Well, that was a bit of brinksmanship!
Yesterday by 4:30 pm I still had no word of the arrival of my new trike
in time for his naming ceremony this morning. I phoned the Darth at the
last possible minute, just in time for me to leave my home and arrive
there while the shop was still open, and heard that it had finally shown
up. Earlier calls to HP Velotechnik had informed us that it had left the
factory on Friday 26th. This was late because they had run out of rims
and had to wait for these to be delivered, which got bogged down in the
Mercury Retro and the German transport strikes. And it was taking a
prodigious amount of time to cross the Rhine!
Two things were not as planned. I had paid a supplement for short
cranks, more comfortable for someone of my 1.7 meters, and strangely not
fitted as standard. (It would seem the average German Dark Sider is very
tall, a pleasant thing to contemplate.) Also the parking brake on the
rear wheel was supposed to be actionable with a push button. Instead it
is a tacky velcro-strap arrangement that they told us when we ordered
was no longer used. We will sort this out with them over the next few weeks.
Widdershins is his name. Widdershins means "in the direction opposite to
the rotation of the Sun", or in other words, "towards the Dark Side",
appropriate for a Bent trike in Halloween colors, born so close to the
Day of the Dead. Also the German origin of the word, "wider sinnig" or
"against sense", picks up on his German provenance. And many
conventional people consider Bents against sense. The Scorpion is a
Scorpio, associated with Sex, Death and Regeneration. All of this might
frighten some but Scorpio is my own 5th house which is all about sport,
play and fun. I persistently associate this time of year with pleasant
engagements, handsome men, enjoyable outings. (Flyzipper too is a
Scorpio, he will be 3 on Tuesday.) Which reminds me, Happy Birthday to
all the Scorpios on my mailing list!
Widdershins narrowly escaped another name. I reached such a state of
mental obsession over him that I very nearly called him the Zahir, after
Borges' haunting eponymous tale about a man who descends into madness
after becoming obsessed with a 5 cent coin. "Belief in the Zahir is of
Islamic origin, and seems to date from the eighteenth century...Zahir in
Arabic means 'notorious', visible'; in this sense it is one of the
ninety-nine names of God, and the people (in Muslim territories) use it
it to signify 'beings or things which possess the terrible property of
being unforgettable, and whose image finally drives one mad'". Both
Widdershins and I have Third House Plutos, connoting to astrologers a
tendency to OCD, among other things. But by this morning he had reverted
to Widdershins - I suppose the best antidote to being obsessed by
something is to take posession of it.
For the ceremony, I made an infusion of sage, for Spica, and plantain,
for Arcturus, which I transferred into Widdershins' water bottle. With
this, I drew the symbols of Spica and Arcturus on the floor of the
garage. I placed Widdershins on them, and drew a circle around the
whole. Then I seated myself on Widdershins and read out loud an
invocation of each of the planetary deities of his horoscope, one by
one, by sign, position and desired interpretation. At 6:15 exactly, I
pushed off and rode him out of the circle. So that was his first moving
pedal stroke. In the shop yesterday, he didn't move at all, but spent
all the time on his parking brake while we made our adjustments.
So now I can finally go take a nap. Cheers to all!
Elisa