Wishing I Could Fly--by Bryan F.
When I was about six years old I was laying in bed one morning at our house in Bloomington, California. I was still discovering the world around me. It was Easter morning and I was waiting patiently for the Easter Bunny to leave a basket filled with jelly beans on the porch out front. While I lay there thinking about life and my new dog Stinky, I spotted a tiny bird outside my window where a Bottle Brush Bush was growing. It was floating in mid-air and I was stunned and mesmerized by this tiny creature magically floating outside my window. It would be some years before I had a name for it, a hummingbird.
I never fail to transport back to my mattress on the floor in that little house and that window high up on the wall looking out on that bush framing that magical creatures magical flight. I’ve always thought of the hummingbird as my spirit animal. There is no other bird as beautiful as the hummingbird.
A Facebook friend who was a childhood neighbor wrote about rescuing a hummingbird on her back porch recently, feeding it sugar water, and even calling a vet to see what she could do to help it. Happily, she wrote that the bird recovered and flew away. She is a special person and I’m not surprised at all by her empathy.
Her story reminds me of the pigeon that came to my door with an injury, right after I found out I was HIV positive back in 1985. The pigeon was injured and as I nursed it, the experience healed some of my pain. My third blog on Consortium of Seven detailed the experience, “HIV, Hypnosis and a Bird”.
Seagulls also are very healing for me. I get excited when occasionally they fly inland for a visit. I don’t know what brings them so far in, but they are always a welcome sight for me.
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I’ve always tried to live by the ocean and got to do so numerous times. The first time in Seal Beach when a job landed me on the shore back in 1976. The next time San Francisco, in 1979, which is a different smell and in San Diego several times, on the North County shores. The smell of the ocean and the sound of the seagulls are like a religious experience for me.
Maybe I love birds so much because I envy their ability to fly. Since I was a tot and into adulthood I have had dreams in which I fly. Extending my arms and rising into the air. I love the freedom to move through the sky at will, leaving my earthy problems behind. These dreams are not like any others I have and are so real they leave me a bit shaken every time I have one.
During these difficult times of pandemic, I'm wishing for one of those dreams of flying that are now less frequent. A way to move freely without the worries of distancing is enticing.
While I've had dreams of flying, it's been a while, at least for any I can remember. I've never been great with heights, so some of the times when I had dreams of rising far into the air they've been both exhilarating and at least a little terrifying.
ReplyDeleteMy best flying dreams, the ones with a real visceral connection for me, were ones I often had as a child, which were born of how much I enjoyed body surfing when we'd go to the beach. Catching a wave and having it carry me, supporting me up to my ribcage, zooming me in toward the shore, remains a cherished sensation. The flying dreams I had based on that never took me more than 20 feet off the ground, unless I was zooming up to a window or rooftop.
The sensation and the connection always reminded me that we exist in an ocean of fluid, just one much less dense than bodies of water. We walk around down here, at the bottom of an ocean of air. My flying dreams just let me thicken that air, and get it to lift and carry me.
When I think of seagulls, I think of how when I was a child I would only see them when we'd travel down to the New Jersey shore. Spotting seagulls was one of the main visual cues that we were getting near the shorepoints. By the time I was out of my teens, though, the combination of suburban sprawl and a huge, regional waste disposal landfill had attracted so many seagulls that far inland that they became increasingly common sights. Scavengers, most often seen sitting atop parking lot lightposts, swooping down to go for someone's dropped french fries or the contents of a fast food restaurant's dumpster that someone had left open.