Route 60 Short-Story Journals March 9, 2004           The Recumbant Man   Salton Sea to Palo Verde -- In 1956 Ilse Aichinger wrote an Austrian story The Bound Man. A man had been bound by robbers and left to struggle into town still entwined head to foot in knotted rope. The villagers found his entangled larking about comical and invited him to join the circus and perform. He did, remaining bound all the time. “Ladies and gentlemen, the bound man!”    Today I began to feel like the bound man, bound to a bicycle all the time. Waking to it, loading it, sitting on it, balancing it, steering it, pedaling it, pedal stroke after stroke in cadence with the hills, the wind, the traffic, stroke after stroke, minute after minute, hour after hour, and day after day.    The people found it all interesting. They could even read about it on the web. The passers by found it interesting, too. “Ladies and gentlemen, the recumbent man!”    “Grass and sunlight, tent pegs driven into the ground and then pulled up again, and on to the next village. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the bound man!’ He had never felt so much at one with his rope.”    As the winter solstice approached, the sun bent its face low over the landscape and made the plain what it was. The horizon went on without end into the big fall sky, never closing with any pedal stroke; until at days end a final summit around the last bend and a camp. “Ladies and gentlemen, the recumbent man!”    Aren’t we all bound? Bound to our families, our work, our religion, our home, our place on earth, and our pursuit of happiness. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” But bound by actual ropes, or to a bicycle?    The bound man finally lost his burden in tragedy. The recumbent man would keep on down the road. He had never felt so much at one with his bicycle.