Plane Tickets in My Pockets -- Vienna, Austria

Movement.

Movement teaches appreciation.

Movement creates openness.

Movement teaches mindfulness.

Movement creates loneliness.

A romantic isolation of constant stimulation.

The most intimate relationships of my life have transpired with plane tickets in my pockets and a halfway packed bag in the hall.

Why is that? 

Some people love things because they think they'll last forever.   

Because it's troubling to suppose that relationships won't last forever. It's disconcerting to believe that an entwined identity can unravel and leave you naked, bruised and confused. Impermanence adds uncertainty to life. Insecurity. Fear.
 
Because it's hard to give freely.

Without expectation. 

Like sending the most important piece of you into outer space without a return address.

Because it's hard to receive freely.

Without expectation. 

Like discovering RIDICULOUSLY DELICIOUS chocolate and then realizing that you're eating the last bar ever made.

You will never get to eat that chocolate again.

Ever.

I love things because I think they don't last forever.

I choose to view people like I viewed the flowers in Judy's garden. Not in the "he's a rose and she's a drancunculus vulgaris" sort of way (although that's also fun), but in the "I'm going to fully appreciate you without being attached to you" sort of way. 

Like that chocolate bar. 

That you'll never taste again.

It's more than enough that this person is here now.

A life of movement has taught me not to search for what I don't see. 

He just needs to get through this funk. Then I'd be able to love him properly. I just have to wait and --

In a life of movement, there is no waiting for things to be other than they are. There is appreciating and loving what you see because you're not going to be around long enough to change anything anyway.

Plane tickets in my pockets and a halfway packed bag in the hall drive home the point that forcing change is pointless. Like telling a sprout to grow into an oak tree (please and thank-you very much) before you leave for England next week. Because you want a picnic before then and require shade.

Movement teaches me to love the is and not the wish. To love the person and not the projection.

It teaches me to find the person I want -- not try to make the person I want.

If I'm set on having a picnic in the shade, I find a tree with shade. I don't sit in the sun under a naked sapling and grow old as it grows up, angrily peeling away my sunburned skin and resenting the sapling for not being able to meet my needs.

When I knew it couldn't anyway.

Perhaps this is why packed bag romances are so powerful. 


On the flip-side. 


Movement spawns a life of unfamiliarity.

New people.

New food.

New bed.

New routine.

New water pressure in the shower --

and new trick to lighting the stove.

Unfamiliarity can spawn desperation.

A clinging for closeness.

For comfort.

For intimacy.

For normalcy.

I still wryly observe myself sitting in the right hand window seat four rows back of every long-distance bus I ride.

Because it's a little thing I can keep constant.

(unless someone's already sitting in my seat. In which case they receive the glare I generally reserve for turkey bacon)

The sapling often becomes the spot on the wall used by a ballerina whilst doing piqué turns across the floor -- not because it's what she wants, but because it's what she needs to diminish her dizziness and keep her balance. She ends up focusing on the readily available and forgoes her picnic.

A life of movement is disorienting. Sometimes we want bright colors to catch our attention, bold personalities to keep it and big hands to hold us.

The question I ask myself --

Would I choose this person if I didn't feel so dizzy? This is important. I don't want to use anyone for a specific purpose and then discard them like a stamped bus ticket when I've found my balance. I don't want to hurt these big hands.   

I've talked to girls who find themselves much more attached to romantic relationships than they would have been had their world not been spinning.

Or had they not been spinning through their world.

The key for me?

To find presence in movement. To become so grounded in myself that the world can move any which way it pleases and I shan't be bothered in a way that makes afraid/reactive/desperate/distant.

What does this really mean?

That I stop dreaming so much.

That I let go of expectations. What should happen. How she should behave. Where I should be five years from now.

I don't want to become detached or distant or self-centered.

I want to become so fully present that time feels irrelevant.

I've had quite a few people tell me that this worldview is unrealistic. That I'm pushing myself too hard or that I'm denying basic human nature. Or both.

I don't have any response for this yet (if you think of one, let me know). 

"Familiarity is often confused with truth."

(is a line from the book I'm reading)

A life of movement does a fine job reducing the familiar.

Perhaps by eliminating the familiar over and over and over again, I'll have the chance to see what's left.

Perhaps what's left will give me my answer.