life as a kite.

I fly in my dreams. It’s not a bird-flight. It’s not graceful or pretty. I simply flap my arms as hard as I can until I lift off.

It depends on the situation, the color of the sky and the weight of the air, but I either drag slowly across the horizon, hitting my feet on every treetop along the way, or drift so far from my origin that I disappear from myself and my dream all together.

The latter are my most favorite dreams of all.

There are only two times when I have been consciously unconscious. When I have meditated without following a step-by-step.

The first was while floating naked a hot spring in the Rocky Mountains alone in the middle of the night. The mountains are the only place to see stars. They move and dance sweet for you. They shoot back and forth. They glimmer and fade and make you feel a part of them.

As I floated on my back; toes and breasts and face exposed to the night cold, I flew away while I thought of silence and while I stared at the most brilliant star my skies had ever seen. The sparkle was dreamlike. The scope of it’s shine—immense.

I laughed and cried for no reason because of this star and the sky that night and the warm water all around me. It was beautiful. And sometimes, when I’m sad, I go there in my head.

The other time was in India in a holy city beside the Ganges. I was traveling alone and then with a friend and the air was heavy there. Bodies were on fire in the river and spirits were floating to heaven all around me and I sat on the roof of a building watching the poof of pyre smoke fuming from the ghats in the east and feeling uncertain and questioning all I ever knew. A strange sadness was falling all around me until I turned my head to the other side and saw a hazy sky filled with kites.

Hundreds of homemade kites with beautiful children guiding the strings and I couldn’t imagine the beauty of this scene in a place that was such a celebration of death.

Life, in the form of paper vees and boxes shot around me like the mountain stars and I cried alone on the rooftop because I was happy and because life was beautiful.