WINNER 2017 AGELESS AUTHORS ESSAY / CREATIVE NON-FICTION CATEGORY
Age 12 is one of those tension-filled crossing points in life. It is a time when the tenderness of childhood
is waning and we are beginning to test our growing bodies, to create our
intellect. Our genius arrives in a
“do-it-yourself kit”. But, there are no specific instructions, we must struggle
to form it. We wrestle with this unique, “higher self” and fashion all kinds of
challenges, inner and outer, large and small. Our gifts seem to emerge from our
engagement in, or our fleeing from life.
When I was 12 my
family lived in a particularly windy part of Colorado just east of the Rocky
Mountains out on the prairies in a bedroom community named Broomfield just
between Boulder and Denver. The wind blew so much out there that the metallic
threshold on our front door vibrated whenever the wind velocity topped 40 miles
an hour, which was frequently, at all hours of day or night.
My mother had been
a young woman in the “Dirty 30s” in the Midwest and Texas. That was the era of
drought and giant clouds of dust that would blow up, become storms and roll
across the open prairies engulfing farms and lives. So, she knew the tragedy
borne by ill winds of the Great Depression and World War II. In 1961, when I
was 12, my father was in the midst of a political “dust-up” in his job which
would eventually lead us to be blown off the Colorado prairies and tumbling
toward a new life in San Antonio, Texas.
Age 12 is also the age of grandeur. Grand ideas, big
challenges are just the thing for learning life lessons. In my case, life gave
us wind, lots of wind, we foolhardy boys seeking a thrill made “bike boats”.
“Bike boats” were a way for us to test ourselves, our creativity and seek lofty
adventure.
Two kids would ask
our mothers for an old, worn-out bedsheet and getting on our bikes, hold the
sheet between us so it caught the wind like a sail and propel us. We would ride
our bicycles holding the sheet with hands off
the handlebars rocketing down dirt farm roads, whooping and hollering.
When we crashed,
and we did crash, we got the tragedy
we apparently wanted to experience. The world, life, gave us feedback on our
“great and adventuresome ideas”. We would limp home, trying not to cry,
practicing swear words aimed at the wind, dragging along our busted bikes, sprains
and bruises and composing great lies about our adventures and daring one
another for our next even grander exploit.
My father may have
saved me from further damage when he gave me one of the best, yet perhaps the most
modest gift that a father could ever a boy – a bundle of raw, balsa wood kite
sticks.
“Look what I found
at the Army surplus store!” he said with sparkling eyes as he physically
radiated glee.
There must have
been 100 pre-made sets of kite sticks without the cheap paper covering that was
typically found in that era’s 10-cent drugstore kites. A broken kite stick was
less threatening than a broken limb. So, for the next several weeks, while our
bruises healed, my friends and I (and my Dad) made kites, dozens of kites of all configurations.
We became kites.
Genius
will work with whatever it has at hand in order to fashion you. At age 12, through
your imagination and inspiration, your genius will take whatever you give it to
a higher level.
A stick becomes a
wand and you become a Harry Potter. A basketball and a plastic box nailed to a
telephone pole and you become LeBron James. A homeless little girl named Ella
Fitzgerald transforms a neighborhood talent contest into the launchpad for a lifetime
singing career. Slavery, neglect and horrific abuse spins George Washington
Carver into the heights of scientific insight.
The greater the
headwind challenge of youth, the higher the potential to rise. 12-year-olds are
the holy boy (puer aerternus) or the holy girl (puella aerterna),
the genius we ride in our lives to great grandeur is the kite of our selves.
Kites
are all about capturing the tension between two dynamic sets of polar opposites
in two bent sticks. Each of the two kite sticks is like a different aspect of
our genius. Both must be put under tension and bent into an arc and both are
joined together. The vertical stick represents our upright self which stands
between the spiritual and the earthly poles. The horizontal stick represents
that which goes between our self as an individual and the world.
If we put too much
pressure on any stick, it might crack. In kite making, you have to risk in
order to have enough arc to generate lift.
Adding tension in life is risky because genius is both positive and
negative, there is always the danger of unbridled egoism, hubris, anger or
violence; or fear, depression and brooding.
The sticks are
bent to create a wing shape and high flyers are the ones who can create more
than enough draught to create lift well in excess of the weight of their
situation. It’s a mix of wingspan, angle of the wing and velocity of the wind.
Genius inspires
all arts, transforms all effort into art, and all people into artists. The
configuration or the form of the art is the wingspan. For a writer, a haiku,
for example, is a short, intense form with high imaginative velocity.
Meaning, inspired in the reader, gives lift (or not). The angle of the message
rises above culture and makes use of the headwinds. Genius inspires all the
arts.
Genius can be a craft,
all handwork, or earth focused and inspired as well – contractors, carpenters,
mechanics, farmers, or gardeners. We all have connections with the spirit and
with our communities.
Kites can spin out
of control if the genius is too
intense and one-sided. A kite can spin in a strong wind and won’t rise unless
there is a counterbalance. A kite, a genius, requires a counterbalance – a
tail.
Kite tails are bits of fabric,
usually cast aside fabric, torn up and tied together and attached to the
earthly end of the spirit/earth pole. Separate bits of life brought together.
Each is like a memory perhaps of attempts, failures, regrets, embarrassments,
tragedies. Bike boat crashes. Gravity. These are what gives weight to our
souls. Our shame adds heaviness. We are glad they have sunk down beneath our
consciousness, but they are not gone, never gone. They balance out our enthusiasm.
They are the fruits of our lies. Our seasoning. Our tempering. Our scars. The
tail of the kite of our lives.
Some wise high
flyers with special genius to see into the spiritual world have said that when
we die, and we look behind ourselves as we ascend into the spiritual world and
see that our egoism, failures, misdeeds, sins, and errors stream behind us like
the tail on the kite of our genius. They are the tail of the kite of our genius.
The memorial
services which I have attended for friends have a public portion in which we
speak and honor the genius of the dear-departed friend. And at the same time,
we sit in unspoken silent remembrance of their flight, including the choices which
held them back.
The headwind of
life continues to blow no matter how old we are. There is a chance to rise even
higher than before. Are we able to rise with it? Do we still struggle? Do we risk
failure? Bike boats of elder-age? Are we still in contact with the source of
the good and holy of our genius?
Our final years
are tension-filled crossing points in life. We wrestle to free ourselves from
what we have created during our life in order to rise again. This is another
“do it yourself” kit.
Sail on.
© Copyright 2016, Jean W. Yeager - All Rights Reserved
This
essay and others republished in this Chanticleer series honoring Rudolf
Steiner are included in an eBook entitled the "Kite Of Your Genius
Lifts Your Community” available at https://344944.e-junkie.com/product/1643566/THE-KITE-OF-YOUR-GENIUS
AUTHOR SITE – www.th3simplequestions.com
AMAZON AUTHOR SITE: http://tinyurl.com/jk9a6e7
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