every morning i turn her
wheels up tear a rag off
an old shirt and polish
my fuji. tighten every spoke
turn the pedals run
the chain across a toothbrush
shine the reflectors. pray
to god today may i not be
derailed
#katyamills
every morning i turn her
wheels up tear a rag off
an old shirt and polish
my fuji. tighten every spoke
turn the pedals run
the chain across a toothbrush
shine the reflectors. pray
to god today may i not be
derailed
#katyamills
i dusted my guitar yesterday and pumped air into my bicycle and rode the river for a while. god willing i might meet some old chords and new friends and find my way back to source. a dusting off may not go a great distance but i’m telling you…every creative effort makes a moment a little brighter for me and you. and that’s something to love about life.
We were long gone when I wondered; were you laughing in the aftermath of an adrenaline rush? Or were you disappointed? Or had you gone on to Broadway, indifferent to us all, searching for cool water, a smoke, friends, and some shade.
Oh! I forgot to mention i could not wear my prescription eyeglasses so i got a little bit lost every single day of the ride. We were trying to follow arrows taped to the ground to know where to turn and thankfully we had maps and crew looking out for us, so i never went more than a mile or two off track. Also, in Auburn i greeted a unicyclist with a coffee who was riding a steep grade like a pro, and one gorgeous solitary deer the last day on the American River Trail heading home. There were plenty of horses and cattle and goats and bees in boxes, and the occasional snake which had unfortunately been run over. We also got crop dusted the first day at one of our rest stops. The planes seemed to be dusting us more than the fields! Don’t know what that was about – we don’t look like crops? – but it felt like a mean country bumpkin trick and we got out of there as soon as we could!
![]() |
quentin and k. selfie @ rainbow bridge |
![]() |
keyko and k. william pond rec |
‘Jaded as Jade’
by Katya Mills
There i was…
Headed out from my apartment on foot
Cheap walmart moccassins
Expose my toes
Dressed to kill fashion
With blood on my arms
Where my kittens attacked me
While sleeping off a one night stand
With my pen
There i was…
A young american
Single white female
Contemporary genXer
Using animated semi-fiction
to report
the hideous truths
could never be received
by the culture
embedded within
them
There i was…
Bicycle framed on my shoulder
Takin’ myself too seriously
And then some
All the way down the
Stairway to the
Street…
Tryin’ for light-hearted
All through the morning
Highlighted strands of hair
Fallin’ out behind my fuji feather
Lickin’ the base of my neck like
Blonde flames
Under the influence of anti-gravity
In the dark and baby blue of the dawn
There i was…
Down the street after dawn
Dealing with all the personalities of the world in a single room…
And then some
Tolerating as best i could tolerate
Day #5 without a cigarette
My own personality, the most difficult and least refreshing of them all
Splitting hairs with split personalities
Spitting in the wind
Jaded as jade
There i was…
Banana fucking split!
Upright on my bike
Riding back home
Five miles of
Legs and no
Hands
Praying i might take a dive on the railroad tracks
Just so i could feel something
Different
Split ends and all
my hair falling back ‘gainst
gravity to lick my
neck in the
wake of
me
There i was…
With the sinking depression that clung to my soul, all of my life
Sinking back into my pain, as the burning sun rose silently over my head
In central california
Here i am…
Split ends and all
In the wake of me
Without shade
Praying for a miracle
Jaded as
Jade
i almost met my maker last night at the mercy of the mind of a lunatic, in flight. Or just plain mindless. Or selfish, impatient, impudent, or blind. Or had bad timing. In an absolutely unforgivable way.
I did not stay to find out. Lacking the ability to forgive, as I was.
I was fresh out that place unseen and unforeseeable, where life and death overlap. Where glistens the oil upon the rod ’round which the serpent coils. With intent to kill.
Yeah. Could have been my immediate end. Unlike the beginning. Much less predictable.
I just rode headlong into the flank of her white whale, on my black bike. The side paneling of an SUV against flesh is quite responsive, I am here to say.
Now I can be here to love words some more, and kind people I can be kind to, in kind. I am here to continue doing what needs be done, directly. Here to love men who love women who love women and men who love men who love women.
And kids too. And dogs and cats and feather pillows. And family. Sunrises and sets. And the imminence of things almost not yet.
The imminence of things almost not yet.
The imminence of things.
Almost
Not yet.
Pretta had a weak heart and everyone who knew her, knew. They may not have wanted her to know they knew, but she knew just the same. They may not have been old enough to understand what was said to still know. Still they knew. And she knew they knew, whether by speaking or gesturing or glancing away or rolling the eyes or tongues back or around in a circle or simply sucking on a thumb. She could relate to sucking. Her exposure sucked.
She learned to carry herself with grace. Before she even cared to, wanted to, needed to and so did. Her mother taught her with books on crown chakra balanced. Her neck became strong. Long.
She was seven years old, Pretta. Seven when she was able to walk through a small group of girls (not friends she knew but friends to them was she to be. and do.) also seven or so, most of whom she had to suffer in pre school times. Seven years old. She held her head and her dresses high, and left them all with only a breeze trailing her strong jawline she inherited from her father. She would use unsparingly from this moment on.
She would be so generous. She would not spare them her pride. Inherited. She would not spare them it! For her weakness required compensation. Overcompensation to balance. A simple concept she knew, from the books on her crown chakra to ballet she watched the older girls and prayed to some day do, too. Having descended from a murmur descended from a fever: aka Scarlet. Red hood got her namesake by course of coursing blood and blue, turned out to air. Met oxygen with a blush. Stirred the beating heart some.
Scarlet. Scarlet sometimes coursing so as to make the tissue flush. Often a cure could come, some said, if you sat bedside and waited out the wailing winds. If you did not rush. Rouge red against the pale blues tripping out in an arc the moist flower bed. Makes you scream, terrified. Strikes the weak of constitution dead. Or so was said. No one wanted scarlet fever. That was how effective she knew exhibition of this trait to be. The small group of kids became smaller below her above average height, as she passed through unfazed. No less than two of the girls left the experience, eyes glazed.
Pretta… she was going to make it. They also knew this, those who poked her and would not let her touch them back for fear of contagion. She would outlive them all! You did not dare suggest otherwise. Everyone in this majority w.a.s.p country understood. The weak. The earth. The meek. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ya Ya Ya… Her odds had low denominators, La La Ya! She learned her math by it, her perfect true condition. The one thing that made her stand out unique. Like the way she felt the day she rode her banana seat bike first through the mission. Approaching # one wholesomeness, they wanted her to think. Organic and good for the spirit. Now tilt back, nurse said, and drink.
Young Pretta sprouted tall. To help her get above it. A tall girl, many remarked, a lady still a girl. She would never know why they stopped. Why they stared. What they said. If they cared. Sometimes she really minded. Most of the times she let them see the back of her head, her long dark straight hair.
Her peers they could not relate to her on many levels. She seemed older sometimes, but not all of the time. She got tougher every year, for sure. But all knew somehow the fears she carried, though some did not know they knew. Their was no lesson in her. She was not a subject to be taught. Still most and especially the boys thirsted to learn from her or learn her or learn to be like her, the girls.
She would not give anything to be any of them. Not one. Though she looked up to quite a few. Even looked up to younger girls she knew. She did not know why she was strong, or why everyone thought her so. But she let her hair grow long like a girl. And she arm wrestled until she was strong like a boy. And the only thing she must pretend and put on, was that she was somehow tough, boy-tough.
She could and did pretend. She did not have to like it. She did not have to even be it, no. Not a fake. Atleast not pretend to the end. Where the boy would spit, she would hesitate. Then stop. Where the boys would curse, she would not. Where a boy would scream and yell and go manic? She would perform clear and conscious restraint. On a dime. Skirts falling ahead of her young calves and back again. Swing, swung. Swing, swung.
The boys eyes went wide like saucers, then telescoped small when she moved again.
They could not understand how she moved like that? could not predict when? She was a sweet sweet anomaly, in the class of twenty twenty-two. A shame she would not graduate, Pretta, at least not through and through. She had to do things differently, or wanted to, they say.
She had a weak heart, Pretta. Everyone who knew her, knew.