Michael Chabon blows my mind. Seriously. I just finished Mysteries of Pittsburgh today during my interminable shift at le Kraft Factory, and holy geez. No one inspires me to write more than he does. This is from the first chapter of Mysteries:

It's the beginning of the summer and I'm standing in the lobby of a thousand-story grand hotel, where a bank of elevators a mile long and an endless red row of monkey attendants in gold braid wait to carry me up, up, up through the suites of moguls, of spies, and of starlets, to rush me straight to the zeppelin mooring at the art deco summit, where they keep the huge dirigible of August tied up and bobbing in the high winds. On the way to the shining needle at the top I will wear a lot of neckties, I will buy five or six works of genius on 45 rpm, and perhaps too many times I will find myself looking at the snapped spine of a lemon wedge at the bottom of a drink.

I mean fuck. And this his first novel. His writing gives me the shivers. It's gorgeous and sensual and intelligent and slightly arousing, and if I ever write like anyone, I want to write like him.

I biked again tonight. The weather was perfect today - warm, sunny, and not at all humid. While at the factory, I spent my shift locating the Japanese beetles that crawl in through the vents and releasing them into the parking lot, to spare them the fate of being sucked up by the night shift's vacuum cleaner. When I stepped outside, I positively shook thinking about going home and hopping on my bike.

I came home, threw on shorts and a t-shirt, and took off with no particular destination in mind. I vaguely traced the route that Rachel and I took last week, with a small detour thrown in that took me past the Kraft towers, the Coca-Cola plant. I coasted on smooth, broad shoulders; I bumped and vibrated ungracefully over gravel; I veered dangerously into roads as eighteen-wheelers whipped by me. I got cat called once - a pickup truck slowed down long enough to say "Hey baby, you know you want some of this!"

I found myself on Route 100, spitting rocks from under my tires, passing bars and window furnishing stores and churches and an old cemetery whose headstones were bleach white. I decided to go see if the old roller skating rink was still there.

When I was small - elementary school age - my school would sponsor "skate nights" at the Route 100 Roller Rink. It had all the excitement, drama, and preparation of middle and high school dances, but with the mood-killing presence of parents, a snack bar whose food consisted mainly of fountain drinks and lukewarm nachos, more oldies music than you could shake a stick at, and generally a lot bruising and falling down and occasionally having your fingers run over by your classmates, especially that kid Eddie Ohlson who made fun of me that one time in fifth grade because I didn't know what a condom was. You bastard, Eddie Ohlson! Wherever you are.

I loved skating nights.

I loved them because I loved roller skating. I was an admittedly clumsy and ungracefully child (now having grown into a clumsy and ungraceful adult), and I always started the night by falling over a few times, but once I'd gotten into the flow of the rink, I felt amazing. I moved fast and with relatively little effort, and I didn't feel gangly or awkward. I felt athletic and tall and graceful, like a large and lovely bird. Like the BFG, even.

I loved the throbbing music, the cheesy lights that reflected in the thick, polished wood of the rink floor, the smell of sweat, the squeaks of ungreased wheels. I even loved (spare the lectures about elementary age relationships - you know this longing, even if you only feel it now) watching the couples skate, my classmates who thought they were in love, fingers curled together, heads leaning and almost touching as they talk over the eighties love ballad, this even when my own hand was empty, cool air rushing over it. My throat ached funny when I saw those couples. Once, I skated with Ty Hooker-Haring, a crush that I sported from fifth to tenth grade, and my heart filled my mouth like a fat goldfish, and his palm was sweaty and warm, and when the song was over and he coasted away my hand was damp.

I loved the skating rink.

As I passed the cemetery and peaked at the top of the hill, I could see the building about a half a mile away. As I began to coast down - going faster and faster - I remembered a bit of advice that someone had once shared with me. "Never go down a hill you're not willing to go up again." Of course, at this point, I'd gathered up so much speed that when I blew past the 35 MPH speed limit sign I wondered vaguely if cops could pull over bikes as well as cars, and by the time I hit the bottom, I decided against stopping and turning around to look at the hill I'd just come down. No point in freaking myself out before I had to ascend again.

There it was. The white building. The sign was still there, albeit with a different name. There were cars in the parking lot. They were still open! I cut across the road and pulled up next to the entrance. I got off my bike, took a huge swig of water, put down my kickstand, and opened the door.

It looked... God, it even looked the same. It smelled the same. The small white lobby had a line three octogenarians deep (the sign when I'd walked through the door indicated that Thursday was "Organ Music (for Adults)" night. As an elderly man carrying a pair of inline skates opened the door into the rink, I caught a glimpse of the varnished floor.

A short, round woman was leaning out of a small window. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah." I was slightly out of breath from the ride, and my legs were a little bit jittery, and I was so excited that I had trouble putting a full, coherent sentence together. "I used to... I used to come here as a kid... you changed, that is, the name is different but... I loved... I mean, I love... ah, I'm just visiting for the summer, I'm grown up... do you, do you have a brochure with your hours?" There! A final thought.

She looked at me strangely and indicated to the wall behind me. "The middle slot. Has all of our hours and prices."

I took the sheet of paper and folded it up, tucking it into the band of my shorts. "I used to come here all the time as a kid. Did you guys buy out 'Route 100 Roller Rink?' The name is different."

"Nah, they just changed the name because now that they've built the overpass, this isn't actually Route 100 anymore. Same woman owns it, though."

"Ah. Well, I'll be back. Thank you so much!"

"Have a good night."

I skipped outside and unfolded the sheet of paper. Geez. Only in rural Pennsylvania can a night's entertainment cost five dollars, or nothing if you bring in supplies like foam cups or toilet paper on Wacky Wednesdays. I put the sheet back in the band of my shorts and hop back on my bike.

A car full of people as old or older than my grandparents pulled into the parking lot as I pulled out. I guess the powerful draw of organ music is simply too much for them.

Up the hill.

I pumped my legs, breathed heavily, pulled my body close to the frame of the bike, and swore on everything holy that I will NOT STOP on the hill. I will get to the top without having to walk there. I will NOT STOP. NOT STOP. NOT STOP.

I wasn't going very fast, but I was going.

I reached the top. My bike wobbled slightly, but I didn't fall over. I took off. Cemetery. Church. Bar.

I took a different road back to my house. I bumped over railroad tracks, wound past a gaggle of geese (a google of geeses? A giggle of gooses! Kelli, I thought of you), passed my father's work. I saw the church where I went once with Andrea. Andrea Long. Her house used to be next to the church, but her house is gone now, and the overpass is right where it used to sit. I loved Andrea's house - it was wide and expansive, and her mother, in contrast to my mother, always seemed calm and elegant. Her father owned a water technology business. She had a pool.

God, there was a point when Aparna, Andrea, and I were inseparable. Isn't that funny? Now one of us is a Yale-educated doctor, one of us is a conservative, hyper-religious occupational therapist, and one of us is a bisexual photographer/poet/writer/figure model who will probably not get a job after she graduates and end up living in a box.

I soared under the unfinished overpass. I saw a deer! The sun was setting. I beat it home.

When I got home, I felt great. I felt amazing. I clamored down into the basement, stripping off clothes as I went. I walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower, running my fingers under the water as my heart pounded loudly in my ears.

My body is changing. I can feel it. I've lost quite a bit of weight since I started biking and working, and everything feels tighter, stronger, stranger (though I must report that despite this pretty substantial weight loss, my breasts remain exactly the same size). Just now, as I type this, I am sitting in my pajamas with one leg bent and resting quite acrobatically on the table. It feel so stretchy and good. I'm becoming flexible! Or perhaps not. It's hard to say.

I rinsed off in the shower and stepped out. The mirror was misted over. I dried off and wrapped my body tightly in the pale blue towel before running my hand through the steam.

As a streak of clarity appeared in the glass, I noticed something. I leaned in closer to see.

My hair, which I hadn't bothered to wash but was still damp from the spray of the shower, was curling and arching around my face. My cheeks were still flushed from biking, my lips red from the sun, my skin olive and tan from being outside, even the soft, round curves that escaped the top of the towel. I looked... pretty? Healthy, glowing... pretty? I was so startled by the word as it flitted through my head that I gasped and pulled away. The mirror began to mist over again. I finished putting on my pajamas. And then I pulled out Mysteries of Pittsburgh, in order to open this post with some of Chabon's amazing words, to inspire me to write.

I wrote something at work today. Two things, actually, which are currently unrelated, but I feel like might be part of something bigger, if I could just find the time to write something long and substantial. Here they are, cut for space (ha) and maybe a little for content.

( Veronica takes the bottle and twists open the cap, which hisses and sputters foam... )



( ...the low curve of her stomach... )

And now I'm... done?

I'll tell you what I did today. I biked. I fucking BIKED. I biked far away, and then, as Rachel and I came back, outran a thunderstorm. We OUTRAN AN EFFIN' THUNDERSTORM. It was SO COOL.

I'm so proud of myself. Rachel had called me a few days ago, telling me that she'd read my entry about how much I love Pennsylvania and asked if I wanted to survey the strange beauty of the Lehigh Valley on a bike. I agreed because I adore Rachel and haven't seen her in ages, but I realized later that she is a BIKER and a bike ride doesn't mean "a breezy jaunt to Rita's," it means hardcore distance biking. But I figured I'd give it a shot, and if I died in the process, at least it would be while I was out of breath and sweating. Sexy.

We biked. Oh good lord, did we bike. We had to turn back early because the clouds were dark and threatening and I could hear the low rumbles of thunder echoing around us, but still.

We hightailed it home, and every limb burned, but in a good, satisfying way. My legs are still trembling, but damn, was that fun. Also, serious cardiac workout followed by lovely shower is the best feeling ever.

I want to write a lot about the janitor job, because it's proving to be strangely poetic. I'm too tired to do so right now. But watch for it. I'm exhausted from that too. I feel like Selma.

In other news, today was a day of, like, four small figurative explosions. None really involving me, just the people around me. It makes me sad.