Earthblog

Years ago, maybe in some previous incarnation, I fell in love. I was attracted, entranced, by something I couldn’t quite grasp but had to pursue. Her name: Sophia. She has led me on many journeys into cosmological mysteries, inner reveries and revolutions, classrooms, courtrooms, jungles, jails, and the vaulted Hall of the Mountain King. Exchanging food for famine, money for metaphysics, and books for knowledge, I have pursued this love until I was shoeless in Gaza, shorn of my backpack in Brazil, and interviewed on the red carpet in Hollywood. It--she, that is (Sophia)--has sustained me through plagiarisms and poverty and guided me to beatitude and windfalls.

The 16^th century Christian Hermetic mystic Jacob Boehme wrote: “I will set down here a short description how it is when the Bride thus embraces the Bridegroom … to enter into the inner choir, where the soul joins hands and dances with Sophia-the Divine Wisdom.” The Divine Wisdom, you say? Capital “D,” capital “W”? Why yes, I reply … the Divine Wisdom. You know, the transcendental Buddhi Mind, the Philosopher’s Stone, the eternal and infinite unmanifest Ground of all Being. The All Radiant Mother of All Buddhas. Sophia. She is the goal of the Philosopher, lovers of wisdom (philo-sophia) who seek to unite with Truth and Wisdom, to be swept up enraptured in the ultimate epiphany, to experience one’s soul stripped bare, down the eternal source, and imbibe for once and for all the profound Truth--that all true knowledge comes from an ecstatic immersion in the transcendent. And the world, ultimately, is embedded within the transcendent--to transcend the world is not to leave the world, but to enjoy and celebrate the world at its core.

First printed in Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac Issue BA 42-100

Wednesday 3/5/08 Home > Work

Today I ride slowly. I like being languid in a world obsessed with speed. When the rest of Atlanta is rushing home in cars, full of end-of-day tensions, dinner plans and desires, I’m rolling my way out to the suburban office where I do afterhours telephone surveys for the YMCA.  

My commute is 11 miles through suburbia on a single speed road bike. It’s a bike route par excellence, because nobody would navigate such a circuitous pathway in a car. To bypass busy streets and interstates I add nearly three miles to the distance, winding my way to work over small, hilly residential roads. 

I pass Medlock Elementary School. I pass the baseball diamonds of Medlock Park. I cross over North Druid Hills Road in a flurry of frantic pedaling because if I miss this green light it means waiting ten minutes in exhaust. A mile from work is a railroad crossing and a freight train is creaking past. Traffic is thirty cars deep. I cut to the front, and from here I can see the end of the train approaching. If I position myself just so on this little incline I can track-stand until the train passes, then dart through the gates before they open, the first to cross. Today it feels like the whole world yields to me and I make it all the way to work without touching my feet to the ground.

Wednesday 3/5/08 Work > Home

Cause and effect: Because last night I used my headlamp as a flashlight, tonight my headlamp is still sitting on the counter at home. Without a headlamp there is very little to demonstrate to oncoming traffic that I exist. It makes for a wary and tentative ride.

At the crest of a sleepy suburban hill the road takes a ninety degree turn and I meet a car’s headlights face to face. Something about its middle-of-the-road trajectory tells me the driver hasn’t seen me yet and I hug the shoulder, ready to dive onto the lawn if necessary. Just before passing the car swerves away and I know I’ve been spotted. I wonder what the unexpected sight of a dark biker evokes in a driver on an empty road at night. A jolt of panic, a sharp intake of breath, the futile reactive swerve that would have come too late, the silent curses as they drive away, and the tension of that moment lingering all the way home.

Local cyclocross bicycle racer, Skyler Trujillo, will represent the United States at the Junior Cyclocross World Championships in Tabor, Czech Republic later this month. This Sunday, January 17, 2010, there will be a Winter Cyclocross Race Fundraiser behind New Belgium Brewing to raise the necessary travel funds for Skyler’s trip. Matter Daily spoke with Skyler earlier this week in anticipation of the big races just ahead.

Matter Daily: Tell us a little about yourself.

Skyler Trujillo: I’m an average student. I have a B average for the most part—sometimes a little higher depending what classes I have and how much traveling I’m doing for racing that semester. This year’s big goal for racing was to make it to the Euro Cross Camp. Little did I know that making it to the camp gave me a good chance of racing the World Championships. Going to the Euro Cross Camp meeting gave me the idea that I could be going. Then getting 3rd at Nationals (17-18 age group) made the idea as a reality and I had a spot on the Worlds team. Now by making my season another month longer till Worlds, I have a good window to train and prepare for the race. I’m very excited, and I can't wait to leave.

MD: How long have you been racing and how did you get started?

ST: I started racing bikes when I was 4 years old. My dad got me to do it. I don't really remember if I wanted to do it or if my dad was making me, but I know I loved it after I got started. It was just BMX from when I was 4-10 years old. At that point I stopped racing bikes to play competitive soccer. After 2 years of that I decided that soccer really wasn't my thing. When I was 13 I started racing mountain bikes, and that following winter was my first cyclo-cross experience. I now have been racing cyclo-cross for 5 years and slowly worked my way up through the ranks of cyclo-cross. Two years ago I was at the top of the Cat. 4's, and then last year I was at the top of t he Cat. 3's, taking 16th at Nationals (17-18 age group). This year I was close to the top of the Cat. 2's and took 3rd place at Nationals (17-18).

Photographs and Essay by Julie Larson

Deep in the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park in central Mongolia, a 70-year-old man proudly pointed to a black dot on his index finger, eager to tell me its significance: he had voted in the national election.