on awaiting arrivals and departures

a plane (though not this one), flying so low and loudly that impact felt imminent, passed over our office this morning.

it reminded me then, and rarely this happens in the moment, of being much younger underneath colossal noises such as that. the mystical qualities of flight, then, when we were young enough to know nothing of mechanics like lift, dominated our imaginations; airplanes were so much bigger than we could ever be and did things we could never do, like stretch out wings and war against gravity successfully—the things we dreamed of doing as we leapt from top bunks with umbrellas and blankets hoping to win for a moment such as the ongoing war of airplane versus ground.

occasionally, it grips me like fingers on an armrest, the rush and shudder of liftoff when thinking of youth. being so young that flight felt like the natural outgrowth of being older, staying up as late as possible until after hours flight would reveal itself. it wasn't simple, though, as we are often prone to say. no, it was magical, the whole world sewn together by inconceivable threads that if seen could illuminate life and all its mysteries. and, growing up was the key that gave us vision to see.

then, we found out, slowly by that very act of growing up, that the vision to see was science, physics that explained aerodynamics and propulsion, and were unimpressed over time by the logical sequences that governed it all, thus did modernity wipe us clean of all imagination. now, airplanes and flights provide us sometimes-long threads of inactivity, spaces to read books instead of time to marvel at the air between us and the ground and our successful war against gravity.

then, while reading or watching a dvd on a laptop, the imagination returns, the ground is so far away! and all the ability of physics to explain wonder away disappears in the distance between you and the earth. and we are reabsorbed into the atmosphere, among clouds and other low-flying planes.

(photo, Jim Weidman, 2008)