Of course, it wasn’t just Mohammed’s smile. It was Oscar’s transforming blue rocks, it was Caramella’s understanding heart, it was Aunt Squeezy’s lessons on compassion, it was Inisiya’s spirit and her story, the fact that everywhere there were stories you wouldn’t have guessed. Grasshopper had one, Ada had one, even Harold Barton had one, and all this seemed to me to be where my living should be lived; in the messy, sad, huge, transforming muck that both bound us and separated us, not in the purely glorious heights of the circus.
Oh, don’t worry, that circus dream still hovered there like a glass cloud above me, and one day I will climb up and grab it, but sometimes there’s other stuff to be done before you’re ready. It’s like you have to build yourself a ladder; build the rungs out of real experiences. You have to know how to walk before you can fly. You have to especially know how to fall down, get dirty and then pick yourself up again. Along the way, you’ll find out what you want and how to lose what you want. You have to learn know how to be a friend and stand underneath, and believe that against all odds you might one day do a handstand.
Above all, you should stay with your dog.
All this can only be done on the ground. I explained it to Kite in a letter and I think he understood because he wrote back:
Cedar, I’m not sure I really get you, but I know that’s what I love about you. You’re your own man, and you’ll always live your own life.