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July 18, 2015
flighty (adj.)
[En route to LHR, July 17, 4:15pm, Bulgaria time]
I'm feeling an immense feeling of...flightiness on this flight. (This is the tightest thought I've strung together since I boarded the plane in Sofia.) After much thinking, (often in daydreams while on transit) about my life in Vancouver, my family origins, and my travels, layered over and over in my brain - first in an orderly fashion, then spun out of control into a perplexed pirouette of folded thoughts resembling DNA chains - I feel entrapped in a tower of my history looking out into the skies of endless potential and vast opportunity. But it's a flimsy structure this tower, which quickly vanishes with the realization that I am uprooted regardless of where I am, leaning away and towards elsewhere, always.
Whether at home, kući, or in transit, I feel I'm always taking flight - because what is below is crumbling, whether because of unforecasted forecasts or because I danced and stomped too hard. Sometimes when I jump into these thoughts, I soar effortlessly in the smooth silken skies naked against the air that lifts me, pulled into the welcome embrace of some mystical vacuum made up of dreamy ambitions; other times, I ascend off a cliff, dragging upwards the whopping weight of my wings as I flail against the winds over me; usually I am with a flock but really, I fly solo regardless of conditions.
When I think of home in this very moment, my bookcases in Vancouver, like Tetris building blocks begin to crystallize in my mind, heavy and grounding, their titles defining who I am now in some way; but I also think of the two little hook holes I noticed in the tall Austrian doorway of our Marijin Dvor apartment when I recently visited with my dad, the chipped paint around them seemingly now the only surviving sign of my baby swing and my early childhood there. I could go on with my many visions of home, but I won't, because their sentimental nature tells me that really, I feel most at home in my heart: this place in which I perpetually seek - and find - shelter and comfort. And the same place which always draws me to check out yet again and board another plane and fly.
When I think of home in this very moment, my bookcases in Vancouver, like Tetris building blocks begin to crystallize in my mind, heavy and grounding, their titles defining who I am now in some way; but I also think of the two little hook holes I noticed in the tall Austrian doorway of our Marijin Dvor apartment when I recently visited with my dad, the chipped paint around them seemingly now the only surviving sign of my baby swing and my early childhood there. I could go on with my many visions of home, but I won't, because their sentimental nature tells me that really, I feel most at home in my heart: this place in which I perpetually seek - and find - shelter and comfort. And the same place which always draws me to check out yet again and board another plane and fly.
flight (n.) from Proto-Germanic *flug-ti-, from PIE*pluk-, from root *pleu- "to flow"; an "act of fleeing," c. 1200, flihht. To put (someone or something) to flight "rout, defeat" is from late 14c.
I, like many of my peers, sometimes ponder making a home somewhere new one day. As I sit here on this plane, I flightily fancy the notion that when I land, what if London were my final destination rather than the in-transit scrimmage line it has been every time thus far? I get this gruelling suspicion I would find nothing new here, albeit a new time zone where I can force a timeout and prove to myself that I can withstand the fluctuation in pressures, and adapt - but this is perhaps the only true remedy for this flighty, dreamy feeling. However unfamiliar a place, in due time, habit undoubtedly will form, setting it's own watery roots through me and into wherever I stand, settling me in.
Yes, eventually morning rituals and sleepless searches for entertainment take shape - regardless of culture or climate. A mirage made of familiarity appears like clusters of cloud, cushioning our seat in the world: a self-made ("homemade") delusion that yes, "I have arrived." And then I'm ready to fly again, lifted by the same cloud that shrouds my vision.
But all this is beautiful consolation, an answer to that deep-set sense of feeling astray and uncertain, a discovery and reminder that we are citizens of the world if we want to be - that I can be at home anywhere, no everywhere, so long as I feel confident in my ability to be open, to adapt.
But a soft landing requires practice.
Yes, eventually morning rituals and sleepless searches for entertainment take shape - regardless of culture or climate. A mirage made of familiarity appears like clusters of cloud, cushioning our seat in the world: a self-made ("homemade") delusion that yes, "I have arrived." And then I'm ready to fly again, lifted by the same cloud that shrouds my vision.
But all this is beautiful consolation, an answer to that deep-set sense of feeling astray and uncertain, a discovery and reminder that we are citizens of the world if we want to be - that I can be at home anywhere, no everywhere, so long as I feel confident in my ability to be open, to adapt.
But a soft landing requires practice.
The unknown and unseen beckons us to deport ourselves from what is near and to cut the strings, if only for a futile moment so that our imagination can take flight before the mortal anchor brings us down again. So take flight! Feel ephemeral, light, despite the weight of this world. Take your flights of fancy, however near or far...
flighty (adj.) 1550s, "swift," from flight (n.1) + -y (2). Sense of "fickle or frivolous" is from 1768, perhaps from notion of "given to 'flights' of imagination."
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