Where Cape Meets Wheel
Eventually, the inner emotional turmoil manifested itself in a week in April where many pieces of my physical identity left me. I lost my license, my cat disappeared, half a dozen cards from my tarot deck fell out, and my car was totaled by someone else. When Stardust invited me on the next superhero ride in June in Iowa, I was ready. I felt exhausted and helpless. I needed to leave. After Gracklefest, our major festival event, I packed my bicycle, rode to meet Stardust, and we hitchbiked a thousand miles to Superhero Headquarters: The Possibility Alliance.
It took us a week, both riding and hitching. I began to understand what was meant when hitchhikers are described as “roadside therapists.” It’s amazing how easily half of the cars we got into were willing to tell their life stories. And more than 2/3 had the same perception of danger: “What are you girls doing out here? Don’t you know that people are crazy?!”
We didn’t run into any trouble, and actually stayed at some beautiful places, camping by the river, staying in a family’s lakeside cabin, a widow’s extra bedroom, an old friend’s roommate’s floor. I wrote down the name and story of every ride we met. I was in awe of Stardust’s ability to connect to every person we got in a car with, without judgement, just a genuine curiosity. I told her that as we pried a can of beans open in the alcove of a college town, pressed up against the brick to stay out of the rain. I felt proud of myself for being able to express such a simple and direct sentiment.
We reached the Possibility Alliance, and I met the Zing, his wife Tigerlily, their daughter Butterfly Girl, Infinity Man, and several of the interns, some of whom planned to join us on the ride. We only stayed for the night, but the brief glimpse I saw of the electricity and petroleum free farm enlivened me to possibilities beyond technology. There are very few things that actually limit our imagination.
When I became a superhero, it was like finding an anchor to the true world. Like I had been living in a cabin of imagination, watching my life through the window, but having no way to activate or engage. When I stepped into the life of a superhero, I did it because it fit my paradigm of a magical world, and I loved comic books. What I found gave me a what I needed most: connection.
My cape was my bridge back to a shared world from the isolated shroud of sadness and shadow.
I spent two weeks riding with a dozen other heroes around Iowa. It was everything I could have hoped for and more. The superhero strivings suggested a way to live in line with compassion, acceptable, and vulnerability.
At the end, I became vulnerable in the worst way. I crashed my bike, and over the course of several days, the injury became worse until I was in debilitating pain. I took a Greyhound bus home the next day. As I called to tell Mom I was coming home, she had called in tears to tell me my sister was in the hospital because her boyfriend had tried to strangle her. And when I arrived home, my Dad told me he had been diagnosed that day with Type 1 Diabetes. Zing told me as I left, “A hero’s journey begins at home.” It felt like I had arrived just in time.
The end of June 2011. That was a year ago today.