At the time, I wanted the memoir to be exploration of the questions, “is truth a static thing to be discovered or revealed, or is it an evolving thing that one grows into?”, “what are the boundaries of self, and when am I not-I?”, “how does one navigate and integrate different cultural groups?” and “what have I got to show for my thirty years on this planet?” Reading the account now feels like a collection of description-lite, barely-strung-together situations.
It mostly works on a mechanical level, but it doesn’t seem to work on a cathartic level—part of the problem is that I am not giving the reader enough background information. If I were going to write it again, I would introduce some of the folks more thoroughly. I would look for and emphasize repeating images and motifs in the descriptions of the jumps. I would address the elephants in the room: Arcosanti, my burgeoning queerness, and my failures at finding True Love and Romance. And I would add the last skydive I ever did, by myself, a few days before I returned to Oregon.
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