pinnacle

You know how every once in a while you'll smell something or hear a song that reminds you of some earlier time, and it's like you're transported back there? I don't mean just being immersed in a memory, but it's like you're *there*. You feel the same, think the same, feel the same way you did then. Well Fridays are my day off, and this morning I skipped my aerobics class to stay home to do some cleaning and catching up. I decided I wanted some music, so I put on an old CD of mine that I haven't listened to in a long, long time, and was immediately transported back to my 20s. And that got me to thinking about the stages I've gone through in my life and all the different selves that I've been... And I *miss* my self from my 20s. I think if I make myself an outside observer, that Jen is the one I am most fond of. I don't think I was smartest then, or happiest then, but when I go back there, I realize I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I can only describe as anticipation. I was both old enough and young enough to be totally and completely idealistic. I felt like I was up at the peak. I was in graduate school, creating my future career. I was in the process of baking me up - of turning myself into the person I wanted to be. I was *good*. I wanted to make a difference - a real and true difference. I was realizing that my life was mine, and I loved to wax philosophical with myself. I contemplated that belly button, but realized my path needed to be more than just that.

Up on the watershed, standing at the fork in the road. You can stand there and agonize till your agony's your heaviest load. You'll never fly as the crow flies, get used to a country mile. When you're learning to face the path at your pace, every choice is worth your while.

Well there's always retrospect to light a clearer path. Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good laugh. You start at the top, go full circle round, catch a breeze, take a spill...but ending up where I started again makes me wanna stand still.

That's when I felt passionate enough about things to get out there and *do* something. I traveled to DC for a few protests, I worked Saturdays with Habitat for Humanity, I ran golf tournaments to raise money for charity. I started to realize that I could be *anything* I wanted. I was arrogant enough to think that was possible. I cried at meaningful songs, I tried backpacking on the Appalachain trail, I decided to get my PhD.

I look behind my ears for the green. Even my sweat smells clean. Glare off the white hurts my eyes. Gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail, Learn how to use my hands...not just my head, I think myself into jail. Now I know a refuge never grows from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose. Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.

My life is part of the global life. I'd found myself becoming more immobile when I'd think a little girl in the world can't do anything. A distant nation - my community. A street person - my responsibility. If I have a care in the world I have a gift to bring.

Of course I was full of worries and agony then, too. I had no prospects for marriage at the time, which I took to mean I'd be single forever. I was silly. I was immature. But I tell you what - if I could recreate that feeling in my pit of my stomach - that drive, that excitement, I would. It's like I'd just stepped outside for the first time in spring and caught the first whiff of blossoms. POSSIBILITY, coupled with determination to make the most of it.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains, I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain. There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.

Now why do we lose that self when we get older? Once we realize our own mortality, it's like we settle for wherever we are and lose that drive to *be*, to change. I'm not unhappy with my life - quite the opposite. I just don't have that feeling of possibility any more. Is that something only for the very young? Maybe it has to be that way. I don't want to go back in time, but I would love to find that Jen again and bring her along with me in the here and now. I need her inspiration.