How to Fly: In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons

by Barbara Kingsolver

How to Drink Water When There Is Wine How to stay at this desk when the sun is barefooting cartwheels over the grass— How to step carefully on the path that pulls for the fleet unfettered gait of a deer— How to go home when the wood thrush is promising the drunk liquid bliss of dusk— How to resist the kiss, the body forbidden that plucks the long vibrating string of want— How to drink water when there is wine— Once I knew all these brick-shaped things, took them for the currency of survival. Now I have lived long and I know better.

How to Have a Child Begin on the day you decide you are fit to carry on. Begin with a quailing heart for here you stand on the fault line. Begin if you can at the beginning. Begin with your mother, with her grandfather, the ones before him. Think of their hands, all of them: firm on the plow, the cradle, the rifle butt, the razor strop; trembling on the telegram, the cheek of a lover, the fact of a door. Everything that can wreck a life has been done before, done to you, even. That’s all inside you now. Half of it you won’t think of. The rest you wouldn’t dream of. Go on.

How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) Behold your body as water and mineral worth, the selfsame water that soon (from a tree’s way of thinking, soon) will be lifted through the elevator hearts of a forest, returned to the sun in a leaf-eyed gaze. And the rest! All wordless leavings, the perfect bonewhite ash of you: light as snowflakes, falling on updrafts toward the unbodied breath of a bird. Behold your elements reassembled as pieces of sky, ascending without regret, for you’ve been lucky enough. Fallen for the last time into a slump, the wrong crowd, love. You’ve made the best deal. You summitted the mountain or you didn’t. Anything left undone you can slip like a cloth bag of marbles into the hands of a child who will be none the wiser. Imagine your joy on rising. Repeat as necessary.

The mindless tasks a body learns when it must.

dream of the troubles you had, when trouble was still yours to make.

Concede your debt to life’s grammar,

How to Survive This O misery. Imperfect universe of days stretched out ahead, the string of pearls and drops of venom on the web, losses of heart, of life and limb, news of the worst: Remind me again the day will come when I look back amazed at the waste of sorry salt when I had no more than this to cry about. Now I lay me down. I’m not there yet.

These you have to give up: Collected shells and pressed flowers. The eyes that knew your body when it was still perfect. Everything must go. Don’t throw it in the Grand Canyon. Seal it all in a box with packing tape, shoved to the back of a closet.

Love is no granite boulder, praised for its size. It’s the water that parts around it, moving mountains.