December 2005

December, 2005

Tis the season. Merry Whatever and Happy Whatever it is that you celebrate. Whatever holiday is around the corner from you I’m sure it means that family and friends will gather to celebrate one another. We celebrate spiritually and secularly but we celebrate. Usually this time of year my thoughts and energy are focused on making or buying presents and planning cooking binges. While that holds true this year, it’s tinged with something else: a need to celebrate Life in all its intricate complexity. I feel more connected to my own life now than I have been in a long time and I want to revel in that personal connection as much as I can. By recovering that inner connection, I’ve recovered broader connections, too: to family (I'll be going home for the first time in about four years), to friends (I recently talked to someone I hadn't spoken to in almost seven years) and to friends who are play partners as well (I'm trying to shoot with ~Z~ this month).

When I am suspended, flying, I feel very connected to what I am coming to understand as the pulse of life - my life and the lives of anyone who is around me. I feel a connection with what can only be called The Divine or that which exists above and below what we know as life, too. It’s all a big puzzle to me…a mystery to unravel with each flight I take. How curious to find such something so confusing and edifying during an activity that restrains and binds me. Actually, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, considering the way I view suspension: as being held between two states of being - tied but free, floating but weighed down by gravity, pained but elated. I swing between the mundane and the sublime and no matter how long I stay up each flight is too short for my taste because I never tire of that inner and outer connection, never tire of surfing on the waves of the mystery.

So, this season I’m celebrating Life and all that it’s brought me by pushing at, and staying connected to, the mystery.

Namaste,

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