DAREDEVILS

The poet as one who takes a leap – not down, not across, but simply surrenders to the winds of fate. Incalculable forces colliding at your center at every moment – warring with each other until they produce the sum-totals which are your constant reality.

Suspending the energy you’d otherwise use to stay balanced and keep a grip on your station, and perhaps improve it with sufficient wit and daring. Suspending that energy and applying it to observation, to increase your sensitivity towards all that you fall through, above, below, beside, with, away from, etc. To increase your understanding, however insignificantly (at least as far as the grand scheme of things is concerned).

Not obsessing with finding irony, or addressing – or serving – any other agenda, which at one time may have been so novel and cute. Absolute suspension. Complete submission to your senses – inner and outer. Listen to the wind of your falling, that’s one sound you won’t hear anywhere else – at least not willingly.

If you understand this, you must be falling with me! Or have once fallen similarly, and remember the sensation! It’s not that unique. It’s practically a sport. An extreme sport, indeed. But one that has existed for at least as long as recorded, or remembered, expression. Whenever people spoke of anything – in every generation and in every culture – some were describing this very journey. The psychological and emotional equivalent of parachuting, but without the parachute, without a landing-field, or any other destination. Without a sponsor, or insurance, or even any means of navigation. And certainly no publicity (until you reach the finish-line). Just sensation! The sensation of absolute suspension. Not fearing heights, or depths. Fearless of speed, or stillness. Or at least sufficiently brave to face those fears…

For now I can only indulge in this sport for short flashes at a time – flashes long enough to write these little descriptions. But now a combination of fear, love for some non-leapers, and a passion for some other hobbies draws me elsewhere!

(11-26-28, Midnight)