Taking Off

by Flip

A lot of taking off is leaving what you know and who you know behind; finding new streets, new toys and new people. Sometimes the new street is a river―a treacherous portage trail under fallen trees, through muskeg, down steep banks swarming with mosquitoes, a canoe on your head. Our toys were rocks to build fire places, new ones every night, and a green tent to put up on half-even ground.

Sometimes taking off is going back to the places I love, renewing myself in a comfortable spot. The one I’m thinking of always changes; the people, the politics, the boundaries. When I arrive I am sad to find things different. I leave with a new story, a new memory of it―a new concept of that place, and myself. Though it, and I are always changing, we remain the same. We go through similar tides. In retrospect though, I never leave at all.

Now I’m far away, on streets with funky names, driving on the other side of the road, trying to unveil the secrets of my heart. The names of the streets, the sides of the roads, the people that pass me are all interchangeable, but I’m left a constant. Whether I straighten my hair, dye it black or leave it messy and sun-streaked, I wake up some mornings with funny thoughts in my head, new concepts, concealed possibilities, trying to find a reason, an excuse for being me; I try to explain the excitement or sadness I’m feeling.

Today I took off down a narrow road winding down the side of a steep gully, going through blasted rocks named Hell’s Gates and Heaven’s Gates, around a hair pin bend on a cliff edge named Devil’s Elbow. A couple of months ago when I first came down this road, I thought it was dreadful scary and never wanted to drive it myself. Today, driving it was fun and easy. Looking down the cliffs onto the river, down the gullies, onto the hills, brought a deep feeling of bewilderment. It was lovely. I was off on my own to do what I wanted when I wanted…till the rain poured down, raising the river with an opaque chocolate mixture and delaying my plans to fish and explore.

Now, back to my commitments in the established, civilized world, engaging, indulging, watching oddities to the tune of humdrum routines, habits, spicy practices. My routine is as much an adventure as finding that piece of gold on the Rocky River shores or catching a big fish. Perhaps because we all live it, our everyday lives do not seem as eventful.

Taking off is walking those streets with familiar names but being amused with the way they sound every time you read them, then being amused with the concept of reading and the magic of it. It is noticing the new crack in the sidewalk and letting your mind drift, imagining the forces that cracked it. It is turning your Barbie into a doorknob to temporarily replace the one you broke the night before. Bumping into an annoying acquaintance on the street and having a good laugh with them, walking away knowing more about yourself, more about the human race, and this planet, knowing more about not knowing.

Isn’t it lovely?