Things That Kill Other Things

When I was content and hypnotized into feeling secure in life, I had certain assumptions about myself that never got challenged.  One of those was that I am a peace loving person, so much so that the idea of owning a firearm made me physically ill.

Then, someone snapped their fingers, I came out of my trance and into chaos.  There are no more assumptions, and I am seriously contemplating owning a pistol of some kind.  I don't want it for self-defense, I want because it is so fucking fun to go to the gun range and shoot.  

I went to the gun range for the first time in my life last week.  A friend took me there and let me shoot his revolver with his bullets.  As soon as we pulled into the parking lot, I started shaking -- not visibly, just internally vibrating.  Guns.  With real bullets.  I imagined all the possible ways someone could be maimed or killed, even in a controlled environment like a gun range.  I could barely hold my pen still to sign the liability waiver.  As we walked to the range, ear and eye protection in place, I found it hard to control my hands.  We walked to our slot.  A couple of slots over, someone was shooting a rifle that made my abdomen quiver every time it went off.  

My friend took out his revolver, showed me how to load, hold, aim and shoot it.  He set up the target for me, took some shots to show me how to do it, then stood back while I tried.  His instructions sounded like underwater messages through my ear protection.  The first time I loaded and shot the revolver, I did not hit the target once.  Not even close enough to make the paper move in the breeze of a passing bullet.  I opened the gun to reload it, hands shaking, clumsy, thinking that if I dropped one round it would explode and leave bits of my face all over the range.  This time, I loosened my knees, breathed deeply before I raised the pistol and used its weight to steady my hands.  I started hitting that target around the edges, once or twice coming close to the center.  On my final try, I got 8 out of 10 shots in the target.  

When we left, my body was finally still, but my hands still felt like they were vibrating from within.  At home, I could still smell gunpowder on my fingers.  Eventually, the adrenaline crashed and I sat down staring out the window while my body reset.  

The next day, I immediately wanted to go back again.  I am a person who enjoys shooting guns.  Handling things whose sole purpose is to kill other things.  Even so, the idea that something in my hands could damage any living body still makes me physically ill.  This is a strange nuance of both my reconstructed life, and of the whole gun debate.  Peaceful people sometimes enjoy hobbies with the potential for violence.  I support every restriction, check and control measure proposed for gun ownership.  I like the smell of gunpowder on my fingers.  

I see this whole day as another discovery on my path of balance.  Each thing I have discovered and held goes on the scales, and they gently sway towards stability.  Some things will stay anchored there, some will be replaced, but I will always find the even place.  Today, a pistol goes on one side, peace and compassion go on the other, pulling it all into alignment.

Back There

"You don't have anything you can throw yourself into," my friend said to me.  About twenty minutes later in our conversation, I heard it.  Heard it and knew without a doubt that it was true.  

What do I throw myself into?  Being a life-loving, optimistic person, it certainly isn't going to be a river or a pit or anything like that.  What did I throw myself into before?  The Ex.  I threw myself into the Ex with absolute abandon and something I called joy. It was my mission in life to be part of that relationship.  So, maybe that is the thing.  I throw myself into a relationship.  I keep working and constructing a backup life, but my real job becomes finding a relationship to throw myself into.  

Except.  Until. There is this glimmer of an opportunity which pulls together things I am passionate about --creativity, wooded land, women (and men) stepping out of their lives to find transcendence.  Just a hint of a sparkle in my eye, and then:

(1) --I won a raffle prize from a local business.  The prize: a consultation with an entrepreneurial law expert.  

(2) --piffing around on the internet, I saw these things:

   "I just wanna go on more adventures. Be around good energy. Connect with people. Learn new things."

    "You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.  --Winston Churchill"

    ". . . a new surge of creativity invariably emerges out of a period of instability, and life unfolds in greater diversity than before whenever it takes a shock wave in its stride.  --Margaret Silf"

(3)--I checked in with the person whose support I most needed, and their response was simply, Yes. 

It feels like the edge of a pit, or a high drop into a river.  But I want to throw myself into it. I think. 

Walking the Land

One of the things that has happened this past year is that I (finally) feel a kind of urgency towards knowing and understanding where I came from.  By divorce, I have somehow been initiated into true adulthood in my family, and I feel more comfortable asking questions about the gaps in family stories.  Also by divorce, I have learned where my real, down-to-the-center-of-the-earth roots are.  I always thought they were with the Ex, but they are within, and everything that is within somehow germinated in Kentucky.

This weekend, I "walked the land" with my Dad.  It had been years since I took a walk around the perimeter of the farm where my grandparents lived.  After our walk, I stayed behind for a while, sitting under a tree in the yard.  I thought about all the years I had come down to the farm, all the iterations of my self as I grew and the places on that land I touched.  The field at the top of the hill where my childhood friend and I tried (unsuccessfully) to catch one of the horses.  The pond where I tried shooting a pistol for the first time.  The relatively flat yard where we had picnics and bonfires and dangerous games of Jarts.  And all the Christmases in the house.  Year after year, for as long as my grandmother could do it.  

As I sat under the tree, time traveling, I felt this long, unbroken thread of loneliness passing through so many of the events.  Every time we got together, there seemed to be some heartbreak brewing.  A separation, a family quarrel, someone moving away. But every time it was someone different who had the burden of loneliness with them.  They carried it sometimes quietly and gently, sometimes with hard, sharp elbows and a face of iron, sometimes drenched in it.  It was almost like the loneliness was our precious family heirloom shared among everyone so we each had a chance to connect with it.  This past year, it felt like my turn to carry it.

I do not know who is next to take this heirloom, but already I feel it is lifting from me.  I sat under a tree in the yard, waving away the same kinds of bugs that bit and stung me when I walked barefoot in that yard as a child.  I saw our legacy, this loneliness we share among ourselves, but I also saw the traces it left behind -- the bottomless love, compassion and creativity which are also our family heirlooms.  This is where I come from, and I mean to go back here -- literally and figuratively -- as much as I can.