Onward
So, thou braggart, thou sexy-headed boy…what turns thee now? What seraphim of need descends upon thy fevered brain? "Nothing," thou sayest, in a happy rhyme, with rhythm of the feet a welcome substitute for the flesh and the heart. Thy intention follows thy wounding, and, forsooth, that was the mightiest of my intentions.
Alistaire Whit,
Songs of Windy Days
Ah, yes. Ye olde Windy Day Voice. It often promises much. When I sense change bearing down on me with full blustery force, the most important thing to hold foremost in my mind is that when I answer “Yes” to the question Are you ready? I must be aware that what I’m saying “Yes” to might not be entirely pleasant. That’s the compact I’ve made with myself (for, of course, the Voice doesn’t come from anywhere but inside of me): when I say I’m ready, it means I’m ready for anything. It doesn’t mean that I’m only ready for stupendously fabulous things to happen in my life, or vast sums of unexpected cash, or perhaps a really nice sandwich. What I’m ready for is change—unknown, and unknowable until I’m in the midst of it. To restrict myself to the merely pleasant is to doom myself to both stagnation and boredom.
Change is a good thing, but it can be painful and wracked with drama, self-created and otherwise. Embracing change means stepping off into the void, with no assurances of being borne up, no real knowledge of the depth of the chasm below or of what lies at its bottom. That gives the act a certain frisson, which I find is motivation enough for performing it.
And so: having weathered this most recent bout of change—and there have been many others, over the past eleven months, brobdingnagian changes, the kind that bruise and delight and terrify—I am, once again, in a place of tottering equilibrium, walking my path along the cliff’s edge, and hearing the voice of the wind. It’s alluring, that voice, and dangerous. The allure and the danger come from the same qualities: the uncertain promise of new things, of growth and expansion, each haloed by the risk of failure, pain, and the embarrassments of sincerity.
There are perilous updrafts along the wind-borne path to the next destination, not to mention downdrafts, and some of the weird vortex-style winds that you occasionally see lofting spinning plastic bags hundreds of feet into the air against the sides of urban buildings. All of that up and down and tossing around can be disturbing, frightening, and nauseating.
But eventually I find myself back on this path by the edge, having moved a little farther along in my journey. I can look back along the path, and see the pastels of the canyon it borders, the distant mesas of my past. Progress becomes manifest, and my stride becomes more confident.
This is my life, and this is how I live it: one leap at a time.
