Someone stole my bike.

I was downtown yesterday morning for a few hours, having the most perfect time of it. I had the whole morning to myself. I grabbed a Chai Latte and sat in the early sunshine at a table outside in front of a cafe, writing, reading Jason Heroux poems, and watching people pass. A little bird came and landed on my chair. Then, me and the bike made our way to my favorite clothes store up the road, which had a sale on. I parked it against the window right out front, and went in, for all of 5 minutes. When I came out, the bike was gone.

I am so sad.

I feel like someone has died.

Someone I loved a lot.

I am furious at myself for having been so careless, having believed I could leave it unlocked out in the open like that. You sort of want to believe the world is a good place, full of good people.

There's nothing to say because all my energies are being poured into wishing the bike back. Waiting for the call. The downtown biker patrol guys are on the lookout.

If you see my bike, pretty please let me know. It's turqoise green, with white lettering, and a black... sniff....seat.

All for now.

On Monday, I got back from Saltspring Island where I had a show at the Treehouse.

I love islands. I'm trying to figure out a way that I can go live on a little island and walk down to the harbour for capuccinos every morning and stroll around in tie-dyed dresses (even though, I hate tie-dye on me) and make a little fishing rod from a stick and a piece of string and fish for cod off the docks. I could do that for the rest of my life.

On the way over on the ferry, there was a tuba player on the top deck. He wasn't serenading everyone, although every single passenger could hear the low rumbling notes floating around in the wind. I imagined he was heading over to Victoria for a high school music festival and he was needing some practice. He sat on a bench up on the highest deck, going over & over his parts. I don't think that band is going to win at the festival on account of that tuba player. But it was nice background music.

When we got to the Treehouse Cafe, Craig said, "Oh! Your name is on the chalkboard."

I laughed. "Wow," I said. "You know you've hit the big time when your name is on the chalk board."

The show was fine, minus a few technical glitches at the beginning. One day I'll have my own soundman and won't have to contend with other peoples' tangled chords and strange speaker set-ups.

My dear friend Amanda came over from Vancouver to see me, and we stayed up late drinking local red wine and talking. She is one of those friends who sometimes tells me when I am being ridiculous or obsessive or, as was the case on the weekend of our visit, selling myself short. She's honest and hilarious and my life is richer with her in it. She's been around for many of my accident prone moments (many of you may remember my almost burning my house down with a piece of cheesetoast) and so of course, the next day, while we rode the ferry off the island together, another one happened. I got bit by a seagull.

As a kid, my mom taught me how to feed the seagulls on the ferry. I never saw anyone else doing it, and people would always gather around and watch us. We would get a few packets of Saltine crackers from the cafeteria down below and then toss bits into the air until the seagulls caught sight of them and would swarm around the rails, balancing in the wind, waiting.

Sometimes you can hold a cracker up high and a seagull will swoop down and grab the very tip of it. But this seagull was brave, grabbed the whole cracker and my finger too. I got a small cut on my pointer finger.

So of course the whole next day, I was wondering if you can get the Bird Flu from Seagulls. I imagined flu-like symptoms on Tuesday and decided I was dying. When I told Craig that afternoon, he laughed.

He said that's kind of like thinking you can get the chicken pox from getting bit by a chicken.

***

On Monday night after we got home, I had my writing class. I rode my bike there in the spitting rain. I'd heard that it had hailed that afternoon and I could see all the flowers in the backyard had taken quite a beating. The roads were wet and shiney. I rode my bike in a long, black skirt.

Note to self: Never ever ride a bike in a long black skirt again.

I barely made it to the class in one piece, and sure enough, on the way home, after 2 hours of writing and warm sips of Chai tea, as I rounded the lake towards the bridge, my skirt caught in my wheel and I nearly sent myself sailing over the handlebars.

I haven't ridden a bike in 10 years.

Oh, no. That's not true. I rode once on holidays to the San Juan Islands. I remember my butt was killing me afterwards.

But other than that, I haven't ridden a bike in 10 years.

My mom let me have her old bike. Now that we live downtown, so close to everything, I thought it would be nice to have one. It's old and green and chipped and a little stiff. I put the chain on and oiled the wheels and pumped up the tires all by myself this afternoon.

In the evening, after supper, I loaded up a big pack sack full of magazines and books and paper and got on the bike. I had a writing class to teach at a cafe downtown. I headed out, a little wobbly with all the stuff on my back.

I forgot how beautiful it can be. I forgot about the wind whooshing by your head. I forgot how fast you can go. I felt 12 years old. The good part of 12 years old, I mean. Not the braces and awkward hair part.

All at once I remembered how I used to ride my bike around Hornby Island as a kid, up to the market, down to the beach, out to pick blackberries, down to the beach in the evenings. My family used to spend a few weeks there every summer. We'd go for long rides up steep paths and over to the fishing docks.

Sometimes, we'd climb these huge, steep hills and when we'd get to the top, if there were no cars coming, I would let myself coast. All the roads had tall fir trees on either side, and their shadows would be striped along the roads, and in between, quick patches of sunlight would filter through. There would always be this deep quiet in the air, and I would get going so fast, my bike would start to shake and the wind would be loud in my ears. And for a moment, I would close my eyes. Not for very long. Just a few seconds. And in those few seconds, I could see the light and shadows rushing past my eyes through my eyelids and all there would be was those patterns flicking past me and the wind cold against my skin.

I decided I'm going to bike everywhere this summer. I'm going to get one of those nerdy baskets and attach it to the front like the wicked witch of the West. (Or was it East?) and make up reasons to go to the grocery store. I'm going to get a bell and some sparkly purple tassles for my handlebars.

At the class I wrote with some amazing women. We scribbled and glued things and drank tropical green tea while the rich smell of dark roast coffee wafted into the room. It was perfect.

On the way home, I took the long way along the lake. I passed couples walking arm in arm and kids playing late at the park and 2 people making out on the sand. There was a guy in the tunnel playing some strange kind of wooden flute.

The whole time, the wind was blowing my hair back. And as I rounded the lake under some big oak trees and gained speed, I closed my eyes. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud.

I feel surrounded by so much beauty here where I live now. There are big pale pink flowers blooming in the back yard. Orange roses climbing up my front stair rail. I hung the birdfeeder up on the neighbor's tree on a branch that juts out just outside my bedroom window. There are birds swinging on it, little grey birds and birds with bright red in their feathers and woodpeckers too.

On Abott, where I run, there are miles of peonies and bright fire orange poppies swaying in big yards where the houses are made of brick, where you can see the lake through the cracks in their trees and driveways. The water shines. It is so close. When it rains, you can hear it, can feel the cold blowing up off the water.

I have also been washed over by waves of grief. The girl who was kidnapped in Armstrong for 2 days and molested. How could such a thing happen? A show I saw on tv with Elie Wiesel, who wrote "Night", a book about the Holocaust. He filmed some old sites where torture took place, gas chambers where Jews were led to take "showers" only to be killed with gas, holdiing their childrens' hands. I close my eyes when I think of it. My head says, Look away. Look away. I am not nearly emotionally stable enough for programs like that.

I've been thinking daily of my friend Jada who is 90 pounds and at death's door. She is in deperate need of a miracle.

How can all this beauty & pain exist in one place? I guess that's how it works, though. It's all mixed in there together.

Sometimes I wake at 3 am and am afraid that I'm dying. I hold my arms around myself and say, No. You're okay. Then i remember that, yes, I am dying. All of us are.

Things go downhill after that for a bit. I mean, it's late, it's dark. I begin to wonder if there's possibly a carbon monoxide leak in the house or if I'm displaying symptoms of SARS. I start to hope to God we will all be okay. I start whispering tiny prayers.

After awhile, I remember that there are millions of people being brave all over the world, little sick kids losing their hair and people with broken bodies running marathons and abused girls helping other abused girls to heal, and so I should be brave too. I remind myself to be brave, and for awhile, it seems impossible, like we are all little tiny helpless kids whose mom has left all alone & lost downtown in the dark & the rain with no way to get home.

Things were sort of going this way for awhile the other night. I fell into a fitfull sleep, woke up the next morning feeling shaky and afraid.

Then I went for a run.

When I run, I let go of everything. Or maybe everything lets go of me, I'm not sure which. Either way, it all goes. I run and run and run and all there is is my feet pounding against the road and my breath in my ears and my body moving, moving forward.

And all I can say is that somehow, something makes sense afterward. Maybe for 45 minutes, I become a bird. Maybe I leave the ground. Maybe being under the sky with the wind and the trees heals the soul.

I don't know.

But I realize that in that one moment, I'm okay. I'm alive and I feel free.

Afterwards, I thought of a line I read in a Patrick O'Connell poem once, that said

It must be this light coming throught the crack
that keeps me asking
that keeps me yearning to be born