Life is Flying

“A new lens passed over everything she saw, the shadows moved on the wall like skeletons handing things to each other. Her body was flung back over a thousand beds in a thousands other rooms. She was undergoing a revolution, she felt split open. In her mattress there beat the feather of a wild bird.” -Excerpt from Evening by Susan Minot

From my journal:

I want to crawl into the book I just finished and have its pages and words wrap themselves around me and allow me to dissolve into nothing. Evening by Susan Minot. It was so beautiful, my heartbeat is pounding in my chest. It was vivid and real and depicted the end of a long intrepid journey that I felt I actually experienced.

I see it so clearly now, one must abandon fear to find passion. I am the embodiment of sensuality. To see, touch, taste, hear and smell, that is why I exist in this body, that is the point.

Easter…

From my notebook on the bus:

I don’t know the date, I’ve been traveling for the holiday. My adventure this time has brought me into so many new experiences. I’ve seen more of this country and seen many new faces. I’ve missed buses, danced in the moonlight, glided in the air over the forest next to a mountain that I ran right off of, and now, I find myself riding on a cramped bus, heading North again. We’ve just stopped in a small town to buy food for lunch. I am alone on the bus, watching people and animals and carts pass by. At the door to my right, is a blind man with a voice of gold and a tambourine, singing a sweet, sweet song that almost makes me cry through my delirium. Now we’re off again and the paved road has slipped away and its too bumpy to write…

Life is flying…

After my mom mentioned a paragliding festival here in Ghana, I decide there is no way I can pass up the experience. I settle on the notion that I may have to make the three-day trip alone, but am happily surprised to find three amazing women who are already planning to go. Mandy, Terri, Caitlyn and I set out for Nkawkaw on little sleep since we stayed up the night before laughing hysterically at stories about our lives prior to meeting.
I sit in quiet excitement mingled with bits of fear while our taxi zigzags up the mountain. We reach the top just in time to catch the end of the opening ceremonies. I sit in the grass, looking down the slope ending in a cliff and beyond to the town below. The pilots are gearing up and I walk over, following my friends, anticipation building. When I’m nervous, I become silent, serious, lost in my own thoughts of preparation. My fear of heights is building and my attempt to destroy those feelings at their start is taking all of the energy I possess this morning. I remind myself that I want to live without regret and that no amount of fear will ever again prevent me from experiencing my heart’s desires.
We line up and pair up with pilots, mine is a nice guy from California, a base jumper who travels the globe jumping from various moving and fixed heights. The pilots’ origins range from America, South Africa, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, and beyond. He explains the process and the gear and straps a helmet on my head with his own video camera attached to the top. While standing in the cue, waiting our turn, I decide that all fear has ceased from within me and I can do this.
Its our turn, he walks out to the running strip, and begins laying out our chute. I stand, facing the edge, breathing in the view while he hooks me up to the gear. Run, hang, sit, run, hang, sit his directions flow through my mind. He says go, I run with all my might, I’m running, running, running…uuuuhhhh…the wind picks us up and my legs are still running in the air, I drop to hang and wait, my heart is rushing, racing. You can sit now, he says, so I lean back and pick up my legs.
I’m sitting comfortably, hanging over the forest, the wind rushing by me, around my neck, my ears, pushing through my breath, I’m drinking the air into my lungs. It’s so fresh, the air at this height, free from everything, enriched only by the trees and plants growing on the mountain’s edge. He tells me were turning left, and to look over my shoulder. I realize this prevents passengers from becoming sick in the air, always look in the direction you’re turning toward. We turn and I’m facing the cliff, the mountain, we’re higher than where we were standing minutes before. I feel exhilarated. We turn again, I’m looking out and I see a hawk soaring, even with me, yards away. I’m in communion with the enormous bird. We are one momentarily, and then she flies away, soaring to somewhere else. This experience lasts nearly thirty minutes yet ends in the blink of my eyes. Suddenly, we’re heading for the field, faster, faster, wait, he didn’t tell me what to do when we land. I pick up my feet, like I’ve seen on TV, not the right move, so basically, he lands for both of us. We hit the ground, I land on my knees, he falls on top of me, I’m laughing, he’s worried I’m hurt. I’m not. (Well, perhaps my pride, but only a little.)