Elementals, Part?D

I remember, when I was a boy, eating sixteen cheeseburgers at a family barbecue; I remember shooting at passing cars with my BB gun, jumping off the garage roof, hitting my only Little League home run. I remember trampolines on the beach, inflatable whales, and a cardboard spaceship, a small pink teddy bear before the cremation, my father's bicycle and stealing comic books at the Washington Park Pharmacy.


I also remember the softness of Gramps' eyes, and Nanny's sniffs, in lieu of kisses, for fear she would suck the life out of me. I remember playing under my grandparents' dining room table, trips to the G&G deli, and walks to the carousel at Franklin Park. I remember so much more.


Memories from my childhood are clean and open because I hadn't yet learned to pollute and tarnish them with the learned conditions of my life. They cannot rust in the absence of judgement. I can never see them in any light but the light in a young boy's eyes.


These memories are still vivid today, some fifty years later, because I hold on to them; hold them to remind me that my spirit was free then, unconditioned, and it jettisoned me on the natural path of play and wonder, magic and awe. Not quite. The memories are vivid because my spirit holds onto them; my spirit holds on, despite its current residence in this dark, ironclad ship that I call my life. I should have walked the plank of this ship long ago, and set myself free, floating on my endless sea.


Oddly enough, I don't remember the first time I was afraid.

Fear is the single greatest disease of humankind; a disease so covert that even House can't fix it, metastasized to the dying spirit, it slowly kills. It is ironic, given the transitory limits of the body, that we allow ourselves to be crippled out of the moment; that I allow myself to be frozen scared. Would I rather die scared or happy? That choice might present itself any time.

Play is the antidote to fear. Is there any greater joy than playing in love? I don't mean pretending, I MEAN playing--playing, laughing, smiling, imagining, creating, touching, giving--and letting your spirit run free. And I don't mean 'love', as in wife, girlfriend, significant other. I mean LOVE, the kind you were born with, the kind before you conditioned it, the kind before you made it into something else, the kind before you 'knew' what it is.

I was born with a playful spirit, and, to my detriment, my greatest fear is losing it. The greatest irony of all is that fearing loss will create loss. It will manifest the opposite. Endless pattern.

Fear is the mechanism that is supposed to warn us, to keep us safe. Fear of god, fear of failure, fear of looking foolish, fear of losing, more fears than you can shake a stick at. But the truth is, beyond the illusions, is that there is no safety, and no matter how much we yearn for it, it doesn't exist. It does not exist in life and, like the 47 virgins, it does not exist in paradise. Give up our need for safety, and we give up our fear, and the spirit can become again.

Come dance with me on the thin ice. Let's play!