Flying, spying

Sometimes, when I put on a certain song, I drift into a montage of my own life and I feel as if I'm about to die.

I'm drowning and in my gasping I suck up image after image of reality, romanticised into a stream of rose-hued scenes.

I see the culmination of dramas and the closing of circles, flicking past in a cinema reel of history. I replay events until I doubt their existence. Reality begins to blur into dream and I enter that world of waking, the confusing change of state when I lose touch with which is which.

In a single second I am both watching the clouds from a floating dock and diving deep down into a salty sea.

I pull my elbows in as a blur of ladies flows around me in a market.

A stray dog looks up at me, big eyed. I roll over onto my front, thumbing a book, legs bent, feet waving.

I taste soup and it is too hot.
They tell me how unusual it is to see shooting stars every time I look at the night sky.
I grab a warm handful of dirt, and throw it at my friend. We talk in accents and laugh until it hurts.

There are the volcanoes, imposing against a colour-shifting sky.

And I'm speeding along in a motor boat, a human masthead, leaning out as far as I can and looking down at the water rushing along below, as if I am flying.

In real life, I sit in the garden, drinking coffee, trapped in a world of plans. I think and I think and I think. Often, I remember to exist in the moment, and I will notice an insect hovering over to the left. And then I will start to think again.

Later on, when I remember this moment, I realise I was thinking in a perfect patch of sunlight, dragonflies floating on unseen currents. The memory is stunning. The image I see on reflection is simply the image, with nothing of the thought attached to it.

It is important to stay in the moment. It is also important to retain memories. Memory provides perspective. It holds lessons. It exists in the present. In remembering, we find a view of ourselves from outside our heads. It is like looking at yourself through the eyes of another.

Through the eyes of another this is a perfect moment. I swoop out of my head and away from my coffee break and hover with the dragonflies.

I watch myself from afar, the enigma, Julia Randall, star of her own film. I wonder what she thinks. I watch the emotion cross her face and how she interacts. I watch her reactions, influenced by unknown perspective, and I see how her actions are reacted to by people with other perspectives.

I see how she shrinks away from conflict, how she goes to strange lengths to avoid killing insects. I watch her obsess about waste, find new ways to create, and I see how passionate she is about colour. I see how much time she spends glassy-eyed, caught in a huge net of fantasy.

I sense her deep desire for balance. I see how she does anything to be alone.

I watch her talk to plants, not just to their shiny surfaces but to their actual spirits. The nymphs and elves emerge smokily from their stems at her call.

I can almost see what she sees, but not quite.

Who knows what communications lie deep down, what things cannot be viewed from this position.

I see her dreaming face, framed by pillows, but I know not what her soul does during her sleep. I see her eyes closed in meditation, but I know not who she talks to. I see the spirits crowd her but I know not if she knows.

She seems happy. I think that if she died today, she would be at peace. From this position it is easy to understand that death would not be the end of life. Her soul seems much older than her body. If it was time for it to leave that body, it would need to be for a good reason.

It is plain to see, from my rainbow-winged perch, that the eyes she controls now are just windows for her soul. These tiny windows can only show her one world. As I look over at her, cross legged on the warm ground, squinting, planting baby cabbages with the tenderness of a mother, I realise that she probably has thousands of these windows to look through before she is done.

Photo by Christina Chandler