Flying

Cleaning house

/ marydpierce / 14 Comments

As I am wont to do periodically, I have gone quiet.  The truth is, that sometimes the world is too much with me.  This is a time when I hunker down, take stock, recharge, rethink, re-plan.  It used to worry me, these periods of introspection. Now we know so much more about things like depression and how introverts function, and I have learned to ride it out.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about, is that it’s time to clean out my house. And not just metaphorically.  After twenty-six years living with the same man in the same house, we have accumulated a lot of stuff.  After a while the stuff gets in my way.

I’m focusing first on my studio.  The room that houses most of my books and all my art supplies.  (I’d include a photo, except that it would embarrass me to no end to have you see how neglectful I’ve been — my family knows what I’m talking about, ask them.)  It’s also the room where I exercise, write and do all my creative work, the room where my muse resides. She is not happy with the mess.

I’m on a mission here:  Pay heed to my muse and get rid of a lot of stuff.  So, if you haven’t heard from me in awhile, this is where I’m at.

I’ll be back momentarily.  I promise.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this little tidbit.  Something I found in one of the many notebooks I have scattered around the room like old shoes.  I rarely date things, so I have no idea when I wrote this, nor do I remember what its purpose was, other than that I do have reoccurring dreams of flying.

Enjoy.

In dreams, I fly, though there are no wings budding from my back like tender shoots that blossom on spring trees.  No feathers fanning in orgasmic waves behind me. There are just my arms — flesh and blood and bone — to lift me, weightless as a dime while I circle above my oldest fears, childhood tormentors grown fat, and unrecognizable, wearing clown pants and floppy shoes.

Being quiet pm

And this . . . painted while I was in college and my house had hardly any stuff at all.

Fear of Flying

/ marydpierce / 8 Comments

Image

A friend of mine asked me for advice.  She’s flying across the country soon and she’s afraid of flying.  Since I was a “seasoned flyer,” did I have any tips that might help?

Though I’m loath to admit it, flying scares the crap out of me.  I’m 30,000 feet in the air inside a huge hunk of metal that remains airborne only by the marvel of mechanical engineering and a proper maintenance schedule.  But I do like to travel and the fastest way to traverse large distances is to get on a plane and hope that the engine, the electrical systems, the landing gear, and the rivets holding everything together have all been thoroughly checked and maintained.  Preferably just before I boarded.  Yes, it scares me, but I’ve gotten used to it.  And I’ve devised a habit to ease my fear.   I meditate upon take-off and landing (statistically the most likely time for a problem).  Without fail, every single time.  It makes me feel better to do this.  It makes me feel a little more in control.  An illusion perhaps, but isn’t life?

Ultimately, my advice to her was do it and keep doing it, because you can.

Which brings me to the point of this post.   As I conveyed my “seasoned” wisdom to my friend, it occurred to me that maybe I should apply similar advice to other aspects of my life.  Like blogging.  That really scares the crap out of me, too.  The whole time I’m writing a post, I’m thinking; someone might actually read this blog, and worse, they might think my writing completely sucks.*  Which is why my first blogging attempts consisted of seven posts over the course of nine months.

We are all afraid of something.  And mostly, it’s the doing it anyway that sees us through.  Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do the thing you think you cannot do.”  She also said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”  Sometimes that may be just getting out of bed.

So read away citizens of the internet.  Or not.  The blogosphere is a mighty big place.  However, if you should stumble upon this page – hellooo – I’m here, still afraid of sucking, but writing anyway.

Because I can.

*I’m also terrified of crossing bridges.  Interesting that the common denominator seems to be falling, whether out of the sky, over water, or on my face.