Building a Bike

Harney & Son's Black Currant Black Tea

(rating: 4/5) First tea rating of the year! I picked up this black tea from my favorite NYC Harney & Son's storefront as a gift, but felt a pressing urge to try it once. The currant feels like a solid mitigator for the harsh bitterness that black tea usually brings, but doesn't necessarily oppose it. It's a wonderful tea, but I only give it a 4 because it feels more well suited for a season with a warmer context.

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According to Jane Jacobs, the post-WW2 Japanese economic model of using import replacement in its domestic bicycle industry is a prime example of creating positive cycles of growth. Japanese brands like Fuji and Miyata invested heavily in developing local manufacturing capabilities rather than simply buying bicycles (or parts) from foreign sellers. Over time, such an economic strategy created a high-functioning domestic Japanese bicycle industry that continues to culture a reputation for dependability and self-regulated success.

In turning away from imports, she explained,“The Japanese got much more than a bicycle industry. They had acquired a pattern for many of their other achievements in industrialization: a system of breaking complex manufacturing work into relatively simple fragments, in autonomous shops.”

I feel quite grateful to my olive green vintage 80's Miyata racer bike, not only because it is the most beautiful piece of utilitarian equipment I have ever owned in my lifetime, but also because it has taught me so much. It has shown me how to love a place wherever I live for its vibrancy, its accessibility to public space regardless of individual vehicle ownership, and its gift of limitlessness at a time in my life when I feel I do not know how to love without borders.

Yet, as much as I admire this self-regulating model apparent in both Japan’s bicycle economy and the ways I’ve constructed my own life, the creation of a paradox exists when it comes to love. I realize now that my tendency to build each part of myself with such precision can make it difficult to open my mind to others who do not fit precisely into my self-insulative functionality, to those who disrupt my carefully curated methods for existing. At a very young age, I realized I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me, so I had to re-create my own. My cherished Miyata bike reminds me of the beauty in embracing the limitlessness of local color, but with the new year, also reminds me of how rigidly I’ve clung to my routines to keep myself self-sufficient.

I recently returned from New York to walk everywhere, talk with wonderful friends, and finish my first book of the year, Agony of Eros by Byung Chul Han. It was a shorter read but one quote personally struck me: "Ritual is in the realm of seduction. Love is born from the destruction of ritual forms, from their liberation. Its energy is an energy of the dissolution of these forms."

Rather than romance, I feel gratitude when I am touched by another person. The other allows me proof that I have a body, that I exist, yet simultaneously penetrates me with paranoia so deep I never know how to reciprocate it. Don’t some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Whoever said that peace derives from the contemplation of order did not realize that joy and triumph is not a universal indicator for the end of effort.

Desire is a very scary and uneasy notion. Its mark is absence. Accordingly, a positivistic neoliberal culture bent on urging the prioritization of individual pace over external contribution, a culture in which everyone ceases to exist in a so-called city without their fragile aluminum shields of cars, will frequently find itself at a loss to explore it or elaborate its workings. 

I have two resolutions for 2025:

1. Fully understand what it means to not just be one person, to be both Cain and Abel, understand that geometry does NOT equal divinity.

2. Ride my bike more.