The Magic of Falling and the Inclination to Fly

I'm sitting here at 7:58 on a Monday night typing underneath a sky that makes me think everything is possible.

I've been thinking a lot about a idea that was offered to me when I was in my early twenties that has stuck with me.  It's the idea of surrounding yourself with people who you want to be like and people who you admire. It doesn't mean that you have to mind-blowingly admire every person in your life, but that, generally, you gravitate toward the people you see lesson, love and inspiration in.  The people who, by their very relationship to the world around them and how they interact with it, make you strive to be better. Make you aim to be less afraid.  (Here I'm thinking of that saying "When the root is deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.")  This is the people I hold in my life, the people I'm beginning to hold in my life, and the people I will hold in my life in the future.

It's like building your own dream team so to speak.

Anyway.

I'm thinking of my friend Alex tonight.  He recently sent me a video of him telling a story to a group of people at a house party. (I harassed him until he agreed to have someone record it).  Since I got it, I have watched it multiple times.  I have shared it with multiple friends in multiple countries.

His graciousness, love, talent, humbleness, intelligence, and eye on the love of the collective over the individual always infuses me with a lesson and mentorship that I am forever appreciating, learning from, and craving. He is able to speak truth to power as easily as he is able to welcome someone who may feel excluded. His agility at navigating languages (both literal and figurative), his sharp analysis, and being able to laugh at himself moves me in the way that the people in my life move me to do and be better. And, perhaps above all, to create and to connect instead of sever and isolate.

I'm not sure why it makes me tear up when I watch it.

Part of it has to do with the love and respect I have for people who choose to feel over numbing out. 
People who will speak the truth and take risks and speak beauty in this world that, too often, reaches to crush emotion, to hide emotion, to encourage people to hide themselves under hard shells thinking it as protection, and/or to commodify everything around them that originated from a beating, flowing, vibrant heart.

I think that may be why I tear up at it.

(pause)

I want so gently to remove your mask. It's hard enough to find water here.

(pause)

It takes a lot to hold on to what your heart feels.

This world is set up for people to pretend to want, to desire, and to hate so many things that make no sense. Things that have no authentic connection to a true (untainted by power systems and expectations) desire. 

To love and be loved and to offer love.

To recognize that sometimes that love simply comes in the form of making eye contact with someone and seeing them. To make room for who they are because they are wanted.

To recognize that sometimes that love comes in the form of choosing to connect rather than sever.

To recognize that sometimes that love comes in the form of building and letting yourself be loved in a way you were never shown.

Raise your voice in swells, find your meanings then
Use your signs inside to relive and never care

No point in holding back on what you're holding
No matter it be shit or it be golden
Foundations shift, they're still shifting
We set up, we set up our falls

Hold on tight to your fears
Cause that's your hatred
And that's your love as well

Learn to use all your fears
As a fuel, an engine
To get you where you need

I must always remember
There's no point to surrender 

I shift

I shift



Here is to the far-flung families we build and the heights to which we can lift (and sometimes propel) each other within them.


Be well, be loved.

Thank you, Alex.


k.

(First italicized words are written by Crass. The second set of italicized words are from Turnstile by Hot Water Music)
(Image: John Evans, Beach with Moon Heavens via chasingtailfeathers tumblr)
(Title: Inspired by the beautiful story Pájaro, by A. Frixione.)