Vertigo

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.

~ Salman Rushdie

When I read this sentence, my first thought was: "What's Rushdie doing inside my head?"

I remember trips up to the 94th floor of the John Hancock Building in Chicago to look out over the city. Wow! I loved it up there. I flattened myself against the window to look as straight down as I could. The height was impressive and the view incredible. More than that, I felt an incredible draw to going down ~~ not suicidal, by any stretch of the imagination, simply wanting to feel the rush of air slipping past me.

That was one of the things I enjoyed reading Divergent by Suzanne Collins: the zip line from the top of the John Hancock Building down. The description of the feeling of flying. Amazing.

I doubt that I am in any way fearless. I trust the glass that stands between me and falling. That's the reason I understand Rushdie's statement about vertigo. It's a totally different feeling when there's glass holding me in and when there's nothing but air. I've felt that on the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, in the American Eagle at Six Flags Great America, atop the oddly rippling Great Wall of China or at the window of a Maine lighthouse. The height isn't important. It's the irrational desire to fly.

How do you feel from a height looking down? What feels different if you're safely inside a windowed room looking down? What feels the same? What high place would you like to visit? Why?

Magical Reality

He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.

~ Salman Rushdie

Another quote from Rushdie ~ Who knew I'd find snippets of his work so beautiful? I'm thrilled to have found that out!

The world around us is so incredible! It bubbles and snarls, sighs and honks. Every passing minute exudes beauty. If we look for it, or even if we don't, the magic is so amazingly abundant that we trip over it if we aren't careful.

Seeing the magic in the world around us is not the same as being aware of it. Or the same as truly knowing it. Or acknowledging it ~ which is what the speaker in Rushdie's statement does: he acknowledges "that the real world was full of magic."

I've seen a fairy ring in Ireland, a burning bush in the Sinai, a holy well in Israel, a street of sphinxes in Egypt, petroglyphs of a goddess in the Columbia Gorge ~ all considered places of power and magic. Not to mention the simple beauty of the headwaters of a river or the striated stone of a canyon or the graceful flow of sand dunes. If all of those incredible, magical places exist on our planet, why not magical worlds themselves? More to the point, if we recognize the magic on Earth, why would we need the magical worlds?

What kind of beauty and magic do you see in your everyday world? If you had the opportunity, where on Earth would you go to find a magical place? With whom would you share your magical place?

Keeping a Hold

I chose to find a quote to start my writing today. Opening Google, I clicked on "images" and typed in the first name that showed up in my mind: Salman Rushdie.

What?!? I've yet to read any book he's written. My thoughts about him are judgments. Why would his name be first in my mind? Yet, when his name flitted across my unfocused inner eye, I took a chance and typed in his name. What showed up was this image and quote. Amazingly fitting.

"Writing is...keeping a hold on...things...that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers." The list of things I attempt to keep a hold on challenges the elasticity of thought and the continuity of time.

I want to hold onto memories ~ I speak them, I write them, yet they continue to slip through the cracks in my life. I create them as much as hold onto them.

I grasp at the grains of family, particularly my family of origin, only to find they elude me, sometimes to the point of mocking me: "Do you believe in our reality?" I have images, pictures of people who look familiar, familial ~ and stories which accompany those images. When I write those snippets down, I solidify that moment in time. I keep it from slipping farther away. Does writing them make them real? or were they real enough to write down?

What leads your list of things you are "keeping a hold on"? How often do you write about it/them? Why do you write your stories? (or why don't you?) What stories do you let slip away?