Riding My Own Bike

My limbs are sleepy and my eyes softly gritty after an hour-long massage. I have snoozed and slowly had the stress pulped out of me like squeezing the final bit of toothpaste out of the tube. I have crawled languidly up to the Gunyah, the cavernous restaurant attached to the Paperbark Camp. Two of the three sides of the deep room open onto a verandah, where I can see the upper-mid section of the trees, if I were starring at a women I would be looking as her breasts and starring down at her toes but completely missing her face. There is a light breeze and the slapping of the leaves sounds like soft rain. Delicious stray wisps lick my arms and the back of my neck. The sun is strongly dappling through the trees and an empty room seems full because of their presence.

We arrived late last night impressed by what was lit up before we stumbled to our tent in total darkness, we slept a lovely sleep blanketed by fresh air, and surrounding by the low key sipping and buzzing of night creatures, cut by the occasional hoot of an owl. Unfortunately, we woke to the buzzing of our alarm that I had absent-mindedly packed still set for 6.30am. Confused I was convinced the tent had some sort of in built alarm system, which I drunkenly grabbed for, before realizing the buzzing was of my own doing. After a dose, we enjoyed a long breakfast and lingered over the paper.

I am convinced that when we ask the universe for something it does nothing else but bend to our will. I had half heartedly promised to look over the book and come up with a new direction and the paper this morning seemed have endless stories about art, and art shows. I suppose this happens every weekend but still, it felt like a hand written and delivered message. And just like that, I have come to a decision about what I am going to do. I want to write the book from live experience from going to galleries and talking to people, rather than from research. I want the book to have a moving energy that brings my romance with art alive and hopefully makes everyone who reads it swoon too. Having said that I have decided to see Andy Warhol in Brisbane in a few weeks to get the ball rolling along.

With a few hours to kill we set of on bikes to Huskiisson, I haven’t ridden a bike for at least 10 years, but hey it was just like riding a bike. I felt like I was living the simple country life riding to lunch, parking my bike and then riding off afterward. My riding style is quite alarming and once I started to really notice it, I understood some things about my life. For example when I get a downhill stretch, I put the breaks on. So when life is giving me some momentum and help in reaching my destination, I activate the break pads. When I have to share the road with a car, I freeze up and stop pedaling pasting myself to the side of the road. When bigger more threatening forces approach the road I am happily pedaling down, suddenly I just stop having taken away my own right to be on the road. I do not take risks, I do not ride with one hand and I rarely look around to take it all in.

Knowing that this is not what I want anymore, my ride back was very different to the ride there. I sped down little hills, I let go of the handlebars occasionally, I kept madly pedaling whenever a car approached and asserted my place on the road. I even raced Greg to the finish line. This is how I want to live, I am not going to be jumping ramps or riding standing on my handlebars, but I am not eighty I need to be in the race to win and on the road to ride.