Sweet dreams and flying machines

I might be the only I one I know who sings acapella alone in my house as a form of spiritual renewal. When I'm completely overcome with everything combative swirling around me, the forces of a brutal world trying to set me off course, I usually just throw my head back and sing. Sorry about that, neighbors.

I sing the songs that I don't remember learning, the ones whose tunes are as much me as my own elbow, the ones I sang at the top of my lungs in red velvet on cocoa brown carpet so long ago. Those ones. I did it then too, a little four year old diva with an audience of two. Now its an audience of none. Without thinking of who is listening, or even the key, letting loose a note that cuts the dusty city air so smoothly.. Music appeals to the higher order of things, the natural world without humans' messy interpretation. The right chord can strike on a cellular level - quashing the inauthenticity of modern life and replacing it with pure, undeniable truth.

Everyone has a way to renew, shed the layers of the world outside and remember who is underneath - the child who believes, who doesn't fear falling or failing, who asks for nothing more than eskimo kisses. My voice is a little huskier now, but it still resonates a clear note of what is essential - a stir of the soul with a little fire and rain.

Light Heart, Heavy Heart (In Memoriam)

I feel like I just did a double-back flip 40 feet in the air harnessed to bungee cords.

(Because that's precisely what I did.) During a take-the-city-kids-to-the-woods field trip to Connecticut on Monday, Ms. H tied a middle school boy for the sweetest jumper on the bungee trampoline. A kid actually called me bad-ass. What a long way I've come from actually being in middle school. Middle school me would have wanted to do it but would have died with mortification at the way the unflattering harness, um, accentuates, the mid-section. Big person me did not care. I made friends with the Kiwi camp counselor named Shaq (really) who made sure I went "super-high." I was the only teacher who demanded to take part in all the activities. A glutton for fun am I!

Watching the kids hike up a rocky hill (a mountain if you ask them) was also a hilarious activity. One of my little lovelies was convinced she would DIE and as she went down the rocky cliff in white pants, she swore (first to Jesus) and then said she would "cry for a whole day, shower for two days, and maybe be proud of myself after that!"

There's nothing like bringing kids from the urban jungle to the countryside (ugh, my sneakers is dirty, Miss!) to lighten the heart and induce laughter. But my ribs are still a little sore.

***

With a heavier heart, I announce the loss of one of the only men I've known who truly lived each day as if tomorrow would never come. You will be missed, William Henry Roland. You exposed me constantly to second hand smoke, taught me what a papasan was, and induced endless laughter in every room of Orion.

Here's something I wrote about him three and a half years ago in a story I wrote for a class:

"The two of them lounge and smoke Turkish Jade’s atop a quilted twin bed, remembering their most recent dreams. Their most current late-night séances are filled with car rides, coercion, penises and old friends.

Laughter erupts when Will describes his latest dream where he was riding in a beat-up truck with several others, including a housemate they refer to as “yam,” for his apparent lack of personality. “It’s so random, I know,” Will says, jolting his head back dramatically.

Craig, also engaging his head, twiddles his hands above it, a nervous habit, snickering as he remembers the time he dreamt of being drunk and how realistic it felt. They’re the first-floor boys. Will is daunting, dark with a large build; he towers over me by almost a foot and a half. His deep voice booms and fills the smoky space. Craig, however, is smaller with strawberry blond hair and a blazer with a pin declaring his devotion to the 80s Brit-cult-rock icons, The Smiths. Will and Craig are the house’s resident smokers, homosexuals and entertainers."

Will, since you wouldn't want me to cry, every now and then I'll have an incredibly stiff drink for you... I'll raise my glass, jolt my head back, close my eyes, and try to hear your deep, soulful laugh one more time.