my best friend all along and comparing battle wounds, writing gospel songs in a giant sun porch with the best man friend a girl could ever find, or looking forward to a reclusive winter holed up on Albert street elbow to elbow with fellow collaborating artists.

All of these things went through my head at a lightening pace today while riding home. Winter hath arriveth and I am alive. Alive and happy. It feels good. All of this feels good.

I am without words today and have no idea how to translate my sweeping thankfulness for all of these things and then some. Last year at this time I was learning to play chess with an Australian babe in Berlin. We hauled a cushioned receiving bench away from the wall in the hall of our hostel and parked it and set up the ancient chess set. Our legs straddling it and our feet wound around the skinny legs like two silly kids on a floral piano bench at the reject table at Christmas. A bottle of wine passed back and forth from my hand to his hand to my hand to his hand with every move and I retained nothing of the lesson except for the sweet memory of it. Funny, as much as a brilliant trip as it was with Rabbi and Kitty, I am psyched to be home. Europe will always be there, this feeling will not.

I am twenty two and at home with the idea of staying home.

MARGARET.