Start Your Engines

You stand with weight evenly divided on balls of right foot and left, and the vibration you feel confirms that the powers beneath are ready. You ignore individual sounds bathing you but take the whole: friends’ voices, crackling radio monologue, a throbbing helicopter passing swiftly overhead, and some creaks you can’t identify as coming from inside your body or not. Your eyes look straight ahead but really focus nowhere and every at once. What you see reminds you of last night but also of months and decades ago. Your stomach muscles tense such that you don’t know if you’re hungry or not. You hardly breathe. Your jaw clenches. Of course you’re ready and have been, but you jet through time so fast that at this instant you’re already immersed in what you just dreamed of. Yes, hours and triple checks and consultations have prepared you, but you have an almost equal desire to retreat than to plow forward.

You already started your engines? Then throw it in gear. It’s September, time for races, new contracts, relationships, voyages, and projects. When the signal flashes, you forget all hesitation. “Ahead full.” You hear only the roar of directed power and don’t look back.