Contemplating Risk

When the temperatures rise and skirt with the sixties, I ready myself for possibilities. Winter with its frost and my hunched shoulders tethers me to the familiar. Spring escalates the desire for risk— something new.

Risk.
A word with permutations—
My sense of risk, dwarfed by intrepid aerialists who live on the edges—
My definition, pallid compared to the synonyms in Roget’s—
I dip a toe and let myself in gradually.

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Writers, invigorated after the winter, leave behind tired words and ignite their sentences. Trader Joe's advertises: Battered Fish Nuggets, and thrusts me into a moral dilemma. Are these nuggets simply dragged through breadcrumbs or am I privy to a slaughter? If so, what is my position? Do I have a position? Will groups armed with petitions asking me to save the fish nugget appear in front of Trader Joes? Can I afford neutrality? I remember the months without grapes, the searches for politically correct tuna fish and the petitions I signed against encroachments in the Escalante wilderness. Neutrality is not an option.

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Risk.
Each spring I purchase a new book encouraging me to write a novel. Not a short story. Not micro fiction, not flash, sudden, cigarette fiction. The writers of these books offer incremental steps—a book in a year. They encourage positive thinking and the use of affirmations. One book, before the cost of stamps escalated, advised sending oneself a postcard each day. Suggested statements: I am a good writer. Everyone wants to read my book. I now recognize the truth. These books are the diet books for the writer. You start off buying into the entire program, set aside time, complete the exercises and required number of words, and then after a few weeks "you fall off" the program. This year I know the inevitable and refuse to support the writer who plays cheerleader.

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Try to imagine standing in the middle tent with a lion—the lion contemplates the wisdom of jumping through a burning hoop?

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Risk:
Loggers, hit by a falling object —
steel workers hoisting metal beams—
people on scaffolding —
river surfers on a tidal bore on the Amazon River riding the waves for miles while avoiding alligators, rocks, tree limbs—
cliff diving—
sledging— a combined white water rafting and boogie-boarding—
sky diving in a free fall for two miles—
sitting for long periods of time—

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My ode to spring, a leap into a new geography with dizzy abandonment.

Perhaps an exploration of non-linear creative non-fiction ....