Morning In the morning I take my bicycle on my shoulder down the stairs and push off from the sidewalk across the street and up the bank. San Francisquito Creek splashes deep below the bridge. At the edge of the tracks I look in both directions into distance of sunset and distance of dawn and, stitching them together, this dual iron rails and heavy ties. East, the dawn through the overcast is like the yellow underbelly of a fish streaming up the tracks. If I’m lucky the bell at the crossing is ringing in stillness the air in shadow and out of the shadow a commuter shines its single light and the rails start to sing and the wind rushes in with roaring and the earth thumps the train in passing the whole world thrusting iron in annihilation and then a dying away the rails sing again following the train backwards to the city. On the other side I push off again and pedal through the cool air under the eucalyptus to Alma Street. If cars are waiting at the light I’m off and through the park and waiting at the light to cross El Camino Real and across the parking lot of the shopping center racing ahead of the cars. They stop at each sign but I push through beside them on ahead until we get around the shopping center onto Sand Hill Road where they have me on the straightaway. A cool breeze blows in my face and I raise my head to the west and the foothills through the trees a fog sits on the uppermost ridge like white feathers or whipped cream a pillow without a cover that falls apart into nothing when it scatters. Beyond the hills is the ocean whose air I am breathing after it has combed during the night through the fog and the trees. I put my head down and push in high gear to Alameda de las Pulgas where I wait for the light and the road steepens and I fall back to the next lower gear. By the time I am at the top I’m in a sweat and it’s too cold to take off my coat. Where I lock my bike in front of the office I move my weight slowly having found my legs. Evening It’s drizzling and I’ve worked late and cycled down the hill in the dark over wet streets cars shining by like locomotives without engineers strange solid objects rushing in gritty water. El Camino Real is a line of headlights but, here, the dark of eucalyptus and stillness and the ravaged El Palo Alto in stillness beside the bridge I cross and San Francisquito Creek splashes below me. If it were quieter as it sometimes is in the morning or seems that way this bridge would seem less out of place. I look up through its cantilevered iron black silhouette against the dark gray sky with my bicycle on my shoulder and I squint to make out the date in the dark from inside in reverse. Light from the back lots of car dealerships shines down the tracks. In conference room 160 I raise my voice to insist that we document a rule’s exceptions in the programming specifications not only in the user’s guide but teamwork does not always get us what I want. Otherwise all morning I have been working on my monthly highlight report, for which I keep notes on my computer about what I’ve done.
31 January 1988