Catching up I: Love and Adrenaline

I have been remiss in posting. Don't think nothings been going on. Rather, it's been going on so fast I couldn't possibly keep up. Now I'll try to get it all into words, bit by bit.

The first major thing has already been posted about by my good friend and newcomer to the blog-o-bandwagon, Mischief. It just so happens that Boy has access to a large space with a grid in it. It also just so happens that he has way too much in the way of rigging supplies. And it just so happens that he, myself, Mischief and Mischief's lovely play partner, Estra all had a bit of a break in our finals madness on the same evening.
Estra had never been up, and it's a pity. The girl is so slight and charming, with the biggest smile and the sweetest face and a cute little boy-short haircut, it might be worth considering that she's what the fairies left when they took away some human child. She is adorable and amazing (and also ridiculously intelligent, and amazingly kind, and I more or less just can't get over how great this girl is). It was pretty clear that this fairy needed to fly.
And I happened to have a pair of pixie wings just, y'know, lying around.
We rigged her up in pretty red and orange rope, with pixie wings on her back, and hung her from our suspension ring, which was on a cable at least 10 feet long, which was chained to the grid. Mischief took her hand and ran her around like you would lead a pony around the ring, and she flew with her bright blue-green wings. Mischief wore his sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and he looked just like a little gnome, to me. They made me smile from head to toe, and they were all smiles as well.
It is such a pleasure to put people in the air for the first time, or even the second or third. It's such fun to be up, and I love more than anything being able to share that with people.

And that is not even what this post is about. Because after we'd taken the glowy Estra down so she and Mischief could retreat to a corner and cuddle, Boy put me up. Estra had been face down in a very basic suspension, but I much prefer to be face up, so we rigged it like that. Now, we discovered, again, that a harness that works excellently for a face down or sideways suspension does not work so well for a face up suspension. We were using a really great harness we'd learned from the inestimable David Lawrence at his advanced rope work class at Floating World, and for what it's good for it's the best we've come across, but because of its configuration, it works less well for how weight distributes in a face up suspension.
But, we worked around it.
And we did something we've never done before. Something we can't do on the hardpoint in my room, or on the hard points in frames. Something that was space specific and amazing.
I swung. My body described a circle 15 feet in diameter, perhaps 6 feet off the floor. I swung back and forth and to the sides. Boy pushed me this way and that and I was so terrified I couldn't do anything but laugh. I was so happy. We've never had the space to do that before, but I love momentum. I love to swing on things, or to fall and be caught. It is one of the most exhilarating, amazing experiences I can imagine. I adore it. And this was the first we'd ever really explored that. What a way to start, right? And to know through all of this that I was held by a suspension ring, by climbing webbing and a climbing swivel and a big thick chain a cable nearly half an inch thing and climbing, locking carabiner and of course, good rigging done with Monk's good hemp rope (though soon, we'll be doing it with ours. Boy's been going through the slow and many stepped process of treating 300 feet of 6mm hemp).
In short, it was more like flying than anything I've ever done.
What it felt like, actually, was those rides at fairs and carnivals where you swing around in chairs. But I hadn't just paid and got on a ride. I had the amazing knowledge that the entire thing had been constructed especially for me, that this was my ride, my flight. And then I swung, and swung, and was caught and gathered in to Boy's arms and stroked and kissed and swung again by the same boy who had put me up, who had rigged this spectacular ride just for me. I have rarely felt so special and so loved.

He took me down, eventually. I didn't want to come down, but it's a dumb idea to wait until you really want to come down, because by that time it's hard to get down fast enough. He took me down and we packed up all the rope and went home and I believe I made quesadillas that night, still aglow.

There are a couple of pictures, but they are mostly of Estra and Mischief, and are therefore not mine to post. But if you use your imaginations, you should be able to see me, swinging through the air and bubbling with laughter, my hair streaming, my hands either flexing open or closed or grasping the ropes that attached me to the ceiling. Full of love and adrenaline.