Falling off the Map of the World
Back to reality. Sometimes our dreams and desires in this life carry us away. Those bright hot air balloons over New Mexico sometimes crash and burn, and sometimes people fall. Sometimes we need our feet on the ground. We should have checked the basket and the wind. We should have checked our impulses and even our wild courage. I've had a few meaningful personal successes lately, but I need to fly my balloon home for the day.
(Photo borrowed from Balloon Zilla Pic --- http://balloonzillapic.blogspot.com/2013/09/hot-air-balloon-new-mexico.html)
This post is about being grounded. It's also about not causing other people pain with our flights of fancy, losing sight of their own dreams and desires and our role in making them come true. It's about not getting tangled up in trees so that the balloon comes down, and people are injured. We must have a map to follow.
Susan Ludvigson has a poem called "The Map of Imagined Geography" -- I want to share the first stanza here. If you're interested in reading more of her poetry, you'll find this poem and others in her book Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming.
One 16th century map of the world
is remarkable accurate,
latitude and longitude somehow
divined, the cartographer inspired,
like a blind man who feels his way
through any universe, outlines of ideas
imprinted in his fingertips. Angel faces
blow the winds of the world from the margins,
three dark mouths from the south, nine
white ones, lips puckered as for kisses,
warm breath, cold breath, puffs
of cumulous clouds surrounding each
disembodied head. Australia is a vacancy
smooth as drugged sleep,
and North America blurs to a dream.
Any map we make, you see, is an imaginary map of the world -- small worlds and larger ones. The map of my house, the map to my friend's houses, the map to the city, the downtown area, the map of Ireland in my dreams. I've been thinking of going there to read my poems in celebration of being shortlisted by O'Bheal. You can read more about the competition and about O'Bheal itself here:
http://www.obheal.ie/blog/3rd-five-words-competition-winner/
I do not know yet whether my map will take me to Ireland in April. Some things might matter more than this. I cannot tell you the latitude and longitude; it is not my country. Here in America, we are awash with negative politics. Many of us have cast votes for a reckless presidential candidate with a lot of money who thinks himself a kind of new emperor, but the other half of us know that he has no clothes, and when I say that I am not smiling. Where is our map? Who will be hurt if we end up following this man's directions? Close the border, put up walls and no welcome signs based on religion and geography. We've seen this before, haven't we? Are we in a balloon on fire, blurring this beautiful, beloved country to a bad dream and eventually a vacancy?
Well, these are my scattered thoughts this morning. I've pulled the dream car over, and taken out the map. I'll need to start with a map to the kitchen to do some chores I've put off in my dream state and distraction. Then I need to march the piled up shoes under the living room table into their rightful space, and sweep the route to and fro. It's time for a clean-up and a staying home today. My map will be to find myself whole and not in fragments scattered about under a collapsed balloon, a crazy dream. I will be sad about it, yes, but it's temporary. I've never actually even been in a hot air balloon, and I've not given up the idea completely. It's just that the sky is cloudy, and I want to wait until I can see clearly through my misty eyes to read again the map and recreate it.
What's on your map?
