When I was six years old I lived in an apartment building that had back stairs leading to the patios. I used to sit on those stairs after chool. I liked the quiet back there. The other stairs leading to the patios were on the opposite side of the building, nearer to the front doors and the parking lot. It seemed that more people used the front stairs even if they lived in the back of the building, I was left mostly alone hanging out in back. There was a big tree near where I perched on the stairs, if I was there at the right time of day the sun would shine behind it leaving leafy patterns all over the patio stairs and all over me. The wind would blow through the tree moving everything around and I would watch the shadows dance around. It was really peaceful and I liked being on my own. My interests were just different than a lot of kids my age. While the other kids were playing kickball in the field behind our building I was learning about transcendental meditation and the difference between Zen Buddhism and Taoism, among other things. It was actually because of those stairs that I had met Lucy, a young woman who had a lot of interests and lived in the same row of buildings I lived in. She would come out into the field sometimes to sunbathe. When she would get too warm she would come to the stairs and we would share the shade of the tree. One exceptionally hot day she had invited me to her place for iced tea. Back then, an offer of tea to a child from someone who is twenty years older wasn't any more or less dangerous than it is now I suppose, we just didn't have as many news outlets as there are now to create the same levels of paranoia and fear that there are now. Truth be told, at the time I didn't hesitate, I was thirsty and I trusted Lu, she had always been nice to me and believe me, there were far creepier people living in those buildings than her. The first time I saw Lu's apartment I thought it was the coolest most hip place ever. She had beanbag chairs and zafus, lava lamps and black-lights, even a rain lamp, it was the 1970's after all. The rain lamp adorned a corner of her home where she had set up a meditation area. All the apartments were pretty much the same. Her apartment was like ours only flipped. She had her meditation area in the living room, an altar with Ganesha taking up the space where most folks had their television set. She did have a stereo and a great selection of records. I would end up visiting with her many times after that first visit, she had a lot to tell me and I was interested. She taught me things like how to read a palm or how to use playing cards in tarot readings. She taught me a lot about meditation as well and it is that specifically which comes to the forefront of my mind when I think of what happened the day the robin came. It was just a plain old robin, American to be precise, nothing special. I was sitting on my perch at the back stairs staring off into space, as I was wont to do, when the robin flew in and landed in front of me. I was watching it flit about on the ground and don't know exactly what brought it on, but when that bird took flight, I could see everything it saw. In that moment I wasn't yet trying to figure out the why or the how, I was flying! I felt flight, which of course at the time I wasn't trying to describe or analyze, I was just feeling it. Weightlessness and wind, the feeling was something I had only imagined or felt in dreams until that moment, it was truly amazing. It isn't really something that can be described, it must be experienced, and that day, I was in the right place at the right time checking out the right bird. I was looking down at the trees racing by below me. I saw my little bird shaped shadow, the ground rushing by underneath, grass yellowed by the sun. The details were sharp and distinct. It wasn't just the feeling, it was the sight, birds don't see the same way people do. Whatever guided the experience that day seemed to have taken that into account and that was when it hit me that I wasn't driving. I was taking in the experience one thing at a time and it all happened very fast but it didn't take long to realize that I was not the one flying, I knew nothing of flying after all, so that had been left to the bird. There was a bit of swooping, of going low and then rising up high. There were the colors and in some cases lack of colors. At one point the bird turned around and started flying back toward the apartments, I realized it when I saw the kickball field come into view below me. There weren't any kids in the field, no games that day I guess. I remember seeing the roof of the building, I had never seen it before and it was like looking at something I wasn't allowed to look at. Roof access wasn't allowed at any of the buildings on our block. Our flight pattern took us to the front of the building where I did see some kids hanging out making ready to walk to the pool, that must be where everyone was. Going around front had made it so our approach to the back stairs would be from a different angle than when we had first flown off. We were basically coming in from the opposite direction than we had flown in when we had taken off. As we came in it all happened very fast. All in the blink of an eye I saw my favorite tree. Had we come in from the direction in which we had left, the first thing I would have seen would have been the stairs, my perch, me sitting there. Instead, I saw the tree and then I saw Lu standing there underneath it with her giant sunhat and she looked up at that very moment right at me, dressed up as a robin. Lastly, I saw me, only for a second at first, after all I was sharing sight with a bird who was a little preoccupied with landing. That one second, fraction of a second really, was all it took though. It was as though the bird's very essence had shot me back into my body like a soul sling-shot, and I was back. The same second I saw my physical body still sitting on those back stairs I was right back in it, it felt it like it would have made an audible, "whump" with a breeze flung up from the landing, just like with my Robin friend. I looked up at Lucy who was leaning against the tree. "Ahh, there you are," she said, "C'mon, I'll make us some tea."
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Highway Hanna
“I travel in gardens and bedrooms, basements and attics, around corners, through doorways and windows, along sidewalks, over carpets, down drainpipes, in the sky, with friends, lovers, children and heros; perceived, remembered, imagined, distorted and clarified.” Archives
July 2021
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