“A minor anarchy was still in me.”

[author’s note: i’m not one much for travel blogs/writing – even biketour or backpacking ones, though both of those things i enjoy. i’m glad some folks like to write them and others enjoy reading them. just never really appealed to me. so this space isn’t going to become that but i wrote this piece on a short solo bike trip i took recently and have decided not only to start again sharing here more of my ‘political’ writing but also that which is more ‘personal.’ as if there’s a difference. anyway, this gets at a lot i’ve been thinking about for a while.]

I’m sitting up on the prairie above the St. Croix, reading. If there are other humans around, they are not making their presence known. I know the modern world is still out there as every so often I can hear a motored boat passing on the river far below me or a plane flying far above. But, I am pretty much alone. And quiet. So the birds hold their conversations around me as if I’m not even here. There is a high hum of crickets and the occasional rustle of leaves as a breeze sweeps through this corner patch of trees. The tall prairie grasses are in their ongoing gentle sway.

“A minor anarchy was still in me.” Ondaatje.* What a line. I stopped reading and took it in. Is one still in me? I find myself more and more anxious and uttering the word ‘should’ all too often. I struggle at a life that for so many years has felt… well, not easy… but, well-walked, let us say. It was more collaborative. And so I don’t know what to do when what is the hardest for me is the shifting ethics and capacities of those around me. I hold this past up like a beacon to be followed but people are looking down at the light of their phones.

I cannot create the collective work I wish to see. Nothing truly collectively liberating comes from just one. And the time I come from is past. This is why I’m here. A few hours of a good, long bike ride, over more than one decent hill; to get to a place where I can sit alone on the prairie for a couple of days. My thoughts allowed to wander and search for grounding away from the urban bustle. In moments like this when I can hear all the sounds that come when no human or machine can offer much of an interruption.

I know the projects I have taken on  –  the goals I have set – they are LONG term and they will be slow. So, how do I sustain myself in these lonelier times? In the day-to-day? When what has always fueled me in the past no longer can be found? What do I need now from the minor anarchy that I hope is still in me?

*The quote is from the book Warlight by Michael Ondaatje.