With Balls Like These, I Don't Need a Parachute.

"Sometimes the reason we go off the rails is because we are at the end of the line".

Ever heard someone say something so profound that the next 5 minutes are a total blur as your mind struggles to process a truth so significant all else becomes white noise?
That happened to me the other day over a chicken salad and a bowl of suspect pumpkin soup.
I was lunching with a friend whom I have known for a number of years.
This man is noteworthy for a number of reasons, namely his creativity, his intelligence, his accent and his startling blue eyes. Mostly his eyes. And perhaps his accent.......and the colour of his eyes.....anyhoo......I digress........

It got me thinking as one does, about the importance of sexy eyes, as well as the importance of courage.

I am a fan of people of all sexes having Great Big Balls.
I have the words "Fortune Favours the Brave" tattooed on my forearm so that when I'm dead, I will still be bear witness to the concept of being fearless.

Guts, intestinal fortitude, ticker,pluck, grit, call it what you will, being able to close your eyes and step off the ledge with a great big "Fuck You I'm doing this anyway" on your lips is the stuff legends are made of.
Sometimes, outright audacity is a silent kind of quality unrecognised to the untrained eye.

Here I am thinking about people with serious challenges just going about their daily lives.

Blind people cross roads every day. Ever closed your eyes and tried to go about YOUR day?

I wouldn't make it much past the getting dressed stage.

Autistic people sitting in shopping malls having lunch when every cell in their body is screaming ' get the fuck out of here, NOW'.

Quietly, calmly, these people climb insurmountable heaps of 'too bloody hard', without a single person witnessing their heroism.

And sometimes the approach to venturesomeness is so loud it attracts words like 'recklessness' and 'derring-do'.

When it works, when the leap into the abyss means you landing safely into a bed of success and happiness, everyone around you says " Wow, that was amazing , what cliff will you be jumping off next?"

But when it doesn't.....oh, ho ho ho.......as the fat man in the red suit says.

No matter.

Valor and tenacity are placed side by side in the Thesaurus.

If at first you don't succeed, build a better mouse trap and all that.

Well, that's the theory anyway.

Truthfully walking all the way up the hill just to jump off the bastard to land in the pile of shit that forms at the bottom time and time again can be wearing.

But then of course, there's the thrill of the jump.

The definition of courage is not 'winning', or 'being right'. The definition of courage is 'the quality of spirit to face danger without fear'.

That 'spirit' is a hungry little bugger, and it feeds on one thing, and one thing alone.....the rush that comes when you realize you may have seriously fucked up, so you had better stay and kill The Dragon or run away.

Good old fashioned adrenalin.

Such an overwhelmingly sensational drug that chemists and Bolivian farmers have been trying to replicate it for thousands of years.

And yet there is NOTHING on the market, and let me tell you I have researched the market THOROUGHLY, that comes anywhere near it.

So having big kahunas, and being prepared to whip them out and use them when required is the most potent form of sexiness available to man, and it's free and always on tap.

Then why the fuck are we living in a world afraid of its own shadow?

Fear of saying the wrong thing, of failing, of succeeding?

Fear of exposing ourselves as being human, and with faults.

Fear of speaking out our desires, expressing our needs, owning up to our anger, our disappointment, our hurts, our love, our passions.

Bland may be bland, but at least it's safe, and on that you may quote me, but only with lashings ginger beer and sarcasm smeared over the top.

Most of us at some point struggle with just being who we are.

And yet to express that struggle is seen as dangerous by those for whom hiding the truth seems somehow less twisted.

So what does this have to do with Old Blue Eyes?

Not much, except in that one statement he managed to free me from years of guilt about a dark

time in my life.

What a fucking liberation, let me tell you.

I kept completely still for a good 10 minutes after he said it- a record for my fidgety self- and breathed in the air of self forgiveness while my internal organs exploded, a carpet of peony's instantly bloomed inside my brain and my heart resumed a rhythm it had not played since I was a very small child.

You see, I once had to be very brave and hurt people in order to save myself.

I have laid blame squarely on my own shoulders for a long time.

But the truth is, I had just had enough, I was at the end of the line, and I faltered, and I came off the rails.

That's hard for me to say.

I have always believed myself to be strong enough to carry as much burden as was needed.

But lionheartedness -what an amazing word- is not always about standing on the precipice all by yourself preparing to leap into the great unknown.

Sometimes it's about looking around and asking for help.

Intellectually I know this.

And in fact I have done it, but never without the secret shame of believing myself to be weak at that moment.

So now you know.

I am strong only because I am afraid of being weak.

You see the irony in there?

Please tell me you see the irony in there because I'm shit at drawing diagrams on this computer.

After lunch I went home and had a little cry, but they were not sad tears, just wet ones.

Into every life, a little rain must fall, as they say.

This morning a horrible Faux European woman with cartoon sized watermelon breasts, a moustache and the unenviable skill of appearing even more stupid than she actually is, accused me of 'having a lot of gall'....which in her head appears to be considered some kind of insult.

I have never been more delighted in my life.

Perhaps for her gall implies bitterness and rancor,certainly that is one of it's meanings, but I prefer the Yiddish interpretation of the word.

For them, gall is audacity and audacity, as we know, is courage.

"You" she seemed to be saying " have a lot of courage".

Well, tie me to the Old Oak Tree and stick Peacock feathers in my VJJ.

Guilty as charged.

So back up the dung heap of human spinelessness I go, wings, wax and a ball of string in hand to once again leap into the cavernous spaces left open by the fainthearted, a renewed sense of self my torch to light the way.

I may land in the fire........or maybe even in a soothing pool just the right shade of blue.