Learning to Fly
I wrote a narrative about a small but profound piece of my childhood, when I moved from the city to the suburbs, and how my life changed because of it. I was planning to set it to video clips I had taken some time before, but I didn’t think it captured the imagination of the piece so I switched to animation. I have innumerable animations – each of them quite brilliant – collected on my desktop and I figured I should do something with them. The animations I used were…rac by Frederic Back, Diary (Dnevnik) by Nedeliko Dragic, Dreamscapes by Sean McBride, Grasshoper by Bruno Bozzetto, The World of Interiors by Bunny Schendler.
The Narrative:
Did you ever play those games as a little kid, the ones where you come up with a story and act it out, making up the plot as you go along? I did.
When my parents moved us away from the city, they decided on a place that liked to pretend it was untouched by the urbanization they so longed to escape. It wasn’t, really. Drive five minutes, no, less than that, and your back in the shitty run-down shopping centers and overcrowding that now characterize northern Virginia. But that’s not the point. The point is that there were trees, lots of them.
Suddenly, my dangers of the world went from hobos, rapists and kidnappers to left and forgotten bear traps and getting lost in the woods, and well, the occasional camp of hobos living near the creek. Really, I didn’t know what to make of it. Until that time, I had known sidewalks, cars and concrete; now I knew trees and grass and animals. I couldn’t have been more out of place. I was a city girl to the very heart and core of me.
To make things worse, children in this new place were few and far between. My heart sank. I thought I was destined to forever be alone, isolated by these trees, forever longing for my concrete jungle. Fortunately, it wasn’t long till I managed to make a friend. I shudder to think how my life would have been should the circumstances have been different.
Her name was Nikki, and she was all of one day younger than me. We looked like twins, down to the mischievous sparkle reflected in our eyes and hearts. We wasted no time getting in trouble.
School days now ended with play sword fights by the creek and weekends began with the ringing of my doorbell to come out and play.
Life was a fantasy. She and I were knights, our kingdom in dire peril, and it was our duty to rescue the maiden fair. (Of course neither of us would be caught dead as the damsel in distress.) Every passing car was an enemy spy and every tree a dragon to be conquered. We lived by honor and measured our valor by counting our wounds at the end of the day. Oh such times they were. We lived and breathed adventure.
My fondest memories are of those days. Of sticks beings swords, of being tackled to the forest floor. Of fighting dragons, Of running the creek start to end, of beginning the day at dawn and never coming back until hours after dusk.
But nothing lasts forever.
These days weapons are no longer made of sticks, and the dragons I fight aren’t trees but people. I have more to worry about now than just my mother finding out about that wooden bow we made.
I’m back in the city now, though it’s not my city. Through it all, I am still, and probably will always be, a city girl through and through. But now, there’s a small green patch in my heart, a tiny vine of ivy that weaves it’s way through my soul. I will always carry those forested memories with me, and I know that people can see those woods reflecting through the brown of my eyes.
And these days, when I still see Nikki, it is like we are still there, back in those days. Our eyes meet, and they rekindle our twin sparks. All of a sudden, we are kids again, running towards the woods, wrestling each other and fighting with sticks. It brings laughter and joy even into the darkest moments of our lives.
We can conquer anything.
Because we conquered dragons.
