Friday, May 2, 2008

Flight...

Don’t we all simply adore books and songs about flying? Well, I sure do!


The open sky. The sun shining brightly up there like a wise old man watching over you. Tiny houses like the ones we used to play with as kids. A tiny spark of desire of picking one with your hand and placing it in a more aesthetic position, then realizing that it’s perfect the way it is. Thoughts about a perfect world come flooding through. You barricade the thoughts and concentrate at your task at hand. A short loss of focus and you’re gonna go crashing down. The hard rocky land down there doesn’t look all that cute anymore. You see a professional shooting past you occasionally, doing the thing that you’re so afraid of, with such ease and ever-so delicately. Such beauty, such liberty, such freedom, you wonder. But this is no time for contemplation. That has long gone. There are times when actions speak, not just louder than words; they’re quite a din over words. And that time, to borrow a friend’s expression, is now.

The clouds seem to be doing their usual pattern thing, except that from up here, it’s different. The shapes are much more real. You realize why clouds are loved and sung about all that much. Cotton floating around in the air, puffs of pure-white smoke collecting together and playing games with our heads, everything we’ve compared clouds to back on land is a joke now. The clouds are cities, the clouds are mountains, the clouds are all that we’ve ever seen.

The biggest distraction is this tiny thing in your head. It’s this annoying voice which keeps telling you what to do. The most annoying part of it, however, is that all the logic is founded on what the consequences would be. Some people call it a conscience. I’d rather stick with “annoying voice”. More often than not it happens that instincts are your best friend. Go where the roads take you, and you’ll get to the best destination. And once you’re AT the destination, you’ll realize that every road leads to the same place (it’s referred to as Rome by an ancient smarty-pants).

It all boils down to that one moment. The perfect dive, the perfect swooshing movement across the sky and suddenly you’re nothing more than a blur. Bounded by nothing anymore. No moment has been as close to clarity as this one. Unleashed from the shackles of everything that’s kept you on the ground. Flying.

Flying.

One word cannot give more joy!