How I survived myself

 I look at my hands sometimes. See the lines etched out across my palms, like an artist took a pencil crayon and scratched them out at random. Some are deep and stretched out with purpose, some placed there quick and light as if by accident. I examine my finger nails, the way one bends unevenly from having being slammed in the door when I was a child. I see the scar on my knuckle, barely visible, a permanent reminder of the dangers of showing off on a bicycle.

 I trace my right hand with my left and am reminded of all the things I’ve held in them; My stuffed bunny Balthazar, the hands of my mother and father as I swung between them at the zoo; My baby sister, a skipping rope, a paintbrush, my grandfather’s hands as I watched him fade away. I’ve held books, and sand dollars, friend’s hair, the faces of the boys I’ve kissed, the door knob as I slammed it shut. I’ve held heart rocks, and the ocean as it poured out between my fingertips and back to sea.

  I hold my hands up to the light and it’s as if I can see right through them. Skin, bones, tiny blue veins coursing with blood, all transparent. All that I am, invisible. Gone. I look at my hands and I am reminded that I am not forever. If I look closely I can see my fingers curling up with arthritis, the memories of all the things they’ve done hidden in the space between my palms. I can see them turning to dust. Tiny particles disintegrating, rising into vapour, and pouring back onto the earth as rain. Back to sea.

  I look at my hands and I know I am not them. I am not my skin, my bones, my blood, my breathe. I am not the words on this page, nor the body that writes them. I am not my memories. I am not even my thoughts.

  I am nothing. And everything.

  In a discussion in one of my acting classes we discussed the impossibility of the job. To capture the essence of a character, to embody them, understand them; a daunting task.

  Our guest speaker laughed. “Do you even begin to think you can understand all the intricacies of the universe? Know all its secrets?”

“No”, we replied.

“ Well the human being is just another universe.”

  I am nothing. I am everything. I am the mud, the leaves, the dust, the trees. I am the wind, and the wild grey sea.

  I hold my hands cupped out in front of me to catch raindrops as they fall from the night sky. They slip through the cracks between my fingers and make their way back into the earth. I look at my hands and they are small. They are etched with lines, there is dirt between the fingernails.

  I do not matter. And yet, I am matter, so I must.

  There was a time when I could fly. I would begin by walking, slowly at first, and then I would pick up momentum as I neared the edge of the hill on our street and my feet would lift off the pavement, into the invisible air and then higher, and higher.  The wind would pick me up and I would soar above my neighbourhood, above the earth. I would dip down, skimming the rooftops and then I would fly back up again, using my arms to part the air as I climbed. I would fly at night, and in the sunshine, and in the rain. There were days I ventured passed the familiar and would discover river valleys and mountains and city streets. When I grew tired, I would land as gentle as a butterfly, back on solid ground.

  I had many tell me I must have been dreaming, but I didn’t believe that could be true. If it were just a dream why could I remember it so clearly? Why could I taste the wind on my tongue, hear it singing in my ears, feel it as it coursed through my bones and made my heart beat fast. If it wasn’t real, why did I know what it was to feel so light, so peaceful, so free?  

  Around five years old I decided to prove it. Our home had a steep set of stairs connecting upstairs to the main level. I was going to take off and then proceed to fly around my house doing aerial acrobatics and impressing all the naysayers with my invisible wings. I stood at the top, took a deep breath, lifted off, flew for a dazzling moment and then came crashing down and broke my mother’s beautiful ceramic urn that was holding umbrellas at the bottom of the staircase.  I remember being impressed that my head was hard enough to break a big clay pot without needing any stitches.

  I also remember deciding never again to prove to anyone that I could fly.

  There was a time when I believed that anything was possible. When I believed in faeries, and magic, and wishing wells, and in dreaming dreams bigger than the sky. When I knew I could just fly up there and catch them like a falling star in the night.

  Tonight I want to believe in all those things again. I want to collect the wings I left gathering dust in the basement, brush them off and fly. I will go even further this time. I will seek out the magic and the beauty in all the corners of the wide world. I will cross oceans, sail with the sun as it rises and falls, and I will embrace the universe and all my dreams with my peaceful heart.

  When I am hungry, I eat. How basic. How crude. How easy would it be if all we hungered for was food? If I could give the man on the corner an apple and he’d be satisfied? If I could give a hungry child some bread to stop the pain? If I knew what to feed myself to keep me full for weeks? But we need so much more to nourish our starving souls. We need so much more to feed our hungry hearts.

  Sometimes, we are hungry for music. For community. For acceptance. For love. For someone to stand up and say “you matter to me.” A couple of weeks ago I attended a concert put on by the Calgary Drop- In Centre. I have spent time in this building, gotten to know some of the clients, employees, and volunteers. It is not an easy place to spend time. It is a busy place. It’s loud, it’s dirty, the smell takes some getting used to. It is a world unlike the one I know. But the people are the same as you and me. They are hungry just like you and me.

  Sometimes we feed our hunger the only way we know how. We fill the void with alcohol and crack cocaine, with chocolate and sex. Sometimes we feed it with anger, sometimes sadness, sometimes regret. Food can be a dangerous thing.

  But sometimes we are served a meal, or better yet, we cook our own, that makes Canada’s food guide look like deep-fried awful. This was the feast I attended on a Tuesday night in June. This was no fast food production. It took time and a lot of hard work. It took patience, plane tickets, media calls, last minute panic, and uncertainty. It took the desire of artists and people in the Calgary community to make a difference, and it took the courage of some unsung voices to stand up and say “I am ready to be heard”. The concert was centered around the song “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King. It is a song that has great meaning to a place whose many residents have been left standing on their own. At one point in the evening all the musicians, who included the never before heard and the heard a lot, all joined together on stage to sing with Ben E. King himself. They shared the song with eachother, and as the lyrics rose up to the sky and reached out across the sea of people there to witness, we began to stand up one by one, until the whole room was on it’s feet.  

 To describe it here would be like trying to tell you what mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes like; I could say it’s cold, it’s minty, and chocolatey too, but… you’d have to taste it for yourself to really know. So I will say that it was mouth wateringly delicious. And yet, I left hungry for more. For more music, more understanding, more acceptance, more dancing. For freedom, love, kindness, creation. Hungry for change, for peace, for laughter. For a world where our starving hearts are full of what we are really hungry for.