Taking Flight

Via text message this morning my intriguing sister asked me if I was already up because I had signed onto facebook at 9am. Yes, I was awake and actually by that time throwing my laundry in to be done. She told me that her and her daughter had just gone for a morning bike ride in a thunderstorm. I could instantly picture my niece half laughing and half crying, sometimes I think she gets confused on what emotion she feels and just does both. Which isn't that far off from what I do as well. I'm finding that more and more a lot of emotions are very closely related. I'm not talking love/hate, because that is so cliche and I don't feel that way. I can envision my sister telling G (my niece), that she needs to peddle and both of them going at top speed as the rain falls. My niece would be yelling for my sister to slow down and wait for her, but be trying her hardest to keep up.

My niece is 6, and it was about that time when I started biking with my father. Sometimes both of my sisters, my father and me would all go for long rides down the back dirt roads of the town I'm from. We would ride hours and every now and then we would be able to ride along some of the main "paved" roads. Most of the time my father would stop by a lake to look for fish, stop in the woods to look for deer prints, or to talk to someone we would run into. My father can talk to anyone about anything for hours. As a kid this is torture, as an adult when we go places it is still torture. I remember many nights riding the bikes around dusk, the wind in my face as we would try to speed down hills at top speed. Every now and then trying to extend my arms out to the side to feel what it might feel like to fly.

When I was a preteen I would spend 1 week a year at a church camp. I was a dorky kid and for the most part that week was spent being teased and made fun of for being different. My family didn't have a ton of money, so my clothing was never as new or brand name as the other kids, I didn't want to play sports, and I spent most of that week trying to be invisible. Out of the many weeks I spent at that camp I can really only think of two times that I actually had a good time. One of them being woken up in the middle of the night, and my cabin being taken outside to play games. One of the things we did was run across a field in the open cold night. I ran as if the world was falling apart at my feet, my hands flying out to my sides, my legs kicking so fast that I forgot I was moving at all. This is what flying was supposed to feel like. With my eyes closed I could see and feel my body lifting off the ground, I was rising above the trees that lined the field, my toes brushing past the tops of the leaves, I was above the world looking down. Eventually you have to open your eyes and the world collides with you again. The world will always collide with you again, it is unavoidable.

In an acting class I am currently taking we are learning about allowing your body to have full emotions and not cutting them off. We have learned that when you decide you only want to feel an emotion up to a 5 (for example, on a scale of 1-10), then you are not only cutting all that emotion off, but all of your emotions. You can't expect to only feel certain emotions to one degree and feel others higher. As an artist I love to feel things, even when they are shitty, because it makes me feel alive. I'm not saying that everything either needs to feel like a win or a lose, a birth or a death, but what's the point in stopping yourself from feeling anything?

In this life time I believe that I am here to have all my dreams come true, to fall in love and to learn to be happy. I am here to enjoy all the simple little moments and be content with the things I have.

I may never be able to run across a field with my arms out and lift off the ground, but I will fly.

"I want to be naked running through the streets
I want to invite this so called chaos that you'd think I dare not be
I want to be weightless flying through the air
I want to drop all these limitations at the shoes upon my feet"
-Alanis Morissette 'so-called chaos'

Damaged Goods

I feel like damaged goods.

I feel broken and unfixable. Today is one of those days where I find myself asking, "why" and question after question floods my busy mind. I can't relax and I'm not sure what's beating more, my heart, my head, or me on myself. My chest is rising and falling but each breath seems to come slower then the last. I'm aching inside and I don't know how to make it rest and pass. I try to be honest and open, as much as I possibly can, but every time I have this fear of falling fast. My mind is a jumbled mess that I don't know how to begin to unravel, I'm stuck in this mind filled with unrequited babble.

I feel like damaged goods.
I feel like damaged goods.
I feel like damaged goods.

Full

My brain feels full. I tried to clean it out, but nothing is flowing how I'd like it to.

Voyeur

In December the last of my grandmothers passed away. In June my family is gathering over the graves of my grandfather and my uncle, both of which I never met, to spread her ashes. Someone asked me the other day if that was what my grandma wanted, and I can only assume yes, I never asked. I am thinking this is my fathers idea, or that she had told him. I do believe that it is what my grandma would have wanted, or does want. Often I've wondered if the spirits of loved ones stay with us, or when you're dead are you just dead? Gone. I don't feel my grandma here at all, I've never gotten a cold breeze or had something fly in front of my face to let me know she is with me. one might think that this is sad, but I actually find that it makes me smile. My grandma spent a large chunk of her life alone, as she wanted. So, why would she want to stay after her death? I do believe that she is somewhere better, or at least some place where she isn't carrying the pain she once did anymore.

With this gathering my semi-estranged aunt will also be making her return to my home town. We have been keeping in touch a bit over the last six months or so, but before that there were years that passed with not as much as a phone call. I was very happy to receive a phone call from her on my birthday, the best gift I was given this year. That and a camera phone photo of my fish Margaret that one of my friends has been taking care of for me. Earlier this week I had a great conversation with someone that I'm very much enjoying getting to know and at one point we were speaking about family and the tension that is carried between members of the same clan over time. For years I spent energy distancing myself from my family and only over the past few years have I really put the extra effort into getting to know them. It is one of the best things I've ever done. I don't know exactly what it was that was holding us apart but maybe sometimes you just need space? It started in high school when I got my first car and lasted until just two years or so ago. Now one of my sisters is my best friend but it takes work and effort to really mend a broken bridge. The relationships that I have with my family now are awesome, I wish i could have had the same ones growing up but then maybe it wouldn't have been so easy for me to leave home. Over the last few months I've been trying to call my aunt every do often just to check in and at first it was awkward, but now it's much easier. To get a phone call from her on my birthday almost made me cry. I really am someone that loves the little things in life. As much as I want a huge house as an adult, I'd rather have a smaller one filled with love. Yes, I realize how corny that sounds but I'm kind of a corny guy.

In June I will be traveling back to my home town to let the final pieces of my grandma find the Earth for one last time. Every time I think of her I think of The Price is Right with a smile and of course my favorite game Plenko (I probably spelled that wrong). I think of her huge dog Madison, mystery novels, how she hated mice and my sister chasing her around the yard with a dead mouse. I have no idea what her favorite food was but I know her favorite candy was chocolate covered cherries and the cookies that come in the blue tin. Her skin was soft and felt like paper to the touch, cotton candy swirls of white hair and country western movies blaring from the tv.

If I was to die tonight and given the option of stay or go, I would stay, but who would I choose to follow? I've always been one to enjoy watching people, I've always been a voyeur.