It was cool enough for Blundstones. The feeling of a firm hard sole on a pedal, forgotten over a few months of delicate Toms or flexible Keds - the hard press down, the purposeful spin of tires on a concrete that somehow feels different on a cool day - more textured, more nuanced, giving a perception or more a reality of less friction - is incredibly satisfying. I was equipped with two sweaters, one jacket, a rain poncho, lunch, water, a book, a baseball hat, gloves.
I took Union to Margaret and then turned onto Erb, crossing under the 8 by Breithaupt Park. The were very few cars on the road, which made for an easier crossing of the southbound on-ramp, which is sometimes terrifying. As I came out from under the pass, I noticed for the first time a trail of depressed grasses leaning from the road into the bush on the south side of Bridgeport (which Erb becomes somewhere in the mingling of the roads under the bridge). I've spent some time and had pokes and scrapes trying to access the far west end of this little woodlot, where once, many years ago, I saw a deer in the sunlight. Is it a new trail, or have I not noticed? I will follow it on another day.
Up the hill to Lancaster, and then I turned left and down the hill to the roundabout on Bridge. I crossed over the Grand River, where a fly-fisher was casting in the middle of the current while another sat cross legged on the stones by the low water working on his line. I followed Bridge to Bloomingdale and made my way toward open country.
I have something on my mind today - maybe nothing, maybe life-changing, certainly not something I want, but something that could be meaningful. A question about my life present in my mind. It was bringing on a familiar, fearful mental state: many valiantly repeated rational thoughts attempting to find an anchor in a sort of wild, untethered subconscious storm of uncertainty. It was clear to me that it was the uncertainty that was creating the storm, not the possibilities. The simple not knowing, and not knowing how to not know. It reminded me vividly - because it was probably a flashback - of a similar situation many years ago, when managing the chaos in my mind overcame my capacity to leave the safety of home and the familiar streets of my neighborhood. It took me years - I am still working - to rebuild the confidence I had in travelling before that time, many years ago.
On the edge of my zone, the small neighhorhood of Bridgeport, I was pedalling slowly, and thinking about this current life situation, and watching the chaos return to my mind, like a person I hadn't had a conversation with in a very long time. How strange, and yet so familiar. Familiar because traumatic thoughts are always familiar, and familiar because all the progress I've made in these years has been in the healing of these original feelings - they may have been dormant, causing me to sometimes wonder "what all the fear was about anyways?", but they were the source, unconscious, informing my thoughts and my actions.
And my fear is: I can't live with this uncertainty in my mind, and journey into an environment that is not familiar. I don't have the mental ability to hold both of these uncertainties in my mind. It is too much. I will panic. I will be panic.
Still, it has been a year of great progress and I am not the untethered mind I once occupied. And also: I can't face it again, the shrinking down into the mundane, the end of adventure, the cowering in small woodlots with no hope of seeing a big sky, the closing of my mind into dull, empty fear menaced by the growing threat of panic in more, rather than less, areas of my life. These are the risks of backing down. I promised myself I wouldn't again.
What to do? I cast my mind around for the latest wisdom I had been using to navigate my life adventures and immediately remembered:
Panic attacks come from thinking.
A philosophy taught by my DBLT therapist, new to me this year, which had seen me through several fairly intense situations in which I had not avoided or escalated my panic, but simply calmed myself, and moved forward without trauma or phobia.
Just don't think.
I continued to pedal, this time with a renewed, if fragile and delicate, focus, consciously emptying my mind of all thoughts. And reasoned with myself, between the empty moments: After all, there will always be things in my life causing me stress, some more than others, and this day, this trip, is just another in a series of trips where I journey with my mind, wherever my mind might be: but I journey in silence.
Don't think doesn't mean force your mind to empty: it means don't try to use your thoughts to get your out of your situation. Don't try to think your way out of it, just continue to work towards your goal; distract yourself by any means possible.
I pedalled past the Woolwich sign and out into the fields. My body tension eased and my mind eased: I experienced an expansive peace in neuron and limb. This was my healing place - just on the other side of where my fear told me I couldn't go - the new place. Again this feeling, also familiar, where the areas beyond my zones were actually the ones without fear, the places where my ego can rest from the wearying battle it makes in the familiar landscapes of my daily life. This other place that I bravely burst out into, the empty unknown, fear lurking of course, but the wildness of this place requiring my full presence, my full commitment to confidence. The uncharted space of the unconditioned. Where the necessity for confidence breeds it, builds a boat that can navigate the storm.
There was a damp, open, rainy quiet on the fields like nothing I hear in the city. The yellow and pale green waving fields to my right; the dark green fields and trees to my left, the grey blue sky overhead, were incomparably beautiful and rich to my eyes. I stood by the road, mostly quiet with an occasional car, and listened to the birds and the wind. After a time, I crossed over to turn back, stood for a while, and then, with renewed energy, crossed back and bicycled a little further. I didn't get all the way to the curve, but I felt a peace in the fields which is progress, the feeling of doing maintenance today, rather than pushing further. Deep maintenance, which is another form of growing.
