Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen occasional regrets:

1. I learned to dance when I was young. Now my imagination still does crab rolls and splits, pirouettes and long, high leaps. Every inch of me still knows what that feels like, I just lost practice and the physical reality feels a bit trapped. Its like I'm in two places at once. Like a posh car with no wheels, the engine makes all the right purring noises, but we're not going to move.
   
2. I used to have a three octave voice, my classical teacher even gave my lessons at half price when cash was tight because she was sure I had a career. I took up bikers and smoking instead. These days I know what my high D sounds and feels like and every part of me gears up for it, except the throat, it sounds like somebody trod on a frog long before then, and just wheezy silence up the top.
   
3. I still know the rush of being centre stage with a dark, full concert hall, the buzz of playing pretend and dragging others in to the story, intensely alone and just as intensely in touch - its an auric thing. Haven't been there for twenty years, though, and I'd have nothing to do if I got there again, now. Nightmare.
   
4. I wish I'd been less tied to duty and propriety; to the nine to five, to career building (which all went out the window when I had kids, anyway.) I wish I'd joined up with something; anything; Greenpeace, or a touring theatre company. I guess I wish my life had been about changing the environment to get to the experiences and not limiting the experiences to fit the environment.
5. I wish I'd dyed my hair green when I was twenty. In those days it would have meant instant dismissal from the kind of corporate dinosaurs I used to work for. I made a conscious decision not to be me, not to step too far outside the approval zone.
6. I remember higher energy levels than this. I just wish I could tear around from project to project, all day.
   
7. I wish I'd lived, just once, in walking distance of a serious library. There's something about information and secrets and lives and windows on different worlds all stacked up to the rafters in tangible form. Books have magic, and they seem, en mass, to give off oxygen. No air conditioning or heating can change the ozone sensation around enough books. I'd have liked a chance to swim in that, to camp out there.
8. I wish I'd come to a halt at twenty years old, not for the physical differences but because at that age all anyone asks of you is that you find out who you are and realise your potential. I could spend a lifetime doing that, but its not so long before society seems to expect you to have worked it out, and stems your freedom to come and go. After that there's precious little room to explore because you're not supposed to need it. People look at you like you've got it all going on. You know that old phrase 'you make your bed and you lie in it'? I don't feel like I've made mine yet. Somebody set me loose in a bed warehouse, please, because I want to try them all; I don't even remember choosing a frame.
9. I wish I worked in a university, or anywhere like that; just a place where all the people you mix with are full of 'what ifs'. I wouldn't care if half of them talked total BS, so long as they were always imagining, always challenging, always firing off each other.
10. I wish I hadn't gone through the phase of guilt for the things I lost, because I had them, so they're inside, and some never knew what they felt like. Regret stops you looking forward.
11. I wish I hadn't gone through the phase of disappointment for the things I've never tried, because staring into an empty bowl stops you looking at the world around you - as much use as losing your keys and gawping at your empty key hook, instead of searching the house.
12. I wish I hadn't been so hooked up on one goal that I brushed different opportunities aside. I guess its like the difference between going 400 miles by bullet train, and walking.
13. I wish I could be as full of potential, of possibilities, of amazement at life as my children are now, but that would make me the child and I'd be no use to them, plus I'd miss the joy of seeing them grow. It takes past experience to spot the same things in a new person.

I think you'll find that the above all cancel each other out. You can't be everything all the time. Sometimes you have to exchange one set of tools for another, but if you didn't regret that once in a while, if you didn't value the things you lost or gave up, you'd never get the thrill of watching someone else achieve them.

And no, I have no idea where that all came from. Call it a glitch, or a spiritual zit, or something. Sorry about that. I'm just going to toddle off now and find the TCP.....




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written by Cheryl the Mad Baggage