WHY I RIDE WHEN THE WORLD IS SLEEPING

In the dark, I learned to sit in silence, transfixed by nature and memory.

- by REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS

THE CICADAS, CRICKETS, little owls, and even the rustling of leaves turned the night into a chorus accompanying my churning legs. I pedaled, angry and weeping, in the dark. I'd gotten married to the first woman I dated out of prison. Two sons and 15 years later, our marriage had been rockier for longer than it had been stable. I didn't know that divorce would soon make me a single father but knew that whatever dam had kept me from weeping had broken. I was 42 years old and hadn't felt this alone since I'd been in solitary confinement.

On a borrowed bike with a borrowed helmet on a road lit only by the moon, I pedaled faster than I should have, two miles down a winding road in Italy's Umbrian countryside. I'd received a 2023 Civitella Fellowship and was invited to Italy, along with about a dozen others—painters, photographers, musicians, historians, and two poets fleeing the war in Ukraine—for a six-week residency in a circa-15th-century castle. My family was staying in a villa two miles away. Twice a day I drove to see them, and twice a day I returned to work in a castle that felt as fanciful as the giants that Don Quixote made windmills out to be. I didn't know that in less than two years I'd be diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder. I did not yet have a name for the unbearable sadness I felt. But I knew something inside me was turning my waking days into a losing battle against tears.

I was further away from prison than I'd ever been, finding solace in the discovery of cycling, being reminded what it means to keep going when the world around you becomes barely noticeable. I'd never seriously ridden a bike, and that night and many nights after, having a pair of tires spin under me, again and again, kept me tethered to my mind.