I don't love ladders, nor do I hate being on one. The perspective of life changes rather drastically when perched precariously up on one. This past Sunday, to soothe the nerves of my wife, Betsy, who was distraught that the guy who cleaned our windows that day left scratches and streaks on our filmy windows (that I later determined to be paint over-spray from year's past that we wisely ignored doing anything about). Armed with paint remover and an old t-shirt, I lumbered up the ladder to the second floor and spritzed and wiped the window with increasing pressure until the ancient matted paint gave way and there was the visage of a clear window pane shining back at me. Huzzah, victory!
Nonetheless, while I was leaning against the house--sort of mid-window height, I would feel a slight shift to the ladder and quickly grab on to the side of the house or the window jamb for a sense of temporary security from the unwarranted sway. I've done this climbing out and clutching a lot through the years.
When I was a small child I had a propensity of climbing out of our suburban tri-level house's second story window and out on a tree limb thinking I was a bird. This is a recollection told to me, not a memory I possess. Apparently I would sit out on that limb for hours or until detected. My reward was to be moved into the basement and have a view of the scrub bushes that were outside that window. I do recall feeling very diminished by my psychic and physical demotion to underground. My lust for climbing, while arrested, was not quenched.
Like ladders for ladders sake, I do not love airplanes. I do love the marvelous perspective that they afford when you are above the clouds and earth is reduced to shapes and ant-sized features. I feel the same about going to the top of a tall building and taking in the panorama of the cityscape--once again a picture of your surroundings that you cannot appreciate from the street-level. When Betsy turned 40, I took her out on a hot air balloon ride which was memorable mostly for the crash landing finish where I shielded her from the hard landing as best as I could.
To describe the feeling of the ladder view is to think how you felt when you experienced your first kiss or your favorite pie smell. It is transcendent of the inherent fear you instinctively feel and must be what birds feel when the breeze lifts them higher into the air. There is a electric magic to the experience.
When I am most in that moment, I can then think about anxieties and worries that I carry. In my imagination they become like the leaves that drop from trees parallel to me and spiral toward the earth. No longer something I carry, but debris that is not mine to have to contend. I appreciate the freedom I have been given and take that to be the moment in which I descend gingerly down the ladder to solid earth where my perspective is once again grounded.
Nonetheless, while I was leaning against the house--sort of mid-window height, I would feel a slight shift to the ladder and quickly grab on to the side of the house or the window jamb for a sense of temporary security from the unwarranted sway. I've done this climbing out and clutching a lot through the years.
When I was a small child I had a propensity of climbing out of our suburban tri-level house's second story window and out on a tree limb thinking I was a bird. This is a recollection told to me, not a memory I possess. Apparently I would sit out on that limb for hours or until detected. My reward was to be moved into the basement and have a view of the scrub bushes that were outside that window. I do recall feeling very diminished by my psychic and physical demotion to underground. My lust for climbing, while arrested, was not quenched.
Like ladders for ladders sake, I do not love airplanes. I do love the marvelous perspective that they afford when you are above the clouds and earth is reduced to shapes and ant-sized features. I feel the same about going to the top of a tall building and taking in the panorama of the cityscape--once again a picture of your surroundings that you cannot appreciate from the street-level. When Betsy turned 40, I took her out on a hot air balloon ride which was memorable mostly for the crash landing finish where I shielded her from the hard landing as best as I could.
To describe the feeling of the ladder view is to think how you felt when you experienced your first kiss or your favorite pie smell. It is transcendent of the inherent fear you instinctively feel and must be what birds feel when the breeze lifts them higher into the air. There is a electric magic to the experience.
When I am most in that moment, I can then think about anxieties and worries that I carry. In my imagination they become like the leaves that drop from trees parallel to me and spiral toward the earth. No longer something I carry, but debris that is not mine to have to contend. I appreciate the freedom I have been given and take that to be the moment in which I descend gingerly down the ladder to solid earth where my perspective is once again grounded.
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