brain vacation

My brain has decided to take a vacation and not invite me.

I'm in my studio for the second day this year because I've been residing in bed since New Year's. My brain started hurting last week when I was working on a new design in my studio. On New Year's Eve after seeing It's Complicated and laughing my ass off, I went flying with a friend over McKinney until it became the new year. I'm not sure if my brain landed with me.

It was a full moon and a blue moon. It was also John Denver's birthday. We took off around 11:48 at night. I was in the back seat clicking pictures of the lights and the moon, when the pilot told me to take over. There went my picture taking, at least the shots that weren't blurry.

I love to fly. I love to take off. It's one of my greatest highs. It's the landings I'm not so excited about. I'm not thrilled about taxiing slowly down the runway turning towards the hangars. I don't enjoy undoing my seat belt and taking off my headset.

Takeoffs are exceptionally orgasmic for me. There's not a cell in my body that's not turned on and tuned in. There's something so amazingly seductive about being above it all, seeing the ground below, the ant-sized people until they are nothing but dots and then nothing at all.

This is freedom. This is unadulterated freedom. This is mind-blowing, breath-taking, and well, for lack of anything better to say, just far out! Thank you, John, for that.

The point I want to make though is that I don't think my brain came back down with me. I've been floating and unable to comprehend the simplest of tasks since. Is it because it's been so long since my last flight in a single-engine? Is it because it's been even longer since I had my hands on a stick? (And I mean that in oh so many ways...)

I am meant to live above it all, above the pettiness and drama that resides here. They are not my friends or my people. My people are lax and loose and free. My people see no boundaries or reason to blame. Situations and people in their lives are clear mirrors to their own thoughts about themselves. They are grateful instead of blaming. They are in joy instead of in sadness. You ought to feel their excitement when I'm up in the stars. When I'm steadying my camera lens at the blue moon outside the cockpit.

It's the stars and the clouds and the sky and the moon and the sun that's home to me. Coming back down, feeling the tires land on the runway, and the propeller slow down makes my brain take a vacation without me.

Next time I'm going with it.

one crazy psychedelic blur

I just got off the phone with a man. Not so unusual except that this man has been in my life more on the phone than in person. Interesting way to keep a relationship going. I've never done this before, but I must say it's tantalizing and very fulfilling in the strangest ways. It's made me use my energy to tap into him so that I can feel him without his physical presence. I can feel him without sometimes even thinking about him. I may be working on a new design in my studio when suddenly a rush comes over me from feet to head. I can be walking down the hall when passing through a pocket of him. He washes over me.

I am content living here without him. I've never felt that way about a man before. Always it was a must-have, a must-see-him overwhelming feeling. How I feel about him energizes me, revs me up to do more here, to create more, to envision more, to expand more. Would I love to have him come through my studio door? You bet I would, and I'm okay without that happening also.

My missing him comes at unexpected moments like last night at Cadillac Pizza Pub listening to live blues and sipping wine with a dear friend. I missed him most last night. I knew if he had been there the music would have been that much more sweeter. I miss touching him, my shoulder against his. Something that small, that minute is something I miss more than I thought possible.

Another thing I miss is kissing him. You know, those quick pecks on the lips when we'd be standing outside in downtown Steamboat, making plans for later in the evenings. Outside Boathouse Pub before driving to my apartment after drinks or on the sidewalk on Lincoln Avenue after coffee at The Steamin' Bean.

It was fun getting out of the shower with a towel on my head and in he'd walk through my front door, stripping off his clothes, and scooping me up.

Or, sitting at Mambo's bar with Jamie after work on a Friday drinking a Cabernet and hearing about her day when suddenly in the stool beside me would be this delicious man. He would just know where I was and show up. Uncanny. It never ceased to surprise me.

And now there's another New Year's Eve without him here, or is he? Or, was he here last year? Sometimes my world gets so jumbled that nothing seems clear anymore. There are no blacks and whites. There's this great big beautiful fuzziness of electric colors, the colors of rainbows swirling around me creating realities that are so fleeting and magical. One blurs into another and into another until I know for sure one thing -- I know nothing.

On West Wing yesterday morning, Leo, chief of staff to the president, tells his deputy: "I no longer know what winning looks like."

It's all just one crazy psychedelic blur. It's an acid trip that doesn't go away.