Flashback 2001: A bike messenger as thinker

     I'm glad that EGD readers were as intrigued with Travis Hugh Culley as I was 20 years ago.  Thursday's introduction led several to say they were eagerly anticipating my review of his book. Here it is. Afterward, we'll catch up with Culley today.

     The modern city has few romantic figures. No cowboys, no knights, no pirates. And darn few fighter aces, Foreign Legionnaires or rock stars.
     The air of excitement that TV bestows on certain professions—cops, ER doctors, lawyers—quickly fades by even the most passing acquaintance with their real-life counterparts, who tend to be older, heavier, and far more sedate than their dramatic Thursday night shadows.
     Every city, however, has bicycle messengers, that colorful clan of oddballs and iconoclasts, dressed in caged helmets and Mad Max body armor, tattooed and pierced, muscled, menacing, blowing whistles as their bikes blast by.
     They are the Flying Dutchmen of the city, solitary, fleeting. As with all romantic figures, the mystery is part of the allure. Who are these people, surging out of the elevators ahead of us, radios squawking on their hips? It's surprising that they haven't already been set upon by anthropologists, now that academics are done picking over the Yanomami in the Brazilian rain forest.
     Maybe that's next. But for now, Travis Hugh Culley's The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power can be seen as an important primary text: a first-person account of a profession which might very well offer the next hot literary genre, replacing mountaineering memoirs.
     Indeed, Culley's account of his adventures as messenger No. 39 for Service First Courier in Chicago bears many similarities to Everest epics: the same tributes to the joy of physical overexertion; the same careful attention to equipment; the same frequent mettle-testing injuries, even the same stiff-upper-lip loss of extremities de rigueur in every assault on the peak.
     "Little pieces of skin hung off the edges of my hands, making them feel like the coarse end of a steel brush . . . ," Culley writes of winter biking. "Occasionally a piece of an earlobe would sting for two weeks or so; then the piece would come off in my hand like the edge of a potato chip."
     Culley's book can't be said to have a plot, other than a series of deliveries (many, many deliveries) and races, tumbles and recuperations. He isn't on a quest, he isn't trying to answer life's big questions, he isn't even really interested in capturing the world of messengers. He's working, trying to get by, and in doing so develops a philosophy of the city and transportation.
     That's the real point of the book. It's a political tract. Which is just as well, because his over-the-handlebars view of Chicago offers no surprises for locals (Lower Wacker is eerie and cool, or was; there are many gritty loading docks and dim alleys). And his Robin Hood band of merry fellow cyclists blur into a hodgepodge of nicknames: Pork Chop and Jimbo and Skull and Bobbo and Crazy Todd. Nobody stands out. There isn't a Friar Tuck in the bunch.
     One problem is that Culley is himself a pure spirit and a pleasant soul, apparently. He happily discovers the courier world to be a near-Utopia.
     "Messengers were highly cooperative, and yet competing against one another," he writes. "They were fighters to the bone. It was a tight society where one could be promised lasting respect and recognition for what one could offer the community."
     Oh, that we were all bicycle messengers. But we're not, and the fact practically damns us. The villain of Culley's book is the automobile, and all the frustrated, angry, joyless grinds who drive them into the city every day from their vast suburban netherworlds, inconveniencing bicyclists.
     In the last half of the book, as Culley takes part in Critical Mass rides—hundreds of cyclists swarmings downtown streets to assert their right to tie up traffic—he develops a vision for the urban future, a twist on the old General Motors motto: What's good for bicycles is good for the country.
     Culley is passionate, though his argument never approaches anything resembling depth. It doesn't occur to him, for instance, to consider that cities were not lovely, easy-to-live-in places for most people before the advent of the auto. He has forgotten his Dickens. Nor does he take into account that a city can have a bicycling culture and yet somehow not be Paradise (I've never thought as much about those masses of bicycles on Beijing streets as while reading this book, not that Culley mentions them).
     But every time I started to fault Culley for not thinking about Communist China, for not honing his arguments, I was reminded of this: he's a bicycle messenger, and deserves credit for looking beyond himself for meaning.
     In fact, I grew to enjoy the book's activism, not as a blueprint for the future, but as a portrait of the strong political passions of an intense young man. In sense, it is the book's greatest accomplishment, the way it captures that passing blend of ego and energy, intellectual curiosity and wet-from-the-womb naivete typically shed by age 30. How can we lose when we're so sincere?
     Culley lives on energy and air. He flashes around on his bicycle, handing handbills to strangers, trying to change the world.
     While Immortal Class is neither beautifully written nor the richest social philosophy, it marks Culley as a talent to watch, if only to see how this sensitive and thoughtful man adjusts to the decades ahead. Could he possibly become one of those bitter commuters he thumbs his nose at now? It isn't the sort of question Culley would ever pause to ask—what young man does?—but it happens to many, to most, even to those who are young and pure of spirit, who think seriously about the problems facing society and offer the world the gift of their freshly-minted wisdom, never suspecting that the world will reward their generosity by shrugging and dragging them down, too.
           —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 1, 2001

     Update: Culley lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he is working on a third book—his second book, "A Comedy & A Tragedy: A Memoir of Learning How to Read and Write" was published by Ballantine in 2015. He describes himself as "an environmental activist, a literacy advocate, and a survivor of clergy abuse." He says he'd like to return to Chicago someday, maybe work for the city. When I asked him if he had any thoughts he'd like to share, he replied, "The alphabet starts with the letter a. Many words do too. All words begin with some letter. They have to. But why do so many people begin so many sentences with No, and so many ideas with N'pas? And yet they hope something productive will come from so many singular decisions to leave one thing out." I think that about sums it up.

Texas notes: Island life

  

     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey shifts her gaze to the Caribbean. 

     She was over a decade older than me and infinitely more fit. She invited me to her home and we went swimming in her front yard— the North Atlantic Ocean. I watched her dive in and out of the placid blue—she soared through the shallow water without creating a ripple on the surface. I’d never seen a human move like this.
     Her name, Doon, is that of a river in Scotland and also a tree in Sri Lanka. She wasn’t the kind of person I felt I wanted to question, so I never found out why her parents picked that name. She was spellbinding and elicited a sense of mystery that made me want to be close to her and experience a sliver of life as she lived it. Words, and especially questions, would have ruined it.
     We were on tiny Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas where I was teaching yoga, and she invited me to be her guest for the day. Her multi-level property included a round house and elegantly simple guest quarters. A balcony overlooked turquoise water rolling endlessly towards the horizon. Looking out, I could see how some perceive this line as delineating the end of the earth.
     Doon had built her home with her own two hands and the help of friends many years back when her children were young. Once when I looked at her strong, tan bare feet and silently marveled at the definition and strength of her well defined frog-like toes, she noticed and commented that she’s worn shoes rarely in her life.
     After she glided through the water and I floated and enjoyed the sun, she invited me inside for dinner. Around her home, she had planted so many trees and flowering plants that it was a veritable botanic garden. We ate outside on a veranda overlooking the water— fish that Doon had speared, and heaps of green sautéed seasoned vegetables. As the sun went down I basked in this magical paradise, which was just another day for the much wiser woman sitting across from me.

     How did I end up here? A series of fortunate events. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a yoga retreat on Paradise Island near Nassaua Bahamas a couple of times. Once I camped for weeks on the sand and spent my days snorkeling and practicing meditation. Another time I upgraded to a tiny house of my own and left the real world far behind. It was on that trip, as I sat alone on a dock, when a tall tattooed lady from California sat down and said “I think the surfers on a little island would like you.” Subsequently I was invited to travel to a smaller island where I met my ocean host. I have been lucky enough to call that island home for a couple of months of my life. It seems like such a pipe dream now, even getting on a plane.
     When I’m there life feels 100% worth living, exactly as it is. Everyone goes to sleep at sundown. Internet is patchy at best. We arise when the sun comes up and tells us it’s time. The residents live in geodesic dome and other solar powered houses. The man who lives nearest the ocean— a retired North American who surfs and sun gazes his golden years away— starts phoning others at the break of day to report whether or not the surf is up.
     If it is and the waves are not tsunami-sized, everyone gets to the shore as soon as they can. I’d sit and watch men, women and children on their boards for a while (too timid to try it myself after a near-drowning experience when I was younger). I’d then venture down to the Secret Beach and collect sea glass along the way. We’d get home before dark, and decide if it was a night to eat at a local restaurant or rustle something up in the kitchen. We’d laugh and talk and play backgammon, worn out from a long day at the beach.
     Island life as a guest takes effort. You have to get your feet accustomed to rocky paths leading through low hanging trees and vines.  You have to learn to say hello to the scorpions and reptiles along the way, and you have to be won into the pack of island dogs, many of whom have been adopted by locals. Once you’re in with them they become your friends and protectors. You have to bear the heat and dust and the island brush to get to the ocean, which calls every single day.
     It also takes know-how to secure fresh fish or produce from a local garden. Even if a farmer invites you over to share a ripe papaya the size of a football, it may or may not be edible. Everyone gathers around and watches as the soft orange flesh is cut open. Have the wasps gotten to it yet? If so, they’ve laid their eggs in the stringy flesh and we have to sacrifice our thirst of this juicy fruit to the ecosystem as it is. If not, a feast ensues.
     Island life reminds one to be patient, to share, to accept the climate on its terms. No one sits around complaining that it’s too hot or too cold. Hurricanes are borne together— neighbors gathering in the strongest concrete dome when necessary. Islanders go with the flow and show you that you have no choice but to do the same. It’s such a relief, and a far cry from the highly intellectual intensity I’m used to.
     Recalling my island memories has given me a feeling of excitement and hope. I could have written about the bleak zeitgeist of the moment; instead I wanted to give us a break. There will be life (for many of us, thank goodness) after the height of COVID. There will be life (for many or hopefully most of us) even until then. Better yet, one day I will return to the island and maybe you can too— Doon’s place Casuarina Bay is there for us: https://www.casuarinabay.net/. 

Nobelist Louise Glück’s poetry offers fierce beauty

 

                                                Hydra and Kali, by Damien Hirst

     You know how they give out the Nobel Prize in literature and it always seems to be some Icelandic novelist you never heard of? And you think, “Oh, I must pick up one of his books”? Then you never do.
      At least that’s my usual reaction. But not this year. Thursday it was announced the 2020 honor goes to Louise Glück, “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” 

     My reaction, “Wow! Louise Glück rocks!”   

     I’ve read all of Glück’s poetry, some poems many times. Sometimes in public, from a stage. I’ve not only talked with her on the phone but bargained with her and, ultimately, paid her money for her poems.      

     Where to begin? Something utterly ordinary, like the setting of a Glück poem — a room, with a table, a chair — only in this case, a newspaper, where lots of books arrive daily unsolicited. Unread books piled on tables, to be disposed of at “book sales,” where the staff snaps them up for two dollars each, the money going to charity.
     I see this fat book and am drawn — wait for it — by the pretty dark orange stripe running across the bottom and the blurry photograph of Saturn — I love dark orange! I love Saturn! The title, “Louise Glück: Poems 1962-2012” means nothing. She was poet laureate of the United States, yes, but who keeps track of those?

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Flashback 2000: Free sidewalk advice well worth the price

Photo for the Chicago Sun-Times by John H. White

     Travis Hugh Culley friended me on Facebook last week. And suddenly it was 2000 again, and a colleague was telling me about the man downstairs sitting at the base of the Wrigley Building, dispensing free advice. 
     A newspaper columnist is always looking for the extraordinary, and this was enough to send me hurrying to take a look. This column followed, as well as the review I wrote about his book, which I'll run Sunday. I'll also update you on Culley today.

     Travis Hugh Culley, a handsome young man in shorts, black T-shirt and sandals, sat cross-legged on the sidewalk at the base of the Wrigley Building on a beautiful late-summer day. His bicycle was parked beside him. Lunchtime pedestrians on Michigan Avenue hurried by. Culley was not begging, or protesting, or resting, or selling.
     Set before him was a brown cardboard sign, weighted by a pair of books. The neat hand-lettering read, "Advice: $0.00."
     Curiosity got the better of me.
     "OK, I'll bite," I said. "Performance art or creative beggary?"
     "I believe mankind is best in the service of another," he said.
     Has anyone sought advice? He said yes, some have.
     "But I'm accomplishing what I came here for, even if nobody stops," he continued. "Opening up public discourse helps to purify democracy. I believe in making public space something to go to, not just go through."
     Two young women stopped. A tall blond with her hair in twists, and her shorter friend, who began talking about her job.
     "I don't hate my job. I don't want to go back to school, but I want to get into something else," she said. "I majored in education. I'm a creative person. I thought I might be a teacher."
     Culley said this: "We choose our careers around what will make us money, not what our service to the world is." He told the woman she didn't need to change jobs to be a teacher. "You can be an educator in your office. The problem with democracy is that we expect to be paid for the service that we do. Part of being a free country is that we have to take on duties we aren't paid for. Take on things you want to be within your own context."
     The women seemed reluctant to leave. But people were lining up. A shabby-looking man holding a cane and wearing a vest with a hospital visitor's pass stuck on it launched into a protracted complaint.
     "I went to the patient advocate at the VA. . . ." he began.
     Culley listened as intently to the older man as he had to the two young women. When the man finally finished, Culley said: "The VA hospital is built to operate. It doesn't operate well. You have to force it to operate. . . . If you give up now, you give up too easily. The thing that's supposed to work should work. Stand up until it works. Push."
     The man finally shambled away. A pasty, entirely bald fellow stepped up, casting a glare of distaste at the departing man. "Certain people should be gassed," he said. "The worst substance abuse is kindness."
     As the man spewed out hate, Culley gazed at him calmly. When he stopped, Culley said: "You're turning into a poor man, emotionally."
     I watched Culley talk for two hours. At times, a dozen people stood in a semicircle around him. They ranged from a petite elderly lady in an elegant summer outfit to a janitor to a boisterous group of Irish tourists, one of whom was considering marrying a woman he didn't love to get at her family's land ("Don't," said Culley. "She'll know.")
     Old, young, black, white—all stopped. The trolley to Navy Pier paused on Michigan, and the driver yelled a question about a man constantly trying to bum a lift ("I'd say give the guy a ride," said Culley).
     Finally the cops arrived: a lone bicycle policeman, about Culley's age. "Technically, you're peddling," he said, halfheartedly. The officer looked around at the people gathered, then shrugged. "Does he give good advice?" he asked a woman, who had just posed her young daughter with Culley and taken their picture. He left.
     The questions kept coming. A college student wondered whether he should make a special trip home to put his ailing dog to sleep or let his parents handle the chore. ("I'd go home and take responsibility for your dog," said Culley. "Clean up after yourself.") A man in a Spike O'Dell T-shirt, carefully smoking the stub of a cigarette, asked Culley what he thought of David Duke ("I would not take his points seriously," said Culley. "You cannot live in a free country and be exclusive.")
     He told me he grew up in Miami, where he began his street dialogues, inspired by a towering Hassidic Jew named Simcha Zev. Culley is 27 years old and works as a bicycle messenger and writer.
     A successful writer. His first book, The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power, a mix of political tract and autobiography, is being published in March by Villard.
     For a moment I thought I had finally put my finger on it. This was a book publishing stunt. But if a book publishing stunt, it was an odd and subtle one. Most people went away never hearing about the book, and Culley didn't mention it to me until I asked what kind of work he did, almost an hour after I showed up. "Book stunt" didn't seem to fit him any more than "Communist" or "Jesus freak" or "Blissed-Out Cultist" or any of the other labels I tried to slap on him.
     He was an image out of ancient Greece: the philosopher in the street.
     "I have very strong ideas about the automobile," he said. "Bit by bit, we're destroying the public space that makes us a democracy. The problem is that the whole shape of the American city doesn't bring us together as a people at all. It limits our capacity for random interaction. We are not in a dialogue."
     "Exactly," said a man in a suit and red tie. "We've moved the model of the suburbs into the city."
     I had trouble tearing myself away. Partly because of his magnetic personality, partly because of what he had to say, partly because of the fact that people on the street responded.
     They stopped. They talked. They laughed. They gave advice of their own.
     Taking one long last look, I headed toward the newspaper, convinced in my heart we have not heard the last of Travis Hugh Culley. "I want to have an impact on America," he said. As improbable as it sounds, he might.
              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 10, 2000

Can’t explore a coral reef? Try a discount fabric store

 

     One big benefit of never going anywhere is that when you finally do go somewhere, it’s really cool. I probably would have been happy just to enter an interior space and be surrounded by walls other than my own. And here I was, wandering this incredible brilliant soft world of fabric in Pilsen. And not just cloth: spools of ribbon and thread, buttons and glittery fringe. But mostly fabric, in big log-like bolts, in scraps on the floor, pulled out in dizzying sheets for inspection. 

     I wish I could say that I went because of my relentless journalistic curiosity, exploring every corner of the city, seeking out the new and fantastic. But you don’t need to go anywhere for that: a firehose of the incredible — mostly incredibly bad news from Washington — hits you in the face every day. Hard.
     The reason is ordinary. Many are remodeling the homes they’ve been stuck in for six months and will remain stuck in for God knows how long. My wife and I, despite my pretensions to the contrary, are ordinary suburban folks. We’re remodeling the TV room, which has the same grim white linoleum floor and mournful blue walls it had when we bought the place 20 years ago.
     Over the past half year, we finally took a good look at the two sofas the boys spent 15 years jumping on and squirting juice boxes over. One had to go immediately. When I dragged it to the street, and saw its tears and stains in daylight, I was sincerely ashamed, embarrassed to have it sit on the curb, evidence of our unseen interior lives. I worried that the neighbors would think less of us. “Look what the Steinbergs had in their house!” We North Shore types can be so judgmental, and no judgment is more welcome than one confirming superiority over somebody else.

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Don't Fear the Reaper

The line in Latin is Ecclesiastes, 12:1: " Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time of affliction comes."

     "Don’t be afraid of Covid," President Donald Trump tweeted shortly before he left Walter Reed Medical Center Monday. "Don’t let it dominate your life."     

     Silly us. And here we were doing exactly that, being afraid of COVID, letting it dominate our lives. When all we had to do was simply the opposite. Not be afraid; don't let it dominate us.

    We feel sorta silly, now, with all our habitually wearing masks and avoiding enclosed spaces and such, as if our lives depended on it.
     Maybe our lives did. There are those 209.000 Americans who died since Valentine's Day.
    Old, right? They were old, half of them anyway. Practically begging for death. And the rest with all sorts of pre-existing conditions, diabetes and whatever. Which doesn't exactly make their lives forfeit. But really, if they didn't want to die of COVID-19 they should have taken better care of themselves, or at least been born more recently.
     Like Donald Trump. Honestly, while my friends were imagining his getting sick and dying, I had dismissed that along with winning the lottery, and focused on this: his striding out of the hospital and doing a France-has-fallen jig. Which is exactly what happened. Declaring himself "an invincible hero."

     Does the fact that he was quoting some groveling sycophant at the New York Post lessen the sting of that? I don't think so. 

      "An ... invincible ... hero." The vengeful God of Deuteronomy must be busy, must be distracted, perhaps molding distant galaxies, or otherwise there would have been a smoldering spot of grease where he stood on the White House balcony, whipping off his mask for his photo op. Maybe that's coming. 

   "Don't be afraid of COVID."
    There's so much packed into that sentence. 

No, I'm not linking to her site.

    Oh heck, we've got time on our hands. What's anybody doing but checking Twitter every two minutes and waiting for the next godawful shoe to drop. Let's unpack it.
   "Don't..."—a directive, from your leader. From your king, to some. Have you seen the "Trump is my king" t-shirts that weaponry wacko Kaitlan Bennett, the pride of Kent State University, is selling? Ooo, you must. 

   "...be afraid..." which is funny, because being afraid is what Donald Trump has sold so successfully, the central operating principle behind all of this—fear of minorities was only the start. Of science. Of change. Of anybody other than themselves, and I would imagine, push come to shove, they'd be pretty afraid of each other if there was no one else around left to demonize.

   Afraid of everything but the stuff they should be afraid of. Like COVID-19. Which if it isn't about to scythe through the Trump administration ... well, let's say we won't be surprised.

   In their defense, sometimes Democrats seem to be not afraid enough. If I hear one more person speculating that, gosh, these drugs might affect Trump's judgment, that we have no way of knowing now if he is fit to be president I'm going to scream.

    "...of COVID." Heck, at least he said it. That implies he figures it's real. Maybe that's the epiphany Trump had at Walter Reed: "Oh, this IS a disease, and a discerning and exclusive one, since it picked me!!!"

     Although he did declare himself ... what was the term ... "Maybe I'm immune, I don't know." Modest, as always.

     Altogether, "Don't be afraid of COVID."

    Not if doing so keeps you from going to work and restaurants, to movie theaters and bars, so the economy gets jacked back up in three weeks and Trump wins.

Catacombs, Paris, 2017

    Have I got it right? I believe I do. 

    As for the dying people ... the dying people ... well, they're dying out of sight, and you can't bake a big American is Great cake without cracking a few eggs. Am I right here? Of course I am.
    There was more of course. There is always more with Trump. He babbles like a brook.
     "Don't let it dominate your life."
     I guess wearing a mask counts as domination. These are the same sort of people who fought against seat belts because they rumple your tie. Who declared that, without smoking being permitted, restaurants would all go out of business. Do not submit to the yoke of the mask, Trump implies. I didn't and look at me. "I feel better than I did 20 years ago," he tweeted.

    Live the best life you can, by contracting COVID. I'm surprised Donald Trump hasn't figured out a way to charge people for getting it. Oh right, he has—pay $250,000 to attend a fundraiser and breath in his virus-laden droplets. I wonder how those people are feeling today? I wonder how Trump will feel once those drugs wear off? I wonder how many times he'll go back to Walter Reed? I wonder if Nov. 3 will ever arrive.

Don't fight monsters by becoming them.

 

     Most folks don’t proofread remarks tossed up on Facebook. But this was Nietzsche, and I didn’t want to get Nietzsche wrong, lest the forces of darkness he dabbled in come flapping out of a fissure in the earth and get me.
     I had posted my Saturday column about Donald Trump coming down with COVID-19. It skewed toward kindness. Sorry, I had to work quick, and find decency a handy default position, particularly now. You rarely regret kindness. Rarely slap yourself on the forehead the next morning and wonder, “How could I have been so decent?!?”
     Yes, it bothers some. “We’re showing him more empathy than he’s shown us,” complained an assistant professor at Loyola. “He has never called for any kind of remembrance of coronavirus victims or personally sought to console survivors.“
     True enough. But since when did Donald Trump become our moral pole star?
     “That’s how it should be,” I replied. “‘When battling monsters,’ Nietzsche tells us, ‘make sure that you do not become a monster.’”
     Quotes have a way of being distorted. So I checked the source, “Beyond Good and Evil.” Easy enough to find, aphorism No. 146: ”Whoever fights with monsters should make sure not to become a monster in the process.” 

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