When I was (1)

When I was hanging by one hand gripping a thorny vine that should never have held my weight, I looked down my armpit into a chasm that seemed to understand that it held my death.  I had been climbing a mountain to go deer hunting, my rifle slung over my shoulder, shell in the chamber, the steepness becoming a cliff, I was going the wrong way up but was too stubborn to turn back.  Something inside me urged me on.  Crazed idiocy disguised as confused determination.  There was no way up.

I had taken hold of the vine to maintain my balance as I tried to look around a corner to search for a next foothold, but all I found was emptiness and I slipped, and slowly swung out over the chasm like being taken through a door that was more outside than inside, opening to a space that invited me with a pleasant carress of an assurance that it would be fast and easy and painless and good and right.  But for some reason the thin vine held me there suspended and somehow I reached out with my toe and caught upon solidity and somehow the ever so slight movement and ever so slight touch of my toe allowed me to swing back.  There had been nothing but calmness, nothing but the knowledge that I would not accept that invitation.  I came back for a reason.

When I place my hand upon the thinnest possible spoon handle that I can create, I remember that moment of suspension.  I remember that invitation.  And I remember that calmness.  That last tiny touch upon that last possible point of contact with the last essence of solidity upon that spoon.  If I let go, it is the spoon that falls.