My friend Kim wrote a piece inspired by this pic I showed her, and how I told her I didn’t want to smile at the camera guy on the race course. I was so focussed on finishing the 80km of uphill. And then I shared with her that shortly after this pic was taken, I started whizzing downhill at 50-70km/hr, on my bike, my dog’s spirit growing wings to keep up with me. My own purple jacket has wings in this pic.
So here are Kim’s words:
Where the rubber meets the road
Who knew angels on earth made poop jokes, and said things like ‘rad’ or ‘far out’. It’s just packaging, legs and arms and bodies and hair, it’s just part time packaging, borrowed clothing that sets our feet down here, or lifts them up just floating every so slightly above the earth, if we looked closely enough we’d see that. Flying bodies. Angels aren’t angelic, they are splattered with mud and guts, they wear ripped jeans and say fuck a lot. They grind up long paths, even when they are tired, just so they can get to the top with their bodies and bumps scrapes and scabs and say ‘I got here’. Or, I’m here. We fly through life sometimes looking at the ground, not wanting to stumble, or miss a smile for the camera, we do. We preen and pick and prompt ourselves into performances for the people.
But what if we let go a little. Let up, put down, sigh with relief and relax our clenched jaws, what if we put on black gloves and the sky on our head and just flew forward really so fast we sprout our own wings.
Create Your Own Closure
September 25, 2024
