what dreaming means . . .

I just finished reading an excellent novel, Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Not only impressively incandescent writing, but a truly moving meditation on love and loss. He sets much of it in 1974, the frame focuses on Petit's high wire act between the Twin Towers. I too write about the past, trying to tap into a more innocent time. Perhaps it's because the older I get the messier things are.

And then there are the brave people of Iran. Those who walk out into the streets to defy their government knowing what it may/will mean. I can't even imagine where their courage comes from, but it starts with a dream.

I return to 1980 in my novel because it was a time when New York City was still a city I recognized. Every corner on the Upper West Side held memories for me, some good, some bad, some indifferent. All gone now, but then the city was gritty and vibrant, still the city of my childhood and my adolescence, still a place where anything was possible, all you had to do was try.

Amelia dreamed, her dreams draw us in even now. Of course, change is incremental, still did I think we'd elect an African American president in our lifetime in 1980? There are reasons to weep, and reasons to be joyful. . .

leaving home and second chances

I think of how it felt, leaving home for the first time. Imbued with a sense of what was possible, but always aware of how easily one could get caught. If Amelia got to choose to live her life again, would she do what she'd done before? Would she believe that this was her best opportunity to complete that task, to finish that journey, to circumvent the globe again? Would she regret too much, or too little? We all have regrets, they're what comes to us when we first wake, the echo of the dream that we can't quite recall, the things we should have said to those we've lost or have lost touch with, the harsh words we've spoken that should have been held back. I think about Amelia and about her regrets and I think about how life unfolds. Here, not in my usual perch but on the other side of the Atlantic, in the city where she was feted so many years ago, I wonder about regret, about the road not taken. Amelia looking down from above, sees in such a different way from the rest of us. We are caught in our own lives, we are in awe of the smaller things, the way the sun slants in the afternoon as I look out the door of my kitchen at my children, so much smaller, racing each other across the hot summer grass. The smell of summer comes back to me. And that time too. Moments of happiness like snapshots, all that we get down below. Above the world is a map and you ride on, oblivious. Down here it is all about the moment, when he first kissed me, when he first let down his guard and when I let down mine, life is filled with things one doesn't expect, for Amelia too I believe that would come. She would think she was meant to go on as before, but then she'd realize, second chances come for a reason.

Amelia in Paris

Traveling the world

Once when I was young I thought I would like to travel the world. I imagined myself the kind of person who could do that. I didn't know myself too well, instead I promptly fell in love, and committed myself to stability and a routine. I forced myself to write on a daily basis, worked hard on my writing and on making a living. My husband and I traveled a bit, though we were always pinching pennies. Once we had children, it took us a while to realize that we wanted to take them on an adventure. Ironically it was my children who forced me to travel again. And they're fine companions.

Amelia never felt that she wanted children, she assumed that having them meant being tied down. She was certainly correct in that assumption, she could hardly have risked life and limb with the same alacrity. For her home and hearth was counter-intuitive. She chose 'the journey.' As she wrote, "It may not be all plain sailing, of course, if one chooses to step out informally over strange country visiting unfamiliar landing fields. But the fun of it is worth the price."

I see her as someone who was both self possessed and driven. She was always careful when she wrote, choosing her words, choosing how to describe everything. She saw writing as a way to explain her choices, but not as a way to expose her inner workings. I imagine that she would find all of the self exposure that is the art of memoir today, incomprehensible.

I think for her flying was art. When she did it, she was completely in the moment. She was as engaged as any writer, or sculptor, or painter or musician. She was in touch and in tune. It wasn't traveling that mattered, not in the way we think of it anyhow. When she landed, she was like anyone else, touring the sights. But in midair, she was something altogether different.

It's her artistry that draws me in. Her passion for flying is the same as any other passion one has, if you give yourself to something you are transported. It's just that in her case the word had both literal and figurative meanings.

Music and Amelia

I'm a contemporary music fan. One of my son's is a musician, both listen to alternative rock. Some of the bands aren't exactly to my taste, a little too loud, a little too intense, but others are incredible. They remind me that there's still life in this old gal. The Ipod ad works so well precisely because my generation has been brought up with their own personal soundtrack. Mine began with the Beatles, from there I graduated to Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. Later on there was time for the Incredible String Band and Joni Mitchell's first two albums. I didn't go to Woodstock, my parents wouldn't let me to my eternal regret. But I did spend a lot of time at the Fillmore East, my hearing has never recovered from a certain Jefferson Airplane concert, the amps were piled so high they reached to where I sat, in the first row of the balcony.

Music has always mattered, it mattered when my husband to be took me to see Sonny Rollins on our first date, and introduced me to jazz in all its incarnations. It mattered when I discovered Otis and Aretha. It mattered every time I felt miserable or elated, because there was a song that came to mind and I played it over and over and over again. When my father was dying, I listened to Warren Zevon's haunting Keep Me In Your Heart.

I think of Amelia and her friend Louise enjoying free concerts on the stairs outside of Carnegie Hall.I believe she would have adored Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton. That she would have danced to Cole Porter and sung the lyrics softly to herself, no one wrote better. That she was partial to Louis Armstrong's version of St. James Infirmary, that music was also her soundtrack.

When she returns in 1980, much has been transformed. Would she even tolerate rock music? Would she think it was music at all? Amelia is about to listen to a whole lot of Grateful Dead when she hitches a ride with some strangers. Yes, the name is meant to be ironic in this fictional case.

I saw the Dead in their heyday, they were a band that was so involved in making music, the original jam band. Will she find anything in this, or will she think what my parents thought . . ."God in heaven, what is that horrible noise?"

first meal?

Okay, it's a strange premise but go with it. If Amelia was alive in 1980, say if she came to life and had to do it over again, what choices would she make. Number one, what would her first meal be. Think about that, and think about food. Food is what makes my day go round and I'm assuming if you'd been starving for a while, it would make yours as well. So I offer Amelia a few dozen choices, granted she doesn't have money in her pockets but she won't notice that yet. What she will notice is how desperately hungry she is and how much there is to eat and how hard it is to choose. Not your last meal, but your first, your first that might be your last, so that makes it doubly hard. Do you choose comfort food? Do you opt for a gourmet's delight? Do you go ethnic? Do you pick something that harkens back to childhood or steers clear?

I pose that to you oh noble readers. What would your first meal be if you were allowed a first meal knowing all you know? What fabulous feast would you choose? Would it be the best slice of pizza you'd ever had with all the toppings? Would it be dinner at Babbo? Or in Amelia's case Delmonico's? What is food for you? Is eating something you do to go on living, or is eating one of the greatest pleasures in life?