Damsel in distress: an alternative ending.

 It was the light of course, but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant.

-- Ernest Hemingway, ''A Clean, Well-Lighted Place''

The other night I had a startling dream: I was walking down an anonymous, woodsy street when I told myself, ''be careful here, you might get abducted.'' Seconds later, I was being carried away by a faceless man, who promptly took me to a well-lighted room and locked me in. I don't know how long I sat there staring at the beautiful wood floors, but eventually I realized that I felt trapped and sought an escape. I was being well-treated (''il était correcte,'' the French might say), but I was certainly stuck. Somehow I thought to turn the doorknob in my room. It opened at once, and I saw my kidnipper watching TV. He might have glanced at me as I ran towards the stairs and out the door, but I was determined to be free and ran fast. In my dream, I remember thinking that I would have to start running faster during my jogs if I expected to escape faceless men on a regular basis.

Lady Gita in the foyer

And it's true, my legs have felt particularly heavy and resistent to exercise lately. I used to blame the hilly Buttes Chaumont Park, but jogging along the Seine last week (glorious, breezy morning jog!), I noticed the same dead-weight legs, even though the course was flat. So when I woke early this morning, I hypothesized that if I were sitting down as I exercised, my legs might cooperate better, or at least, have more pep. The local commerces were still sleepy when I started off on my burnt orange, cement-caked, trash-picked (thanks Hildete!) Gita racing bike towards Park de la Villette and along the Canal de l'Ourcq. The landscape changes quickly there, and I was happy, twenty minutes later, when I was finally free of construction zones and sharp curves to enjoy a straight, flat terrain. In the sunny 8 am stillness, I kept murmuring, ''Oh my God, yeah'' as I barrelled over cobblestone and onto the bike path, feeling shivers of excitement as I took in the quiet and the green.          

Park (parc) de la Villette

Around forty minutes into the ride, my legs were stiff and tired, so I stopped along a garden, and stretched out on a granite bench. ''Isn't it lovely,'' I thought to myself, ''to be carefree?'' Often when exercising, I have fairly rigid ideas on how long I should sweat before I can stop, and rarely invite myself to take a nap mid-trot, but this morning, I simply wanted to enjoy a leisurely ride. I watched more serious bikers zip past, and returned to thoughts about the dream.   

A few friends have offered their interpretations, but I keep coming back to my original thought: 'Wherever you feel stuck,'' I told myself, ''you can get yourself out of it. And even then, look carefully at what you call being 'stuck.' Maybe it's more imagined than real.'' 
My bike is back in the bike room downstairs, and my apartment is as sunny as ever on this blue-sky Monday afternoon.

Here's hoping you have a clean, well-lighted place of your own.

For more information on the bike path along the Canal de l'Ourcq, please visit here (in English) or here (in French).