cage…

lets get something straight…

the bastard has come to loath driving…

since I dumped the bike near these four years ago…

he has felt a car is a cage.

a cage that folks sit in traffic in with the windows rolled up sucking the life out of you until you move to some suburban elephants graveyard to end your miserable existence in.

a bike frees you…

it puts the wind in your face.

and is closer to our frontier roots than anything you don't have to feed with hay.

but I digress…

a month ago, my cage was destroyed when Long Island city became Atlantis for an evening.

I was in the desert when five feet of water from the east river ran roughshod from the Annabel basin straight down 5th street towards its lady friend, the newtown creek which crested flooding Borden avenue and the midtown tunnel.

is this the first you've read of this carnage?

of course it is.

true, the liquid city took a beating but…

the rockaways took it on the chin.

so did red hook.

so did the forgotten borough…

so the bastard ain't gonna take it the wrong way.

anyway…

in the aftermath of all of this…

the bastard sits on a platform bound for woodside as he has a meeting with his new cage.

what can I say…

I couldn't talk the wife into a ural motorcycle with a sidecar as a practical way to get around this holiday season.

makes it hard to haul gifts around in a sidecar with a toddler who doesn't yet know how great it is to have the wind in your face.

besides…

the bastard misses shopping at trader joes…

cages are practical that way.

—the bastard

to see a man about a horse…

the bastard is sad tonight.

and it's not because he lives in a van down by the river.

you see, it's about the past.

it's about my past.

the wife had asked me to make a run to the garage in the fhillz to pick up some stuff and to get some stuff for the house.

and when I turned down the wrong block I saw it was gone.

the stable.

the stable where I learned to ride horses.

the stable where I learned about community.

the stable where I learned to jump.

learned to respect creatures greater than myself.

where I broke my nose into 11 pieces.

where I met my people.

where I rode on tuesday nights in the summer coming back in the dark only by the good grace of an animal who knew the way.

then we drank into the night and swapped stories.

talked the craik.

learned about the land on my forebears.

learned to let people's shortcomings go by the wayside.

and most importantly, learned that I felt the most free when the wind was blowing in my face.

and alot of other things that I could never possibly remember because this is what time does to a man.

it robs you of your past.

now all that's there is a fucking sidewalk and some scaffolding.

and all I have is a broken nose to remind me that the barn was there.

thanks for the wind. thanks oh so very much.

the bastard never took it for granted for it was the greatest gift I ever received.

—the bastard