Wednesday, September 20, 2006Lift One of the highlights of the marathon party was a surprise visit from my martial arts teacher. She's an awesome woman -- a wildly talented rock 'n' roller, master martial artist, and an expert at an ancient Filipino percussion ensemble called Kulintang (which the boys and I studied with her, in addition to the JKD, for several years.) I was flattered and deeply touched when she came by; with all possible respect, it was like being visited and honored by Yoda.She emerged from her SUV with a set of helium-inflated balloons -- three purple ones, one white one. They were all marked with the rhythms of the dabakan drum that we had been studying with her; it is a deep and basic pattern and it permeates how we knock on doors, honk the horn, and even beep the timer on the oven. "The purple balloons represent your emotions, your mind and your body," she said "The white one represents your soul. Write on them what you want to release up into the universe, your dreams for yourself, where you want to go on this next passage of your life." As you may have guessed, I was all over this idea. I'm the ritual queen and this was made to order. This whole thing was dripping with symbolic richness. I couldn't wait to have some time to think up the perfect words to send up into the sky. Unfortunately, however, the balloons were on a different schedule. By the next morning, with the house filled with guests and another 20 hours of party to go... they were drooping and flopping on top of the piano. They were no more going up into the heavens to announce my intentions than I was. (Ah, hopefully.) I put the idea on the back burner for awhile. And as I recovered from the party and finished peeling the top layer of barbeque sauce out of the cracks of my lighting fixtures and found the last beer bottles propped in the crevices of my backyard, I had another idea. The night before my actual birthday, I would go out and get seven new balloons, one for every chakra, and send them up... carrying my deflated purples and white with them as payload. What would be even cooler, I thought, would be if I got the kids to write some neato words on them, relating to the nature of the specific chakra. And since this was a bigger idea than just sending up my little wishes for my humble existence, we would write words and thoughts for the entire planet. And our dreams for the world would carry with them my hopes for myself. I loved this plan. It was so neat. And the kids humored me. Something about turning a big round number makes people humor you a bit more. (Hopefully it's not because they figure they're going to have to suffer your wacky ideas for that much less time in the future.) Maybe they secretly thought it was pretty cool. It's possible. Whatever it was, we sat around and talked about the images and energies for each chakra following the various definitions we looked up.  Red is the root chakra and associates with the earth, survival, base instincts. So on the red balloon we wrote words that we wished for the planet's environmental well-being. For orange, the chakra associated with sexual organs, we wrote down what we wanted for the world's emotions and passions. Yellow is the chakra located around the solar plexus. This is the power chakra, so we thought about how we as a country could better use our power. The heart chakra is green. And it's also the middle chakra. So this is the place of balance and compassion. The next chakra is blue. This is the place of communication, associated with the throat and speaking. We thought of how we as a society could better communicate with the world and what we could do better. Violet is the color of the third eye chakra. This associates with vision, so we wrote down what we wanted the United States to see as we look around us. The last and most elevated chakra is white. It lives in the crown of the head and represents the highest attainment of spirituality or refinement or enlightenment. This balloon is where we place our loftiest hopes and ambitions for our culture and country as it operates in the world.It's obvious that we were doing something cool. It took about 20 minutes and then we put the balloons in the hall way to release the next morning at daybreak. Then, having saved the world, we grabbed ice cream and spoons and settled in to watch some good old fashioned vampire staking. I woke up early on the day of my birthday. I was really relieved that the day itself has finally arrived. The bridge was crossed and I was safely on the other side with some adventures around the bend. I get up and throw on some clothes for the launch of the balloons. I check on the internet and find out that sunrise for Pasadena is at 6:33. I rouse the kids and tell them we're about to send them up. I feed the dog and cat and grab the balloons, heading out the front door. That's when I notice we have a slight, ah, problem. The night before, when I let them go, they hit the ceiling with a deeply satifying latex smack. Bam! Bam bam bam! They just couldn't wait to hit the ceiling, they were so filled with the lightheartedness of helium. But this morning, they were having a bit of a hangover. The lightheartedness was a bit more downtrodden. Yeah... they'd still go upwards... but lazily, sleepily, like all in all they'd rather sink down to their little balloon knees and give the flying thing up completely. Problem. These were not balloons that were going to be able to carry with them my dreams (as written on four semi-flated balloons). No way. I tried tying my soul balloon on and the whole Chakra Seven posse couldn't withstand that one balloon's heft and just slammed down onto the floor like I'd tied on a small chunk of boat anchor. So the idea of the big balloons carrying my smaller balloons was out. Well, that's OK. I can still wish the world something big for my birthday, right? They are still inflated... they will still go up. It'll be fine. I'll figure out something for the purples and whites at a later date. The kids shuffle out of their rooms and we go outside. I keep yanking gently down on the string hoping that the pull back up will get more, well, noticeable. It doesn't. But they are still upright, damn it. And it's daybreak on my birthday. The kids are getting late for school and well, we have to release the things. I take a bunch of pictures with the film camera, and Chris takes some with the digital. I figure we've done as much commemorating as we can... so I just open my hand and let them go. They DO go up. They really do. But, well, they don't really go up very far. As we watch, we see them gently drift over the top of the roof ... and then up over the trees behind my house. Where they, well, just barely clear. And then I get the incredible, heartwrenching error of my ways. Behind my house, behind those tress that the balloons just barely cleared, is a major freeway. A MAJOR FREEWAY. With motorists driving blearily on their way to work. The Starbucks wore off 20 miles ago, it's just a hair after daybreak, they stayed up too late watching Survivor reruns... and they are SOOOOO not going to like a big wad of cheerfully chakra-colored balloons smacking them in the windshield. Our quasi-elation rapidly turns to acute anxiety. The kids and I watch as the cluster wafts gently over the freeway. They actually look like they're going to dip all the way down and just fall. But they don't. Not quite. They continue over the freeway at basically overpass height, buffetted by the occasional car wind travelling beneath them. I am going to kill someone with my good wishes. I am going to get arrested for setting forth something that is going to cause a multi-car pileup on my beloved little freeway. The cars are going to screech and careen and come flying over my back fence. Bodies are going to be mangled. Letters will be sent to all citizens of my little town, telling us in no uncertain terms that the release of unidentified objects into the air is a public hazard and anyone who is caught doing it will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. The kids watch nervously. They are thinking about the tires screeching that we are sure will be forthcoming any moment. They are no longer really on board with this idea. Our stomachs somewhat clenched with fear, we go back into the house. I pace around, mumbling to myself, trying to remember certain laws of physics (NOT the one that says "what goes up must come down.") More along the lines of thinking that the helium will equalize at a certain altitude for awhile and then gradually they will come down. In a tree, maybe. Or maybe in front of someone's home. Far away from the freeway. Maybe, I try to tell myself, someone will see them and get that they were aligned in the exact position of the various chakras. Maybe someone will read the words. After all... our hearts were TOTALLY in the right place for this little project. It really SHOULD not result in a sigalert and mangled metal. The good intentions should, actually, maybe... work. As I go through the day I wonder what happened to our poor little balloons. And as I check the internet to see if I had caused a disaster, and found I hadn't, I begin to tentatively identify with them. Noble, brave, and not quite as enlightened as I would like to be, I go up every day and try to do my best. Maybe not shooting up to the stratosphere with the same mad trajectory as I did before, but still going up. Still having enough lift to clear the treetops.  # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:55 PM  
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