itsy-bitsy life..

"There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus."

- Annie Dillard.

Man, the stuff this lady writes makes me go crazy inside. I reckon I'd go running through the streets throwing my hat into the air if I wore one!

lucky schmuck

yeah.. that's me.

I can't believe I'm going away in three days! ahh!! So exciting. I feel so spoilt (I am so spoilt!), being able to go overseas again, and join in with people's lives in another part of the world.
..Give and receive, bless and be blessed (I hope!).
Taste and see the differences.
Celebrate common, immortal humanity.
Have fun.
See some cool stuff.
Live courageously.
Spark myself alight on the world...

"Who turned on the lights? You did, by waking up: you flipped the light switch, started up the wind machine, kicked on the flywheel that spins the years. Can you catch hold of a treetop, or will you fly off the diving planet as she rolls?

Knowing you are alive is feeling the planet buck under you, rear, kick, and try to throw you; you hang on to the ring. It is riding the planet like a log downstream, whooping.

What is important is anyone's coming awake and discovering a place, finding in full orbit a spinning globe one can lean over, catch, and jump on. What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch – with an electric hiss and cry – this speckled mineral sphere, our present world."

- Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

There's been a lot of ups and downs to life lately, but I've still got to be one of the luckiest girls around.

Waking up on two legs

"Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or drowning: in media res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighbourhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well under way.
...
Consciousness converges with the child as a landing tern touches the outspread feet of its shadow on the sand: precisely, toe hits toe. The tern folds its wings to sit; its shadow dips and spreads over the sand to meet and cup its breast.
Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."

[An American Childhood by Annie Dillard. HarperPerennial, 1987]

I love how Dillard describes this coming-to-awareness. Beyond the waking as a child, I know the strange feeling of suddenly noticing oneself - that feeling when you step back, step outside yourself and become your own self's observer, just for a moment.

"Who turned on the lights? You did, by waking up: you flipped the light switch, started up the wind machine, kicked on the flywheel that spins the years. Can you catch hold of a treetop, or will you fly off the diving planet as she rolls? Can you ride out the big blow on a coconut palm's trunk until you fall asleep again, and the winds let up?
...
Knowing you are alive is feeling the planet buck under you, rear, kick, and try to throw you; you hang on to the ring. It is riding the planet like a log downstream, whooping. Or, conversely, you step aside from the dreaming fast loud routine and feel time as a stillness about you, and hear the silent air asking in so thin a voice, Have you noticed yet that you will die? Do you remember, remember, remember? Then you feel your life as a weekend, a weekend you cannot extend, a weekend in the country."

May I stay waking, and ride it well.