SKY: 4.13.13

Sometimes it’s the only thing that helps me know I’m here.

The blue, the radiance of it.

Sometimes I head out into the day, murky and swishing, grabbing at something to root me down.

It’s a constant surprise to get roots from above, to get pushed deep in instead of pulled straight up.

:::

I wasn’t really an outdoors kind of kid.

I watched a lot of bad television; I’d sit inside, lying on the couch, as the bugs buzzed and swirred into the screens.

I had no idea.

And then one time, I walked across Europe for a few months.  This college escapade was the least likely choice for a couch-dweller like me.

But something told me to go, to see, to let my skin feel the blue.

And of course nothing was ever the same again.

Because sometimes things need to change.

:::

The other morning I dragged my laptop through my studio window, set it down on the kids’ red table in the yard. 

Mid-workout I stopped and sniffed the air.

I looked up.

I looked up and breathed deep and realized that the magic isn’t in Europe, isn’t in my early twenties, isn’t anywhere but right here.

Out in the air, deep under the blue.

SKY 04.12.2013

By Melody Washkevich

It’s amazing that I could still hear the screams of terror.  Or maybe that was just the sound of the speed of my fall racing past my ears.  I didn’t know how long this weightless demise would last.  I was certain that I would die.  You know, you hear those freak-chance sky-dive accidents where the girl lands flat on her back, lives and turns out...she’s pregnant.  Yes, the baby lives too.  One in a fucking million.  I’m not going to live.

I look up and around me and see others falling too.  A Woman clinging to her too-young-to-die child.  An old man that looks already limp.  Low cabin pressure is my bet.  Lucky man.  Many more, and frankly I don't give a shit.  Pieces of the plane and debris from the collision fall like the ground is what’s moving, not it.  My tie keeps whipping me in the face and I find it annoying.  I take it off.  It’s torn out of my hand by the sheer velocity I’m traveling.

I start to do the math.  If I’m five miles in the air and I weigh 160 lbs then that would mean that I’m traveling at 125 miles per an hour.  12,000 feet per a minute.  Two minutes to live since my body left the plane.  Likely one minute now. 

This flight was my ticket out.  Clean slate.  Fresh start.  All those damn clichés.  Take your pick.  No one knew what I did.  No one would ever find me if they ever discovered it was me.  I’d never have to spend a day in a prison cell held captive by my own dirty deeds.  The weight of the sky would be my burden to bear for my life.  This was not in the plans, however.  Dying on the way out.    

Quickly the blurry earth becomes more defined.  I see property lines separated by different, darker colors. Houses. Buildings. Lakes. Rivers. Trees. A few blinks and it would be over.  No one will hear my final words but I’m too self serving to not…

“I KILLED JULIA WESTON!” 

SKY: 4.11.2013

A dear friend once taught me how to give offerings of tobacco, and thus how to transmit my prayers and thanks to all corners of the earth--north, south, east, and west--and to the heavens--to the Great Mystery, to my ancestors, to Mother Earth and to Father Sky. Today I think particularly of Father Sky, but I can't detach the Mother's relationship to him, try as I might to focus only on him. For it is there quarrelling and love that I live between, their everyday movements that influence my experiences in this life.

Here is one such experience:

During the warmer months in Brattleboro, nestled in the Connecticut River Valley, there is often a mist that clings there, possessing different qualities with each new visit. Sometimes the droplets of mist are large and clear to see. Sometimes they are miniscule to the eye but nonetheless possessing clear substance when collected together. Some nights the mist is so fine that it merely brushes over your cheeks, rather than settling upon them. There is a hint of moisture, but it is fleeting, insubstantial.

I cherish this mist in its myriad forms. Grey days are imbued with a smell of life, the air thick with the breath of plants and trees, new air pouring down the river valley.

My clearest memories of this mist are at night while biking down certain streets criss-crossed with overhanging branches. With no traffic before or behind me, I have slowed to a crawling pace, enough to keep steady and moving. Some branches on these streets hang just below a streetlight, their leaves shedding a glow, and this glow possessing gradations of light and dark greens. And within these luminous streams, between the canopy and the pavement, hangs the mist, swirling and tumbling--as hot steam does, dancing above freshly poured coffee. At this sight, my feet will come down on either side to keep me from toppling as my bike's slow crawl ceases.

The sky trapped in the valleys of the earth. I have only ever known them in relation to one another. They have many more tales than I can tell.

- James Branagan

SKY: 04.10.2013

by Shannon Herrick

It was wide open above us. 

There is nothing like a desert sky.

Nothing like a desert sky to fill one simultaneously with the weight of insignificance and the lightness of purpose.

Nothing like a desert sky to expand into, endlessly, and yet feel grounded beneath its immensity.

We lay under the desert sky, our fingers entwined. The smooth rock under our backs was solid, but the vastness above us made us feel untethered to gravity's pull. All those days were a dream, but that night we spent in J-Tree...we floated. Up and up, above ourselves, inside and out of all the dreams we were discovering we shared.

All day we had skipped across giant boulders, tripping lightly and laughing, sometimes collapsing into each other, sometimes chasing, sometimes caught in our own silent reveries. We were like feathers tenderly tossed about by a gentle breeze, finally settling on the warm surface of the rock only to be caught up again and again. The sun seemed strong, but it was November and so it didn't make us dizzy, just warm all through and energized. Our heads were clear, wide open like the sky above us.

We thought about pitching our tent at the campsite, once we'd ambled back in the early evening. There was a perfect spot, flat and free of debris, where hundreds (thousands?) of tents had spent the nights previous to this. A boulder loomed, like a protector. We would be in its shadow, perhaps, when the full moon rose. Until then, our day had been free of shadows, so why should we want one now? We climbed, and the great boulder was flat on top, the perfect size for a nest of sleeping bags and blankets. The tent remained behind and we made our camp, free of shadows, beneath the deep blue-black of the desert sky.

There is nothing like a desert sky. 

First, there were stars, and beneath them we made Grand Plans. We reached as far as those stars with our breathless, excited talk. And then we lost our tethers. We were stars. There was nothing we could not do with the jet pack power of new love, and we lingered up in dreamland until the darkness faded. It was like daylight but it was not daylight. 

There is nothing like a desert sky. 

I read The Fog Horn, out loud, by the light of the full moon that night. It sobered us, the unrequited longing of a sea monster for a lighthouse, our own longing to live forever in those stars that were already fading from view with the white-yellow intensity of the moon's glow. Ah, it is fleeting, our time in the stars! The next day, we would move on, to places where tall trees and buildings cut the sky into ribbons. To places where the tethers would hold. 

We didn't know how long they would hold.

Where, now, is our wide open sky?

SKY 04.09.2013

I grabbed his hand as though his weight alone would anchor me to the ground we stood on. “It is beautiful” he said, eyes fixed on the millions of stars that illuminated the sky above us.

It was, indeed, beautiful. All those tiny pinpoints twinkling against an endless velvety dark blue void. My pulse quickened. My head felt weightless. I held onto his hand tighter. Between feeling so incredibly small, falling in love, and my extreme fear of all things huge and unknown, I wasn’t sure if I was going to lose consciousness or vomit. Maybe both.

When I was a little girl I would proudly announce that I was going to be a ballerina and an astronaut when I grew up. I wanted to dance on the moon. I absorbed every book I could find about the solar system. I would recite the planets (in order from the sun, of course), to anyone willing to listen. The idea of something so big that we hadn’t found the end yet, fascinated me.

My curiosity-filled innocence slowly faded and in its place stood anxiety, fear, and panic. They, at times, consumed me. I no longer looked at the sky in awe and amazement. I avoided looking up at all out of fear of what may be, of what I didn’t know. I would glance at a harvest moon and momentarily forget that I was fearful. Then a wave of panic would awaken me from my daydream and anxiety would settle in once again.

Then I met him. We spent our first summer under dark and moody skies. Thunderstorm after thunderstorm would roll through. We would watch from my truck as the sky changed from clear blue to steely grey to black. Together we would watch lightning rip through the clouds. Claps of thunder echoed in my ears along with the pounding of my completely smitten heart.

Warm nights were filled with star gazing and storytelling. I started to forget my fears. As long as he was beside me, I could do anything. The unknown was a beautiful place to be.

Four and a half years later, we married on a beautiful October day. The sun warmed my bare shoulders and made his blue eyes sparkle brighter than the sky. Later that night, we surrounded ourselves with friends and celebrated our union. I found myself looking up at the stars. The infinite unknown didn’t seem so scary. It seemed hopeful, promising. Maybe not knowing was better after all.

It has been nearly 11 years since our first summer. We have a daughter now. She asks about the stars and the moon. Together we look at the night sky. I hold them both, to keep me firmly on the ground. I still feel those rushes but I know that I have them to hold me. I have him.

He looks over at me, his eyes still sparkling like that clear October sky, “It is beautiful”, he says.

Yes, my love, it is beautiful.

-Michelle Stephens

SKY 04.08.2013

Exhausted, I walk up the ladder and into my bed in the water tower. I'm ready to sleep the kind of sleep where my bones feel like they can release themselves into the under side of my mattress, where my muscles go mush and melt. Out of the tall skinny window by the ladder, the sky is gray and the clouds are moving fast and the wind is whipping the palms unruly. They’re moving around like gigantic starfish that got a chance to stretch their fingers and poke at some clouds just for fun. They’re showing off how they can flex their joints through the night sky and they’re doing this dance by my window. Next, the wind comes from the other direction and the leaves begin to unfurl and flail separately. They writhe and flutter and gyrate and gesture, and now they are the sea anemone of the sky. I imagine the ocean above my head, above my bed, and the world flipped upside down. Every couple of minutes the wind stops. Everything gets so still, and the fronds become frozen like fossils making stencils in the skyline. I imagine all of this as just a bit of pre-slumber entertainment.

I start to fall into that sleep I want so badly, and then it picks up again. All the various wind chimes and rock chimes and shell chimes in the garden are making music like a strung out symphony. Like a music box from an attic, where, I imagine, the ballerina leg is broken, so when she does her pirouette, she trips the beat over and over again.

I want to be able to pass out like he did. He, who was up at 5 am to drive a rental car 4 hours away to a mountain he’d never been to, so he could ride his snowboard for the first time this year. He, who after taking 15 or so runs down 12 different trails drove back, and before stopping home, drank a couple of beers at a new bar with an old friend and then picked me up from work because he's kind and it was raining. He, who usually can’t sleep when it’s like this, but tonight he does and he does so deeply.

He’s fast asleep and holding me, and I’m propped up on my forearm looking out the windows like I’ve gone mad. I don’t know what I’m looking for or why It’s making me feel so frenzied, but my eyes hover around each window like a goddamned hummingbird. The tower rumbles and the light keeps changing with the trees casting shadows on our wooden walls. I can see the light shifting even when I close my eyes. 

The wind is getting stronger and I’m propped up with his long arm draped around my stomach, just imagining. I imagine the bee houses blowing open and the swarms making figure 8's down Monterey Boulevard, while dripping honey on the pavement. I imagine the feathers blowing off of the chickens who are perched on their branch in the coop. I imagine the rats that stalk the chicken feed from the low hanging trees, being collectively thrown, tails taught and circling, to a far away neighborhood. I imagine the wind uprooting the mustard greens and the garlic and just taking all the yellowing weeds. I imagine he and I are blown out of the window spooning; flung across the city on a fast moving current thick with fog.

I wanted to sleep, but the night was wide awake. I guess I remember saying somewhere down the road that I wanted to be awake for everything. So, here I am, staring at the sky and listening to the wind in the middle of the night.

SKY 04.07.2013

Before we even left the runway, her knuckles were white from gripping the vinyl seat in front of her. The way her nails dug in, I was sure she’d tear right through. After takeoff, she bolted to the bathroom and returned with a pale face and bloodshot, watery eyes. Her father, obviously shaken, led her back to her seat with a hand between her shoulder blades.

“Anxiety,” he said apologetically to those seated around us, “Fear of flying.”

The girl, either from sickness or embarrassment, buried her head deep into her knees.

From where I sat, I could see her between the seats. While everyone else politely averted their attention, I watched her.

Just a few years ago, that was me. I don’t have a fear of flying, but I have struggled with anxiety for most of my life, and it spiked once on a flight to San Francisco. The anticipation of spending a week with a recently all-consuming lover, combined with the inherent confinement and lack of air circulation of the airplane, resulted in sweaty palms, a quickened pulse, and waves of nausea that sent me sprinting to the bathroom more than once. 

The next morning, the same anxiety ruined a hand-in-hand walk down Folsom Street, as I broke away to vomit in a storm drain. Not my finest moment.

There was a time when I sincerely believed that anxiety would plague me forever; it seemed too complicated and deep rooted to ever conquer. I was so convinced in the inevitability of panic attacks that I didn’t seek professional help until they were so extreme that I hesitated to leave my house. “You don’t deserve this, you know,” my (amazing, beautiful, brilliant) therapist said one day, “This doesn’t have to be your fate.”

And just like that, my reality shifted. I struggled, I fought, I healed.

From 32,000 feet in the sky, I watched her back roll with intentional and rhythmic breaths, indicative of someone who is struggling and fighting. The process was hard to watch; she was deep in a pain that I knew intimately. My heart broke for her.

Then, just like that, my perception of reality shifted again as I noticed her hand. She was squeezing her fingers into a tight fist, then spreading them wide, over and over again; a tactic I recognized immediately as one I still use to this day to reign in my anxiety. The feeling of fingernails digging into my flesh never fails to keep me present and grounded. I didn’t learn this in therapy-- my body already knew.

Whether she was aware of it or not, she was struggling and fighting, but also healing. Her body was teaching her how to cope, how to move forward, how to reign it all in.

Her body was choosing a new fate.