Six Feet, More or Less

August twentieth. The thing Simone said was: 'It's one session. It's not a commitment. It's just a thing we could do.' That was two weeks after she mentioned it in passing at the end of a shift, and I spent those two weeks saying sure, probably, maybe, I'll look at the dates, which is how I register for things I've already decided to try.

The class was an intro aerial silks workshop, ninety minutes, held in the big gym at the community center on a Thursday evening. Simone found it in the summer brochure, the same brochure I have been half-looking at since February. Twelve people, two instructors, no experience required. The silks hang from rigging near the ceiling and you learn, apparently, to trust fabric with your full weight. I did not completely believe this was possible until I was six feet off the floor gripping ivory fabric and realizing that it was holding. That I was holding.

Pre-climb strategy session. Simone had a theory. The theory was incorrect.

Simone did not make it six feet. She made it four and a half, which she has pointed out is almost six feet when you account for her height relative to mine, a calculation I am not accepting. She was also significantly less frightened than I was, which I think is because she spent the two weeks before not worrying about it at all and I spent them imagining all the ways gravity works. What she did, which I didn't expect, was stand underneath me the whole time I was up there, not saying anything, just there. That was the part I keep returning to.

Back on the ground. Alive. Slightly amazed.

I've been feeling for a while, I noticed it again last week, looking at the windowsill in the evening light, like something is pointing in a direction I haven't named yet. I don't know what the class was exactly. It wasn't a commitment, like Simone said. But it was a thing we could do, and we did it, and I'm still thinking about what my hands felt like holding the silk and the floor being further away than expected and the ceiling being closer than I thought possible. That's probably something. I'm letting it be something.