symmetry in numbers has always been something i've noticed. patterns, repetition, progression – i love it all. so, to get the chance to celebrate my birthday {which is an unassuming 10.26.82} on 11.11.11 was something of a numerical gift of the universe. a tribute to the balance and stability i hope to step into as i enter the last year of my 20s and absorb the strength that saturn return has bestowed upon me.
last year my closest friends both locally and around the world came together to give me color and build me wings and what a year it has been. the theme of flight woven tightly through some of the most profound moments. it began with that amazing vision i had on my run this spring in sync with the lyrics and one day, i am gunna grow wings – revealing in my spirit a rare moment of acceptance of myself, struggles and all. and while the image of flight is literally represented in the song, it also lives in that rhythm i have spent hundreds of miles savoring as i cemented my love for running this year.
and it was running that delivered the next experience of flight this year. even before the amazing release i experienced at mile 11 of my half marathon, i had a moment, at mile 8, when i pulled away from my little brother and told myself i am going to do this – i can come in sub-two hours. i can do this. i can do anything. and suddenly there was a rush of adrenaline and focus that filled me beyond full, rushing down my back and causing the muscles across my scapula to ripple in anticipation. and even while this is all going on and i was registering the emotional and physical events happening simultaneously, i spared a quick thought for humor's sake to acknowledge that if i had wings, they'd be coming out of the part of my back shuddering as though i was trying to take flight.
the third and most recent experience of flight was the breakthrough i had in singing not too long ago. at the time i even named the blog entry flying because that is what it felt most like in the moment – this clear sense of soaring effortlessly. it was like i imagine a bird to feel in that freewheeling space where any direction is not only possible, but easy, and connected to a deep internal strength of ligaments and muscles so perfectly designed to do exactly what is needed. that strength, that knowledge, that potential, i have had all along despite all the times i have told myself otherwise.
and the flying, the acknowledgement and acceptance of own strength, as i am learning, is so often accompanied by grief. a purge. a release. as they come at greater frequency, i hope for myself that i will hit the bottom of that well of self-doubt and find something new to channel.
in the spirit of that hope, for my birthday this year, i wanted to welcome a sense of lightness, freedom and purity into the equation, take the wings you all so colorfully presented me with last year and strip away everything to its purest elements: light, air, weightlessness, luminescence and flight.
so i gathered to me some of the clearest voices in my life {those darlings that are local} and together we infused the next year of my life with these elements. a benediction of white and light and adventure and play and connection to those things rushing toward me from my future: the cumulation of my efforts on proof, of travel, of settling into a new home, seeing radiohead {in march} and of finally getting to go to my hometown.
a fitting welcome for the new year.
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