When You're Out of Practice, Out of Shape

When you go out late at night to ride your bike nowhere in particular and you feel so elated about it.  You really feel as though you're doing something good for yourself.  As though even though you're sad and alone all the god damned time you're becoming amazing at being sad and alone, you're on a path, you're rolling along, so sturdy, burning things down to get to some essential something and nobody gives you strength.  Nobody upon nobody, the nobodies you found in a Kafka story and took with you so that you too could link arms with a crowd of nobodies and go out and face the night and feel the sea air so thrilling on your throats.  When you're riding around with your nobodies making sharp turns and round ones, pounding up hills and coasting down them, cruising alleyways, skidding through shallow puddles, circling the block with one hand on the handlebars and your eyes on the sky and you run into your friend Dave, who is a really nice guy and who is on foot, going to a show somewhere and you catch up a bit and in parting he says, be careful riding around at night wearing all black.  And you look at yourself on your bike with no lights and no working gears until you get the damned rear de-railer fixed and the worn brake pads, nothing on your head but a tuque, nothing upon nothing, and you ride home feeling stupid but still kind of elated and very sweaty, kind of like you've just punched another hour on a timecard for something like community service and when you get in, you just lie down on the  red-painted floor, curled up like a bug with nothing to do but watch the walls not moving while the big sad comes back slow and settling in your blood and you laugh a quick and quiet, distracted laugh about it, and you're not burning anything down anymore except for time, just time.