Federicaville

“Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With The Wolves: Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman

Waves crushing over the shore
feeling wild.
They break on the rocks
splashing in and out.

Over the child’s skirt,
they are all over it.

Wet. It is wet out here.
Simple action.
Much purity.

Simple accident.
Rich meaning.

Wild.

The biggest battle one fights in life is with herself and with the necessity of finding acceptance for one’s positive characters and faults…the text below always helps me think about not getting stuck in the past with all my mistakes and unsuccessful moments, but to move forward toward a life of future dreams and hopes no matter the hardship and no matter the challenges. I am a believer in standing in that fire mentioned below and I won’t settle for anything less dangerous and less real.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming
from the book The Invitation

There is something so whimsical in walking up and down Williamsburg at lunch time on Fridays.
The Jewish families are preparing for Shabbat and everywhere is mayhem. Kids coming back home from school, mothers baking challots and putting the finishing touches on the rest of the meal, cars rushing through the neighborhoods for the last drive of the week, and then the play-time before dusk when all the kids are let loose on the street block with their tractors and their second-hand bicycles before sunset when all the toys have to disappear and the quiet and reflective time begins. I had a moment of luck among then disproval of the religious mother and stole a couple of frames of the childish games. It was enough to let me go back in time to last summer in Jerusalem where I would assist to the exact same scene every Shabbat in my neighborhood, Nachlaot before the prayers began and the whole city went quiet for a whole 24 hours.
Although, I disliked this for the longest time, the last month I spent in Israel, I learned to love the “imposed curfew” and I now miss it terribly. A quiet day to spend entirely on self-reflection *(and/or, if you are a believer in prayers) it’s much needed especially in a metropolis where chaos and lack of patience prevail like it is in New York City.

“There are a hundred different ways to hold someone’s hand. There are the ways you hold a child’s hand, the ways you hold a friend’s hand, the ways you hold an elderly parent’s hand, the way you hold the hand of the departing and of the dying and of the dead. He held Dawn’s hand the way a man holds the hand of a woman he adores, with all that excitement passing into his grip, as though pressure on the palm of the hand effects a transference of soul, as though the interlinking of fingers symbolizes every intimacy. He held Dawn’s hand as though he possessed no information about the condition of his life.”

–American Pastoral, Philip Roth.

I think sometimes life puts us in front of a pile of bricks and asks us to climb over them, and leave the fragment of the broken bricks we stepped over, behind. It just tells us to follow a light that is dim and far away. And to trust it will get closer and stronger. In the mean time, while it challenges us, it also throws our way a series of alternative escape exits to give us a chance to turn around, run away, and take the second best choice through an easier and, less fulfilling, door.
Why?
To prove us, to show us that nothing else smaller or lesser than what we think to be right for us really matters.
In fact, we should want to climb for the top, we should want to reach the peak of the pile of bricks and then run, run, run like infuriated cows until we are comfortable for a moment or two and then run again…we should not stop and take the red incandescent exit sign for the “chicken” doorway.

The real prize really lays in the mist of it all and not at the finish line.
But the longer, the more arduous and impervious the way, the more the ever-lasting presence of victory and the stronger the sentiment of not having given up on ourselves.

WHAT IS IS ABOUT CYCLING AND TATTOOS? WHY IS IT SO POPULAR FOR SINGLE SPEED AND FIXED GEAR CYCLISTS TO MAKE THEIR BODY THEIR OWN TEMPLE FOR ART? DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO? AND IF YES, WHAT IS REALLY THE PURPOSE? I AM JUST CURIOUS AND NOT AT ALL JUDGMENTAL ABOUT IT. I JUST DO NOT SEE THE SAME IN THE FULL-GEAR CYCLIST COMMUNITY WHERE THE SHAVEST AND SMOOTHEST THE SKIN IS, THE BETTER. AND THIS IS WHERE I BEGIN TO WONDER…BUT I AM SURE THERE IS SOME, DEEP, DARK SECRET ABOUT IT ALL!~

There is something about belonging to a team. It’s a feeling of family mixed to camaraderie that is difficult to find anywhere else except with the ones you share the
“falling and rising” of an every-day adventure, lifestyle and lots and lots of kilometers on the road.
And this feeling of unity and comfort it’s even stronger if the team-mates are Italians and the common link among them it’s a “two-wheel full-carbon, 5grams fixie entirely costumed-made in a small city up in the hill(lacking) part of Italy.”
Not to mention how much stronger the team-spirit becomes if they all happen to be in Brooklyn, more precisely in Red Hook, for a Criterium opened only to fixies and they happen to meet a very talkative, Italian photographer. Best combo ever!









See you again on June 8, 2013 for the Navy Yard Criterium and then Milan on October 11, 2013.
Note: The first photo is not a team-mate of Team Iride Modena…but the shot was too good to leave out~!