The Time Travellers

We, the time travelers. We, the makers of history, we the lovers, the dreamers and the ventures, the wanderers and the pioneers. We the stories in the eaves of our own hearth, born to remember and baked from the womb of survival’s greatest masterpiece, us.

It was once said that;

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards..”
 Soren Lierkegaard

I happen to believe in reflection, a gift of what was in what could be new again. Today I found myself gardening and pondering and remembering too, kneeling and grounded to a luxuriant bed of fibrous soil, rich and dark, soft and potentially more. Yes, Melbourne in Winter and an atomizer sky of soft pixie-dust mist had me again flying backwards, hummingbird heart to a very first experience of film, well at least for me anyway. Peter Pan was screening at the local cinema and I was to attend and I was very, very excited. All the night before, I couldn’t sleep. All the morning through, I couldn’t eat and all the wonderous moments then of cinema, for the first time, were everything and more than I could have hoped for. I decided right then and shortly afterwards there must surely be a way... a way to fly. Mission impossible? ...Not for an almost five year old spirit, not at all, for where there’s a will, there’s a way and the way was to ....dance!

First it was me and music. Oh what a partner, so versatile, so many choices, so fully alive with those floating notes that sat on the peaks and troughs of an aerial ocean, wave upon wave of delight filled sound. What a time we had, free and funny, falling and flying from one wide sofa to the open arms of a soft, safe seat. Bunched round the ankles, puckered and twisted in all the wrong ways, I was forever in tights. They were not the right size, always with room for growing taller. And taller I became and I wanted to join a class and I did just that, especially after falling in love with Leeroy Johnson in tights  willing us all “to live forever” “to learn how to fly...high..” 

I loved to dance. I practiced. I learnt the routines. I wore the right uniform. I was dressed by someone else now. It was no longer my own dance. An instructor made divisions, presented as choices;

“Large girls there, right girls here. Your costumes will need to be different..”

That summer I vowed to be right, in all the wrong ways. I lost weight so fast and it felt just like winning, shedding flesh to bare bones, lighter, down, down, down and sinking. My body was shocked.

“What are you doing?”

Warning bells rang at the loss of a menstrual cycle for the time being. I stopped dancing and I also got better, as better as I could get, in time. 

I met a boy some years on. He wrote me a letter. He said..

“Why not stand on your own two feet..”

Politely I smiled on through and up to a clock perched high in the middle of love. But I did have an answer left undelivered and the answer was..

“I am”

And the answer was 

“But I would rather fly..”

And as it was once already said, so what of this? We can do both of course. Women, men, children, stand strong, fly high and teach each other how to jump on the winds back. Be a creator, do not forget, move forwards and ask questions. And so a question can have favorites, and my favorite is this..

“ Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have tea first?

J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)