The cover for “Our Own Day Here” by Richard Risemberg, published August, 2014.
It can be hard to live in a big American city, or any car-dominated place, and maintain a healthy understanding of your identity, the natural world, and your status when you’re walking, riding the bus, or a bike everywhere you go. It is easy to describe yourself and your life from the perspective of those driving by you at 45 mph in their glass boxes on wheels. How do you form a self image on the other side of the windshield – from the sidewalk, bus stop, or bike lane?
Our friend Richard Risemberg recently published a book of essays, Our Own Day Here (Crow Tree Publications), which sometimes rants, sometimes reaches for the heady and philosophical, and sometimes stuns with funny moments that are simply out of reach for the people stuck in the modern Happy Motoring mindset.
The reading is ideally suited for those in-between moments of your day – waiting for a bus, on your break at work, or a quiet stop on a long walk or a bike ride. I worked my way through Risemberg’s essays as I lived my version of some of the moments he writes about; I feel safer for reading his essays about things in life I haven’t been through yet but now could see arising.
Risemberg’s an author whose time has come – for a younger generation rising up to meet him and for his own generation, looking back on the last 40 years and questioning our trajectory and the myths we tell about ourselves. Get on this bus!
Our Own Day Here (Pocket Edition) by Richard Risemberg is available from our online store!
Richard Risemberg is a photographer, writer, clothier, cyclist, and one of the sharpest wits on two wheels in Los Angeles. Hailing from the far shores of Argentina, he emigrated with his family to the U.S. as boy and put down roots in Mid-City. His writing can be found online from various outlets (including this very blog!) but, importantly, the bicycle clothes he manufactures here in LA can only be found in the Bicycle Fixation online store.