What a way to start this year.
The first wave brought mixed images of childhood and childlike innocence. It was a reminder of what it was like, or it could be like, to be reborn without worry. This happened several times, but a few stand out above the rest. As a single thought, I travel in all directions. I can make lines and colors as I move, but it isn't relevant.. I'm just having fun. I began to grow, zoom out at high paces in each an every direction. I zoom about until my physical body actually makes contact with a nearby piece of furniture. This dawns the realization that as children, we are entirely involved in our worlds until something from the outside world makes us take notice. Some of us are granted longer spans of this imaginative period and can carry it onward to adulthood, while some of us have tragic bumps early on that can make us forget that whimsy. While the picture is still being painted, I feel that I belong somewhere in the middle- aware of that outside world, but escaping the real tragedies of every day life for much later... I only knew one person who had died until I was in fifth grade, and that was a great-grandmother I'd only met once as a young child.
Another set of flashes of childhood has repeatedly taken me to a moment in time. I had never questioned it until this weekend, but I had visited it in past meditations. I'm young, six, maybe seven, and I'm swimming. It is at Lake Lorei, my boyhood home, on the better of their two beaches. The beach is divided into two parts; a nicer area with sand that grades outward into the water, and a smaller area that has mud at its bottom, but has the animal-on-a-big-spring toys (and I think a swingset, but these items are not in the meditation, I remember them after the fact.. just the water and the sticky, clay mud at the bottom) out in the lake. I find I am testing myself - not purposefully, but in that "Let's see how far I can go" mentality. I go too far out and catch a sinus full of water. It doesn't send me to panic, but rather just an awareness of what not to do. I swim in and try harder, learning my limits, and I see how far down I can go. I am afraid, which does not grant me my wish that I could go further out. In the midst of all of this, I see my mom with my brothers and sister on the shore. She is not paying attention, she is tending to them, even though I am far out in the water. Is it lack of concern, or confidence that I know better? Something to ponder further.
Another set, new this time, brings me to the first "real" family vacation. As Bach is playing, I tune into that time. I start to think very hard about that trip, as it has been elusive for some time. I know the wheres and hows of the course of that trip spilled over the map of the east coast; through West Viriginia into Virginia, staying at Virginia Beach, driving through Cape Hatteras, taking a ferry, swiming in the oceans, then back home again. Yet, no details. I know that I swam in a pool, I know that I played with crabs and spilled seawater on the inside of our family van.. but nothing feels really 'there', more like a sketch of things people have told me. I draw in on a moment while swimming, where my parent's attention shifted while I was deep in unknown waters. My sister had actually been pulled under from the undercurrents and nearly swept away. I quickly make my way back to shore. Another memory creeps in about my first taste of beer, much earlier than I had always remembered, but the memory has little to do with this trip. Something else to study.
A second wave brings me to the oceans, but not as me, or at least, not as the me I know through my own history.. completely detached, as if in a second life. I am swimming. Deeper. Deeper. The water is cold, the blackness unfolds before me, but I am determined. I want to see the bottom. Further, further. I get the faintest glimpse of splendor and color. I come back to the surface for another breath, diving faster. I hit bottom and know I have enough air to look around. It is gorgeous! A hundred different colors, shimmering with light. A rainbow of corals and stars and fish in all directions! That sharpened point of focus hiccups, and I realize I need to resurface.. and fast. Up. Up. Up. But when I surface, I no longer breathing like am accustomed to do; I shoot a plume of water and vapor and steam upwards, drawing in cool air once the force subsides. I am not a man- for I am a whale.
A third wave brings about adolecence, or first glimpses of the memories from that time that I had forgotten. It is also about personal determination versus giving into the masses. I remember a day, shortly after I had moved away from Fayetteville. Sitting in a swing, minding my own thoughts. A girl my age, maybe a little younger, approaches and demands, not asks, that I move so that she can use this swing. There are three others like it, but she seems determined to have mine. I refuse to yield, and go back to imagining. Moments pass and the girl has returned with a small pack, and I find myself outnumbered four to one. I remain steady, as I feel I am not hurting anything by occupying this one particular swing. I am hit. Not once, but many times. Fingernails, punches, kicks, spitting.. all of the usual no-rules fighting. But I do not yield. I get up off of the ground with each blow that unseats me, and I keep my swing. This went on for maybe ten minutes, but the group eventually lost interest and left.. not ever once taking a seat on the other swings.
Somewhere in the midst of this, I have several thoughts about parenting and love, and what it means to protect and nurture. There is still a lot of focus left on these topics to be had, but I feel more certain about these concepts than I have in the past. There is, like the lake scene, something that keeps happening. A storyline, but it is not something I know. It has something to do with Nasa, the public and the government. More thoughts on that later.
Fresh in my mind are the thoughts of parenting, so I choose to focus on that. I get a rapid fire of important moments over my lifetime, most of that is still a blur. Then, something really deep. Back in my room, my dad has me cornered. He has the door blocked and is trying to talk to me, but I really do not want to hear what he has to say. I had been dealing with a few bullies, really, everywhere. School, the bus to and from school, outside in the playground, so my escape had become my room, or more often, television and video games. He had proceeded to tell me a story of how he had decked some kid for insulting his mother. He went into graphic detail about the incident, and the cited how his life had been easier after that moment, as nobody wanted to mess with him any longer. I felt then (and do again) that this story was counterintuitive to all of the examples they had ever set before me in the past. Be kind to animals and neighbors and.. anyone! Everyone! He closes the door, and he makes me fight him. I make a terrible effort; I am not built for this. I have tiny arms and wild swings and no focus or determination or will to land any single punch. He goads me and trys to get some anger out of me. He succeeds. A week later I wildly attack a kid that sat behind me in English class. It was never a seriously heated fight; the kid never knew he had it coming, no chance to prepare.. but I put on a good show and let out some of that anger. Aside from sibling rivalry, I have never struck another person with intent before or since that day. I was no longer a true pacifist.
It had been robbed from me, and for this long I feel I have been blaming the wrong person, entirely unaware of the reason. It was never his fault that I was in a fight; it was his fault that he told me it was okay, but that can be forgiven. Maybe now is the time to make amends.
Peace.
- Mariner the Whale
heh.
Current Mood: 
focused
geeky
listless
amused
drunk