Fairy Blog - My first time...

The first time I met a bike fairy was on Canal St on a fresh spring evening.  The air was damp from the recent rain and it is said in fairy folklore that fairies are more visible near water.  I guess all the conditions were right for me to have such a close encounter with a fairy.

The next day I was having coffee with a good friend and after hearing my story his eyes nearly popped out of his head.

Joe shouted, "It was a bike fairy!  I know a bike fairy too.  This guy follows me around when I ride at night and knocks out street lamps above me.

"I'll be riding along and all of a sudden, 'PSSSSPOPPPP' and the light cuts out."

His eyes are huge.

He takes a breath and lowers his voice. "The first time it happened I just thought it was a bad bulb.  Then it kept happening to the point that I realized I was being followed!"

So I said, "Does it ever put street lights on when you pass?" Because what he was saying sounded really familiar but sometimes, occasionally, it happened the opposite way for me.

Joe said, "Maybe...once or twice? Usually he just cuts em off."

"And you call him a bike fairy, correct?" was my response.

He said, "I mean...what else would it be?"

The night I first met a bike fairy was a serene spring night.  Drinking in the air as I speedily crossed the city, I let the breeze cleanse my face and everything else.  At that point something landed on my left shoulder.  I looked down but didn't "see" anything. It didn't matter because something was there. And she was sitting on my shoulder, enjoying the bike ride as much as I was.  I could feel her excitement. It was palpable and exactly how riding a bike made me feel as a child.

This was when bike fairies started appearing everywhere...

Fairy Blog - St Andrew

Home to about 30,000 people, St. Andrew is a small town surrounded by woodlands. The founders planned the town around its' central most point located at a large oak tree.  As such, St. Andrew's Park was then designed around the majestic tree.

Anything and everything a resident of St. Andrew needed could be found by visiting the Town Center, as the area was known. Across from one side of the park are the St Andrew Town Hall offices as well as the town’s library. Restaurants and shops are across from two adjacent sides of the park. St. Andrew’s PS 1, a K-12 public school, is also across the street from the park leaving the imposing St Andrew University campus to the final side of the park.

There are only four stoplights and they are located at each of the corners of the park. Daniel's bike shop is at the corner with the longest light because it has the most traffic. Residents of St Andrew take great pride in their lovely park and have regular park beautification volunteer days where nearly half the town comes out to make St Andrew's Park as well kept as possible. 

St. Andrew is also incredibly bicycle-friendly. The roads are shared  throughout the town by all kinds of bicycle riders like daily commuters, recreational riders, and racing teams. Obviously bicycle fairies can be found there. 

When the bicycle shop, owned by Daniel and Sarita, opened near the park, bicycle fairies began congregating in the St Andrew's Park at the large oak tree.  To decorate their meeting place, they mounted several free spinning bicycle rims that rotated in the breeze. If you looked at it at just the right angle it would appear as if the tree was a giant pin-wheel. The mayor's office of St Andrew assumed the Park Commission authorized a public art display. Amusingly, the Park Commission assumed the Town did the same. Though no town official could trace the origin, it was generally appreciated by everyone and so it stayed. 

Not only did the bike fairies think the spinning rims looked cool, they threw wild parties on stormy nights. The rims often spun so fast that it appeared as if they would fly off the tree at any moment. The bicycle fairies didn't care about that, they were enjoying their favorite fairy tunes from the spinning wheels.

Fairy Blog - Ronan and his First Bike

Ronan got his first bike when he was six years old. The bike was a golden flecked, hunter green sting ray with a banana seat and ape-hanger handle bars. He got the bike for his birthday, which also happened to be his last day of kindergarten.

Knowing he didn't know how to ride the bike just yet, he walked his bike to school. He didn’t want any help from his parents to learn how to ride. This was something he wanted to learn how to do by himself. 

After school let out and he was officially promoted to the first grade, Ronan climbed onto his sting ray in the parking lot. He grabbed the handlebars as he straddled the frame and began waddling himself forward to gain momentum.   After a few strides, he jumped up and landed on his banana seat.  But his feet accidentally slammed onto the pedals forcing the bike to skid to a stop, which made him fly completely off the bike.

His new first grade teacher called out to him from the classroom window, “Ronan, you can’t do that. You can’t ride that bike yet.”

Dusting himself off, Ronan pulled a couple pieces of gravel out of his elbows. He tore his school pants but he didn’t care because it was the beginning of summer. It was at that moment that he realized that he didn’t really understand what the bike was doing under him.  Ronan seemed confident that if he could just understand how the bike works then he’d easily be able to ride it. 

He flipped the bike upside down and decided Ms. Trotter was wrong about him.  "I can and will ride this bike," he said grunting to himself.  He revved up the back wheel by rotating the pedals as fast as he could with his right hand. In a quick flick of his wrist, he slammed the pedal backwards causing the wheel to immediately stop moving. 

“Ahhhh,” he said while releasing the pedal.  

Ronan figured out that pedaling backwards makes the wheel stop moving.

With a new appreciation of how his Sting Ray worked, Ronan took off in one sweeping motion by flipping the bicycle onto its wheels by the handlebars while outright sprinting forward.  He leapt mid stride and landed perfectly on the oblong seat. Riding down the school’s long hilly driveway, Ronan found his balance and his feet found the pedals.  He made it to the bottom of the hill and then slammed on his brakes making a perfect crescent moon design in the dust kicked up by his speeding trick.  

That’s how Ronan learned how to ride a bike and that’s the day his bike fairy was born.  TL burst into being midway down the hill in the wake of dust, laughter, fear, amusement, and serendipity.

Fairy Blog...

Ronan was the first child of Daniel and Sarita Jason. The Jasons owned a bike shop in St Andrew. Every evening, the family of three would close the shop and take a bike ride through the park.  Waiting till Ronan was at least two to start putting him on the bike with them, Daniel made sure he knew how to tuck and roll if there was a fall.  Sarita on her cruiser bike and Daniel on his mountain bike, Ronan rode the chariot strapped to his dad’s bike while they zoomed along the trail. Bike rides were his absolute favorite.

He doesn’t remember the day he first met bike fairies.  It was more like he always knew they’re around.  Bike fairies following his parents through the park tickled Ronan’s face and tussled his hair while he sat mesmerized by their shimmering radiance.  The fairies would gather all around his seat in unique and unlikely ways to relax, which was right above the wheel making for a perfect resonant listening zone, as they rode through the park.

Reba and Trudy, both bike fairies, lived on the bike pedals of Ronan’s parents. Reba lived on Sarita’s left pedal and Trudy on Daniel’s right pedal.  Reba and Trudy met around the same time that Ronan’s parents met.  Daniel and Sarita’s first date was a bike ride on the country road. Not too long into the ride, Reba and Trudy introduced themselves.  Soon after they realized they knew a lot of the same fairies and shared a lot of the same interests, including singing fairy spoke songs. It was a wonder they hadn’t met before then. They’ve been friends ever since that bike ride five years ago.

When Ronan came along, Reba and Trudy showered him with fairy kindness. They whispered bike fairy songs in his ears, showed him magic tricks, did acrobatic tumbles, tickled, played with and loved him every single day. 

Sarita and Daniel relished in how joyful Ronan seemed during and after their rides.  As he grew, they got bigger and bigger safety seats to fasten to Daniel’s bike...

5 Commuting Tips from a Regular Bike Rider

I'm inspired to share a few tips that have helped me navigate the roads of New Orleans. Often biking is so amazing in this city, though sometimes it is hard and scary.  I've learned a few key things that have helped me stay safe and focused while being in the latter situations.

1. Always have lights on your bike at night. Being seen is a good thing; be seen!
2. When navigating potholes, engage your core and lighten your grips on the handlebars to reduce impact to your wrists and shoulders.
3. Pay attention to the other road users around you.  Listen for cars and try to anticipate for how the drivers will navigate the situation.
4. At busy intersections, pause for at least two seconds before crossing an intersection after the light changes to green.  Avoid cars running their red light by pausing briefly before going.
5. As much as possible, try to learn the traffic signal patterns for major intersections that you frequently cross.  Stop at red lights; especially if you are not familiar with the light cycles for that crossing.

Words on the Train

This is a poem I recently wrote while reminiscing about growing up in New York in the 90s and spending time at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Big up to ALL the slam and spoken word artists that I watched spit truth bombs in Alphabet City.


Words used to flow outta me
Riding on the trains through the city.
It was like the blur of the passing subway lights
Rhymes and verses streaking past my mind's eyes.
I felt angry, charged, confident that my words were daggers
To the egotistical hubris of New York's vanity.
My observations shed light where no New Yorker dared to stare
My wit brought the non-believers to their knees
Begging to over-stand how they'd been so blind,
So unwilling to validate the fallacies around them.
Those words danced with the graffiti spun into oblivion
Finding their home among the trash piles deep
In the bowels of that city.
It was all said before -
To different beats, cadences, inflections, tones and emphases.
Not a whole lot has changed but those words seem to stay the same,
Carved into the tracks etched into the memory of that city.
Those words stayed there, they they don't visit me anymore.
They found their place, dancing their way out of me
To their rightful owner -
New York City.

Sharing for the purpose of sharing

It’s really hard to listen when everything else is being so loud. 

It makes sense to write down your story, turn all your pain into words to set ablaze for the universe to unravel… 

I write, “It isn't fair how some people get to live versus how some people have to live.”

We all live such parallel lives in such perpendicular ways.

Resilience is refusing to believe you are less than, even when everything is designed to specifically make you feel less than. 

My hope is that we will mourn, collectively, with knowledge of the malice and indecency that our injustices have incurred. 

No one and no thing will have died in vain.

Transcendence honors the living in bountiful glory with everyday as an intentional spiritual practice.

When all you want to do is shout back, patience becomes impossible. 

There is writing on my wall that says, “What do you think you are living for?” 

I was not allowed to feel the feelings I had.

And this, too… I receive wonderful things; I reclaim my power.

Know What You Believe

The phrase sounded like a simple enough mantra. It didn't feel simple though, it felt like I didn't know what it was I exactly believed.  I heard it as an indictment.  Not knowing what I believed felt empty and felt like that other mantra of Malcolm X's - “If you don't know what you stand for, you'll fall for anything.” Why was it that I could clearly identify that which I did NOT believe, but I couldn't state what it was that I did believe? More specifically, why didn't I know what I believed?

I've spent the last few years trying to get to the bottom of this block. In retrospect, I realize that I feared feeling shamed for my beliefs. I had his fear of being told what I believe is not good enough, not something, not anything. By taking a firm position, there was no backing out of that stance.  I do tend to hang back and assess all sides of an argument or issue before being willing to state my opinion on the matter.

But I think I had a break through today.  The truth is, I do know. I believe that there is no less than. No person, culture, society is less than any other person, culture, or society.  

There is no less than. Therefore, this includes the earth, all living beings, natural resources, and our atmosphere.  I believe in symbiotic relationships.

I recognize that it is my human arrogance that puts humans on the same plane as the earth in terms of there being no less than.  Humans need the earth and its resources, but its hard to imagine in what real way the earth needs humans. The fault in humanity's logic thus far has been attempting to control all of earth. There is no way to control ALL of it though. We can't control it all, that's not how it works.

There are several millenia of structural, spiritual, psychological, and emotional forces woven together in thick fabrics of fear, war, violence, and oppression.   These forces all, in their own ways, buffer humanity from an embodied experience of living on this planet.  I believe that wars are being fought, resources are being stolen, and people are being displaced to prove that there are 'greater thans.' This side versus that side, us versus them, we/they - to control the people, land, and resources. But why? To always control, to always rule, to always have. Always controlling, ruling and having requires the equally opposite to be true, that there will always be the controlled, the ruled and have-nots. I believe we are all worth more than this false dichotomy.

We have the opportunity to figure out how to live in a mutually beneficial stasis with this planet. I believe that we can recognize this need for balance and develop systems to nurture symbiotic relationships on earth and beyond.

Fairy Story Journey

I've been developing a fairy world for the better part of five years now. Its been exciting and challenging and wonderful and awful and all those special, deep things that writing is/does for one. Confidently entering 2015 with the "i'm no longer scared of being scared" attitude, I challenged myself to share my visions of fairies with the internet. (Stay tuned for Mardi Gras edition of the internet)

This is my fairy journal space for the next 30 or so days.

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When I was a little girl, my mother told me fairy stories. According to her, fairies played everywhere I could see fluttering around me and getting into hijinks all the time. I loved her stories and I began seeing traces of fairies in gardens, parks, at the ocean, in the forest, and even in my house. My favorite kind of fairy is a bicycle fairy.

Bicycle fairies came out of the thickets and brambles of nature when the bicycle was invented. So many years ago, the magical creatures were drawn to the sweet sound of wheel spokes cutting through the air as a bike gains speed. Lyrics to spoke songs, like stories, are kept alive across generations of bicycle fairies and new songs are being created all the time. 

As bicycle designs changed throughout the years, the fairies' love for bicycles never wane. Bike fairies live on the pedals of bicycles. The fairies follow bicycles every which way they might go, as long as bike spokes make their bike fairy music. While the bicycle fairies are too small to actually ride human bicycles, their size allows them to stowaway on bicyclists undetected. My favorite bicycle fairies are three best bike fairy friends.

Malachi, Ruby & TL live in St. Andrew which is a small town far from here. Surrounded by woodlands, the town has a giant park at its center. Many, if not most, residents of St. Andrew enjoy riding bicycles and so, as might be expected, a large population of bicycle fairies also populate the town.

The three best bike fairy friends all show their appreciation for bicycles in their own way. Malachi writes messages of encouragement on walls or fences for passing bicyclists to have positive messages along their journey. Ruby rides on bicyclists' shoulders to feel the wind on her face as the riders do while weaving through the streets of St. Andrew. TL flies overhead and knocks streetlamps on and off as riders pass beneath. Together with their other bike fairy friends from St. Andrew, they meet at the large oak tree in the center of the park to sing songs and share epic bike ride stories...