5 Feb 2009

Flying Without Wings

On my way to Jamaica - (sorry, you did not know that!) anyway, while there, I did this and this. Back to my story. Where I was in the land of Patois (Patwa), I kept thinking how far I have come from the 12 year old who dreamt of marrying Nick Carter and touring the world with him, and living in Florida. If you don't know Nick Carter, you are way too old to reading my blog. (sic) This is he


He once ruled my world with his little army called the Backstreet Boys. By now you know that I did not marry him, mainly because he dated Paris Hilton. As much as it hurt, I had to call it off on my 16th birthday. This thoughts started when i was in Ft. Lauderdale waiting to connect to Montego Bay. Here i was, 13 years later ( you can stop doing the math as to how old i am) in Florida, the only place i ever wanted to be. I started to think of what had changed about me. I guess we never think about the boyband crushes girls go through as teenagers, and how we believe anything is possible. I mean, there I was, another 12 year old, deep in the heart of Kenya, dreaming of marrying a boy in one of the biggest boybands of our time. Where was that little girl? I don't dream that big anymore. I dare call it to 'dream big' because given background, I needed a probability hyper drive to come close to realizing that dream. I hardly think Boy Carter had dreams of marrying a little African girl from Kenya....

So why don't I dream like that anymore? Not of boybands and blond-blue-eyed teenage heartthrobs, but of greatness and accomplishments beyond the wildest dreams? You might retort and say it is because i grew up and became realistic. I don't think so. It would have been equally unrealistic for me to dream that i would be sitting in Florida on my way to a holiday in the
Caribbean . When I went to Disney World a few months ago, these thoughts did not go through my head. I never grew up wanting to be a princess or a fairy, or even wanting to meeting one. It was never 'real' enough to me. Disney never held that 'magic' for me. It could be the environment i grew up in. Play was not filled with barbie dolls and make-up, it was polyethene paper balls, mud and clay dolls and used cooking fat tins cooked food. No, my mother did not feed me that. In those days (damn, i can finally use those words), cooking fat / oil was packaged in cans, more like canned beans. We would get the empty tins, steal a little bit of cooking fat from the house, two or so leaves of vegetables, charcoal and matchboxes. We would light a makeshift burner and play 'house pretend', where we actually cooked the food. Every child had to bring an item from home and i did most of that. My parents were always away on business and the nanny / housegirl cared less what i did.

My parents never knew that i did this. Both my parents were very protective and my father would rather get me anything i wanted rather than let me out to play. I never got what his reasoning was since he could only do this in the short periods he was home , but i was rarely allowed out of the house when he was around. I took full advantage when we he was away. I also watched too much TV. My TV supervision came later in my teenage, when I had lost interest in it and loved Mills and Boon far much more. In the occasion that my dad was home, i would lock myself in my room and fantasize for hours about Nick. The things we would do, the names we would give our kids, the places we would visit....My mind was uninhibited in its wandering. As i left Ft. Lauderdale, i longed for that feeling. Not that I have stopped dreaming, but i have limited myself as to what i can dream about. I want to make life changing films, but i dream of making them up to a certain budgets. I daren't (it's a word) dream of the endless possibilities that could be, that are actually available. Making films is just an example, there are so many other things...

I replaced Nick Carter with Mark Feehily. Once again, let me be the fist to show you he





Mark is the one with the angelic ( i still think so) voice in the Irish boy band called Westlife. Hiw blue eyes drove me wild. Yes, my affair with blue eyes dates that far back. I happened to see a song i used to love (secretly still do) in a Karaoke book in Montego Bay, and I got up and sang it. I was transported back to me as a 15 year old, wanting everything Irish. I now wanted to move Ireland, I knew everything there was to know about Eire, you'd have thought i grew up in Sligo. Again, I never held back my dreams of Ireland and Mark. I swore to myself that my son was going to be called Shane, after the lead singer of the band. I have not been to Ireland yet, but I'm not closing my mind to that. In my head, I'm going to roam in the lush green of the hills, smell the rain....because i have learnt that only I can limit what I achieve my limiting my dreams. I have learnt that there is not dream to big, and the is no fantazy too wild and if i never get to have it in reality, at least i can explore its full beauty in my mind, which is more vivid than anything that Technicolor will ever come up with.

Because dreaming is flying without wings. Nothing to control you, letting wind that is your imagination fuel the images that fill your mind. It is the free-falling of thought, with arms wide open and outstretched.

And right now, sitting here at JFK waiting for my flight, ( airports seem to make me think), I'm playing Westlife over and over again. It feels stupid, very juvenile in fact... but there is also this feeling of release in my heart and mind, the feeling that I have opened myself to more things than i will ever appreciate, more love, health, wealth, happiness and fullness of life.

And to quote the song:

....And when you know how much it means
You've found that special thing
You're flying without wings

So, impossible as it may seem
You've got to fight for every dream
Cos who's to know which one you let go
Would have made you complete
....And it's like flying without wings....


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Now playing: Westlife - Flying without wings