Flapping and Leaping

I will ascend. I will go up. I will lift off. Soon. I'm rushing about flapping and leaping. It is a precise art that needs to be refined. It is the art of letting go of the earth. It is the art of up, up and away. I find myself, as the moment casually strolls in, practising breathing out. I sigh often. I breath out big belly fulls of breath, in silent sighs rising from my toes. It took me a while to realise that it was all about letting go, but when I got it, it made so much sense. Soon I will be suspended in space, transported through time and place. I have to let go to be able to go at all. I like the earth. I like her under my feet. When I hold my breath, feigning control, I grow rigid and then weary. I have to learn to be a flute. Air comes in, music comes out. I will be an empty channel that gentle embraces and softly caresses a flow of life passing through me. It is all I have ever been. If only it could be sweet music that I always made! Instead, as I leap and flap and jump and land - I find myself heaving and huffing, grunting and guffawing. I stop and steady myself. I breathe in and then, smiling, simply breathe out. Like so many things in my little life, it doesn't have to be hard! I stay soft and prepare to transcend the surface of my little life. Ready, steady, go!

Preparations For Flight

I am steadying, readying myself. Packing and planning and listing and wishing and dreaming and organising and sorting and borrowing and counting and panicking and singing and putting aside and casting off and buying up and thinking and tuning out and readying. I am on the brink. I bend my knees and practise springing up into my lift off position, arms flung up and away from my stone body. I am about to fly. Flying is in my nature. To depart. To journey on. My gypsy soul will not stay put or put up or shut down. Adventure waits. She bats her lush lids at me enticingly. My flight companion calling me up and away. I do not want to leave this place. This space where we have nested in this self made stillness. Stay here. I will return. I will bring wide stories and breaths breathed in foreign airs. I will bring pictures with words, of people and places, rivers, mountains, forests and cathedrals. I will return with pirate booty to share and savour. It is a wonder that stone can fly, but this bone bag will rattling up a run way and clank into flight, suddenly weightless. A whisp of soul, searching the blue yonder. Speak to my toes when I return and let them tell you all the soils they have kissed. Listen to my hands recall the struggle to communicate with other tongues. I must take little, so there is a space, an opening to hold the treasures I will bring home. I take you with me. You are the anchor that gently holds my kite string. I will soar the wide blue dome, but bring me home, bring me home to your rich depths, your warmth hearth.

Inside the minute spaciousness of a new year

A new year has begun and I am in it. This pregnant container waiting for my self doodling in time and space. Already it holds many songs, some weeping, laughter, the work of my hands, the ticking of my digestive system and the thrumming of my heart. I have casually slept away hours of this year. Already reaching toward Autumn, in this Southern Hemisphere. I want to befriend this year - to inhabit it fully. My feet pressed against one side and my hands against the other I will freefall down through time as if it were an express elevator. Somehow I must catch this one. So many others have slipped by. They are here for the having one brief flicker and then made to step aside for the next passage. Right now...right NOW, I am seeing and celebrating the yearness of this time, this sweet and sour illusion of my being. I whisper, half to myself and half to all the universe, "Remember Solomon's ring! Remember Solomon's ring!"