Fri, Dec. 20
... The day I remembered how to fly
When I was a child, I flew down the stairs. I don't know how, but I distinctly remember going down the stairs without touching them. Not all the time, but there were many occasions that I remember when I would start at the top, and it would almost be like I was jumping, except that it would be a much more graceful float to the bottom.
I never fell, and no one ever saw this, but I always knew that I flew down the stairs. Until, of course, I got older and began to doubt myself. Maybe it was all just a dream. Maybe this flying was just something that I imagined as I jumped down the last 3 steps of the staircase.
It was always so clear, though, that it couldn't possibly be a dream. It had to have been real... but of course flying down the stairs is impossible, and it's only the product of a child's overactive imagination.
I let myself forget about it until I read this:
When I was a small child, visiting my grandmother at her beach cottage, I used to go down the winding stairs without touching them. That was a special joy to me. I think I went up the regular way, but I came down without touching. Perhaps it was because I was so used to tyhinking things over in solitude that it never occurred to me to tell anybody about this marvellous thing, and because I never told it, nobody told me it was impossible...
Did I, in fact, ever go down those winding stairs without touching them? I am convinced that I did. And during the years enough people have timidly told me of "impossible" things they have done that I am convinced that the impossible is open to far more people than we realize--mostly because we are fearful of being ridiculed if we talk about it. Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of the imagination. It binds us where we should be free. (Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art)
This story was simply an anecdote, told to illustrate a point in the book (which, by the way, is an amazing book--one of the ones which has influenced, encouraged, and shaped me the most as an artist), but when I read it, something inside me resonated.
"Yes! Someone else remembers, too! It wasn't just your imagination! Someone else knows what you're talking about!"
I felt that I had found a kindred spirit, reaching across generations, across years, and across miles, to find me as I was reading that book. I have never met Madeleine L'Engle, and I most likely never will, but these words convinced me that if I ever did meet her, she would somehow understand, and I have the feeling that I would be stretched and challenged more than I would probably feel comfortable with, but it would be an amazing experience.
When I finally get to meet her when we both reach heaven, she is one of the people I will have many questions for. For now, though, she is one who flew down the stairs, just like me.
infinite || abyss
posted at 3:20 p.m.
