I am Adventure

'Wake up with adventure in your heart'

-me

One of my favourite things to do as a child was to curl up or sprawl out under beams of sunshine as I read a book.  Today I have spent most of my morning doing just the same thing, diving deep into it's binding and ink.  An almost Holy moment.  I decided to record it for you and for myself, detox the words right out of my frame.

Perhaps spending so much of my childhood abstract from siblings or neighbours my age has prepared me for the life I have led so far, often alone, travelling, working, with bursts of almost claustrophobic human interaction.

I never realised I was alone as a child, having two older sisters that were 3 years in age apart they were friends, I came along 6 or so years later and was followed by a boy 4 years later who quite wonderfully became the joy of all our attentions ( he is still quite wonderful).  He was however a boy, who had his own friends and escapades that rarely involved me and if they did it was to watch him climb trees or go to scout camp, or visit with his best friends parent (who became my mothers close companion).  His best friend was an only child and so I enjoyed the company of Max an overexcited, fat and strong silver hound that would jump me everytime I entered their house, his legs towering up to my face to knock my over sized glasses off my face.  I attended school, but was as a girl in a minority and this pattern followed me until I was 27.

I never realised I was alone, because I had a book and the delicious rays of the sun beaming down on my face, and the desire to be climatised in a warmer corner of the world, like my ancestors were accustomed.  I didn't just have a few books, I had all books and I had instruments.  My father read and kept a diverse and often strange library, my mother sewed and cooked mostly and her weekly magazine subscriptions filled up folder after folder.  I also had hand me downs, the books my older sisters had finished with.  We all enjoyed to read, my eldest sister loved detective novels and the next poetry.  I personally had a hankering for adventure stories and teaching myself the piano.  I still do.

I have tended in my later years to steer towards historical narrative as opposed to pure fiction.  There is an energy in knowing what I'm reading has actually taken place.  It's like sucking on helium.  The friends I've kept close, actually those who have kept me close are people who are literary, read, write, publish, create lyrics.  Although I have great respect for the mercy givers in my cloud of acquaintance and family, I am no nurse or soother.   Though I am grateful for their soothing.

I am an adventurer. 

I married an adventurer who may be coming to the realization that he has always been one!  Adventure is normal life for him.  He is extreme, but not foolhardy.  An outdoor man who takes sobre gratification from the technologies of modern existence.  He is also a writer, a good one.  He conjures up scenario and dialogue with envious ease.

Being an adventurer has meant travel, extremes, isolation, inundation, new people, old ties, sometimes lacking, often wondering, mainly enjoying.

As I look across at the skyline peppered with evergreens and bare branches I am reminded of the adventures ahead, out there, in here.  Adventures that travel wide and adventures that dig deep into the soul.  With so many experiences I am a jar full, full of tales that need to be carved out or drawn on to my cubicle wall, painted with words that bring out the intricate meaning of each and every journey of the body and soul.

Do I see adventure in all things?  Maybe? I have not always?  Where is the adventure in sorrow, death, illness?   There maybe an adventure in these places...one that takes you into your soul, one that leads you into new levels of relationship.  An adventure unexpected, unplanned, unpredictable...the adventure of life.

I have adventured through my own sorrows....my head is still held high...there are new adventures each morning, on every horizon.  In company or alone, there is an adventure waiting around the bend...every waking moment is laced with adventure pointing us onwards.