I Love EPIC

I love EPIC.

Like the moment in Last of the Mohicans when the scene pans wide and you get this gorgeous vista unfolding before you, just as the music is hitting that 2:26 minute mark and there’s the big crescendo and all the string instruments come in full force… every hair on my body stands at attention as me, my consciousness, and my physical form are consumed in the most surreal experience of all the senses and I’m ALIVE.

Like standing at the top of Hoover Dam. Is NOW when it’s going to finally give?

Having your grown daughter say “I love you momma.”

That point in the book when the title all of a sudden comes together. Or, even better, when they Finally. Fall. In. Love.

Experiencing a sweat lodge.

Like when Mariah Carey hits that inexplicable note “I can’t liiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIiiiiiiIIIIiiiive, if living is without yooouuu…” in the middle of the song, you know right after she’s already convinced you that she can’t live, but then it like SINKS IN and hits you on every level that there’s no way she’s going to make it if it’s without you.

Epic is when you’ve been working for years on learning a foreign language and you have that eerie moment when you’re so wrapped up in the new language, that you hear your native tongue and you don’t recognize it, and you hear the sounds and rhythms of your own language as foreigners hear it. Surreal!

Oh! And when you find yourself thinking in your second language without doing it intentionally, or wake to a dream that was in said language.

When you’re driving through Idaho and then up through the west side of Oregon and there’s been nothing for twelve days and you finally come out to that part near Pendleton where all you see is rolling hills and a panoramic view of just sheer wonder and amazement. Nature is so epic.

When “I do” is said, and “I do” is reciprocated.

Staring at the face of Jimi Hendrix carved into his memorial. And then DunnDah Duuunnn starts playing in your head.

The rush of finishing a marathon. You’ve peed all down your legs and you won’t move for the week following, but that one moment, that’s pretty epic.

Driving down the freeway with the speakers blaring Awolnation’s Knights of Shame.

The indescribable moment when you’re about to die and they say “It’s a girl!”

Driving through the evergreen wonder that is Washington state.

Randomly taking the G.E.D. just so you can know what subject you need to study up on after years of no school, and then completely acing it all.

The precise moment when you find balance for the first time, and you know you have it and the sensation that floods your body. The magnificent memory that is stored in your muscles.

I love the epicness of when a song takes you completely out of your body. And when the music makes you feel your entire body.

Seeing the Statue of Liberty.

When your kid graduates from High School. And then college.

Visiting a foreign country. Sitting there, in a restaurant, eating the most amazing food and speaking a different language, and you remember your day to day same old life and you can’t freaking believe where you are. In that moment, you’re living what you’ve dreamed of.

Watching Love Actually for the first time.

Watching Love Actually for the fiftieth time.

When the boat finally lifts you up on the skis.

When Diana, daughter of Zeus, says “I believe in love,” and proceeds to kill her brother, and when she lands on one knee and her thighs jiggle, and there’s a sunset and happiness and humanity gets to live on in love. Bad. Ass.