I’ve been out wandering the colorful nighttide. (Still one of my favorite words.) The colors and sky have been worth seeing. I enjoyed seeing the little house cat in the industrial building, its paws raised up behind the dirty glass of the front window. The fox that darted across the street in front of me, headed to the creek. A couple of rabbits, one dog wandering and wanting to be petted, goats in their enclosure, a few bats, and a variety of birds that I collected on my Merlin app. The wind has been blowing the entire time, rustling the trees and foliage. I saw a couple of people who were ill-advisedly still up from last night. One of them was sitting by the creek on the large rocks along its banks, enjoying a beer. I don’t normally walk in the creek barefoot so early in the morning, but I couldn’t resist. There are a few places near my apartment where the sky opens up and are relatively uncluttered. I sometimes forget how much a juxtaposition the area is. The world is unfortunately waking up now. But I owned it for long enough this morning.
For all of you out there who sometimes need a song blasting on the way to work… Find “A Symptom Of Being Human” by Shinedown. I’ve listened to this song multiple times with a critical ear, trying to pinpoint what exactly this song embodies that provokes an emotional reaction in me. The closest I can come Is that it invokes a nostalgic feeling without being tied to a specific time period. It’s a song about mental health and having empathy for every human soul who crosses your path. Even toxic bastards, managers, baseball fans, and registered voters. It’s Thursday which means you’ve made the mistake of delineating your days as if one has more importance than any other.
Am I the only person who has infrequent yet regular interactions with someone simply to pretend to be annoyed? A few weeks ago, a man in a blue sedan was going at least twice the speed limit down the hill toward the Scull Creek bridge. I had more than enough time to cross the street, so I did. The man in the car stopped very quickly considering the speed he was going. He backed up a little and put his window down. I will call him Chad. I calculate there is a 1 in 74 chance that is his actual name.
“Hey, you need to be more careful,” he hollered at me.
“I’m not sure that caution will help me with low flying blue aircraft like the one you are piloting.”
He couldn’t help himself. The irritation disappeared from his face. “Fair enough. You should use the crosswalk.”
“And you should watch for low power lines,” I fired back at him. Both of us were smiling at this point. He waved, put his window up, and sped away.
A couple of weeks ago, he saw me standing by the bridge. He slowed down and put down his passenger window.
“Still running your insurance scam?”
I laughed. “Yes, because your mom says I don’t make enough at my job to support us both.”
He laughed, waved, and drove away.
Today, I saw him coming from the other direction for once. He put down his window as he slowed. There was a car behind him.
“Mom asked me to tell you to bring home a loaf of bread on the way,” he said, obviously remembering my last joke.
Because of the car behind him, I didn’t want to hold him up so I gave him two thumbs up and laughed. He laughed too, as he drove away.
When we are firing back and forth at each other with commentary, it feels exactly like a hidden camera sitcom.
The interactions make me feel literal joy. Maybe because it all started with a flash of irritation. But now I’m on the hook for clever comebacks. I guess I’ll ask his mom while she is cooking us dinner tonight.
I got up before the storm started early this morning. The erratic lightning caused some of my solar light bottles to flicker like fireflies accidentally using Morse code. But it was my newest acrylic solar light vase that caught my eye. The couple of hundred fairy lights permanently embedded in the hardened acrylic shone like maniscule stars. Trying to capture the colors in a photo appeared fruitless. That’s okay. It’s like trying to describe a moment of beauty to someone who didn’t witness it. X .
One of two surprises given to me for taking care of a sweet dog and cat a couple of weeks ago. The other one I will hold in reserve for a bit of shenanigans. In two weeks when it stops raining, perhaps this one will reveal its polychromatic sunlit spectacle.
“Tomorrow is the bastard child of our imagination. It presumes certainty wherein none can be found, even by the most expert and capable amongst us. This is no exhortation to whisper to yourself, ‘Carpe diem.’ All the things that worry you are illusions. The time you have is not even borrowed. It’s yours. If you cannot find it in yourself to detach from the self-imposed blueprint of identity and ambition long enough to comprehend this, there is no question that you’re probably wasting the only resource that matters: time. In the time it took to read this, 105 souls have moved on to whatever awaits them. That nebulous visitor in your thoughts? The one that tickles your discomfort. It is a primeval instinct of awareness and reminder. Distractions only dampen it. Don’t seize the day. Seize the moments that are in front of you. Although you probably won’t practice it until you’re older, don’t let the words ‘later’ or ‘tommorow’ pass casually from your lips. These words are vanity in a nutshell.”
There are some things that only the early risers can experience. When the moon is full, there are a couple of spots along the road where I live where the world loses its shadows and becomes a dark rainbow. .
Earlier in the week, someone complained that we don’t actually own anything. Their focus was on taxes. I didn’t say it out loud, but I wanted to point out that ownership is an illusion. I wanted to point out that their frustration couldn’t possibly change how things are. Even the core of identity, our body and brain, is governed by expiration. It’s not the type of comment that most people enjoy during a conversation. Certainly, we hold things for a few decades if we are lucky. There’s no doubt that everything is borrowed while we’re walking around on this planet.
Almost all of us, no matter what we do or strive for, might end up as a footnote on a Wikipedia page. Once the people we affect are gone, all we can hope for is an echo effect; moments, pieces of our love, wit, or presence that infected others for the right reasons. While I am not a religious person, this sort of thinking always makes me think of Ecclesiastes.
We spend our lives chasing security and possession. Strictly speaking, obtaining either is an illusion. Security is momentary and based on temporary variables that we don’t control. If it can be owned, it can also be taken or lost.
I was told to relearn the lesson of all this. Jumping out of a plane helped. Watching people chase things that give them the feeling of control also reminds me that learned detachment is about the only means to let go of all the musts, shoulds, and nonsense we’ve accumulated.
I’ve been practicing more to remind myself that worry and anxiety are largely based on the desire for control or certainty. Both steal your allotted energy to take in what happens for what it is.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” Captain Picard. I come back to this quote often. Lord knows I am not guilty of doing everything right.
When I went skydiving recently, I signed many waivers, ones that consistently reminded me that I was giving away all control. The back of my parachute harness made this clear; almost anything can happen when you jump out of an airplane. Not just human error but a million mechanical or environmental things. The universe is not a safe place. The truth is that almost anything can happen when you’re on the ground, too. Your organs can spontaneously fail, an invisible aneurysm can surrender, or a vehicle can come from nowhere and turn out the lights without warning. You can wake up to find someone you love has departed, whether through the door or into the unknown place that waits for each of us. A plane can fall from the sky, even if it is piloted by the most expert of those who chose the job or avocation. You can trip on the sidewalk and break your neck, even on a beautiful sunlight-filled day.
I knew in real time when I leaned out of the open plane into the sky that THIS was the moment I’d waited for. Not the 30 seconds of freefall, nor the minutes of floating down with the parachute, watching how everything looks different from such a height. Don’t get me wrong. When the instructor asked me how it was to jump out once we were floating, I enthusiastically shouted, “Holy f@ck!” It was already over by the time I struggled to hold the harness on my chest and keep my arms and head tucked safely. The unspoken thing about skydiving is that you’re going to get back to the ground – one way or another. Likewise, you’re going to end up somewhere in life, even if you don’t make conscious choices.
The next part is tough to admit. I jumped out of selfishness. The day I was in the tree, watching a plane go over, I just knew I had to jump. I waited to be nervous or afraid, even on the long ride up into the beautiful afternoon sky. The only moment that I really wanted was to experience leaning out the door and knowing I had to let go. The moments during and after were window dressing and distractions from wanting to KNOW what would go through my head. It wasn’t fear because it didn’t feel real in the way that we think about reality. It was surrender.
Even if fear had overwhelmed me, I still would have fallen out. Oversimplifying it, the result is the same. There is a lesson in there. The result for each of us is the same, ultimately. It’s the in-between and how we either enjoy the moments or are dismayed by them. Overthinkers and anxious people spend too much time concerned with appearances, control, and things beyond our control. Your face, mind, and body are the ones you have; work with what you have, change what you can, and release the rest of the nonsense into the void. I can preach it because although I understand it, I don’t consistently practice what I preach. That pisses me off.
When you are prone to anxiety or worry, you’re really not seeing that you are trying to be in control of things that aren’t in your domain to do so. Both anxiety and worry take energy and focus away from what it is. Cognitively, I get it. But if you can accept the idea that although you live your life perfectly, the results are not going to be perfect. So why do we expect things to go moderately well when we know we aren’t doing things correctly? There’s nothing you can do about it. This sort of visceral understanding can either mobilize you to action or it can freeze you in your tracks, maybe forever.
I say I jumped out of selfishness because it’s true. I’m hoping that the moment of looking out into the sky clogs my head with the absurdity of worrying about the infinite list of things that cannot be controlled. I’ve been in the headspace before where I was completely detached. It’s liberating, but it is also dangerous.
Friday at noon, I climbed 30 feet into the trees near the creek. Saturday, I climbed 10,000+ feet into the sky, leaned out into the nothingness, and let go. The one second I spent hanging out of the plane, looking down at Northwest Arkansas with the sun on the horizon on such a beautiful day, is something I will be thinking about for a while. The 15-20 minute plane ride to get the right altitude was gorgeous, too, even though we were cramped into a very confined space. If you are prone to nervousness or overthinking, this part would be your downfall. The 30 seconds of freefall was an adventure, but nothing could top the loud roar of the plane and the wind going silent in my head and fading away in that one single second. I kept waiting for the nervousness to hit me; it didn’t seem real. It was more of a hassle waiting on the process to get on the small plane. Erika accompanied me to the site but, surprisingly, wasn’t interested in jumping out of a perfectly good washing machine disguised as an airplane. Just letting go and falling, knowing everything was beyond my control. Once the parachute deployed, it was live tv with the world at my feet. Trees won’t feel the same to me now. The only real danger of jumping is the landing. It went perfectly as I slid across a few yards of clover and came to a stop. Back to the real world, with the memories of allowing myself to let go and jump into the sky.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 