#31 (Kite)

Have you ever seen a chinese kite festival? It’s really gorgeous…and if it’s quiet and still from where you watch…it can be a very majestic thing to behold. Kites make me wonder…i remember flying them as a child and feeling the tug of the wind and somehow feeling the kite and how it soared even though I stayed below. Even just remembering that makes me sad…I don’t get excited like that anymore. I don’t know why. Innocence and aspirations and dreams lost…who knows. While i still think and imagine and grow…the feeling of soaring within my heart seems to be completely and forever lost.

But there’s more to kites than just that, for me. I loved my kite. I loved flying it and seeing how such a small thing made of wood and bits of plastic could reach the skies….it mattered quite a lot to me. It’s very much like other things in the world, for me, things that I love. You hold onto them so tight, watch and admire them in their flight and their soaring….but there are dangers there as well…nature and the trees, the forceful winds…your not holding onto them tight enough…so much can pull the kite away from you forever.

Too often, it seems, the people around me get their kites caught on the trees and snagged by branches….and then they’re unwilling to untangle them and pull them free to fly them again. In a lot of ways that makes me sad…people are so quick to just go find new kites to fly that they give up on the old ones, whether or not the problem with the other ones they choose is major. It almost hurts me to think that the people around me are so socially and morally bankrupt in that way…once you commit to something, is it just to just let it go as soon as it gets difficult?

And then there are those who, either because they don’t know themselves and where they are or because they simply just don’t care….who don’t hold on tight enough and then a simple gust of wind blows their kite out of their hands and then all they can do is watch as it drifts away…

And then there’s me, who is not guilty of the previous. Me…I’d always fetch my kite down from the trees when it’d get caught, try to repair it and take care of it so we could fly more later. We were a team. I didn’t always do the best job, I know, but I tried to do the right thing and I made sure to hold onto it tight enough that no gust would blow my kite away. I made a point to hold onto mine so tight that together we held on for quite a long time, despite circumstances. But then a storm came….

Sometimes one can’t hold on, no matter how hard they want to or try to. The world around us is sometimes much stronger than anything we can procure, even with the help of our family, our loved ones, and all of our friends. Sometimes the only thing you can do is let go. I let go, and I’m still waiting for my kite to come back to me. Other kites simply won’t do….while some are very pretty and attractive, handpainted over periods of months…made with the finest and strongest bamboo and silks….and powerful strong fiberglass kite strings….and even folding hinges and latches to fold the kite up for ease of storage and transport….none of these will do. While they might be flashier, prettier, more expensive, stronger, bigger, more…they’re not my kite and they’ll never have what my kite has. It’s just not the same.

Perhaps I’ll never fly again.