Aviation Poem: Timeless Flight
2/22/2021
There is a certain absence present in life…a void shadowed by death, paled by loss, fueled my something missing, something less. The inability to accept reality, the inability to freeze time. My heart felt devoid of purpose when I was on the ground…all was dull, nothing shined. It was noisy and chaotic down here, with the crowds of people, the fleets of cars. There was not enough balanced contrast, at night, it was too bright to see the stars. I felt there was never enough room for me. Comparison and competition created expectations that I believed. These great expectations told me how to act and how to feel. Becoming overwhelmed, I drifted away from what was real. Oh, how I deeply admired the birds…able to fly away from it all and become one with the wind. They were free, untethered by the chains of gravity, born with wings…unlike me.
I first saw her when they handed me the black folder, N476TC. She was a small plane. She looked broken and unstable, unreliable. She had faded blue and yellow paint clumsily painted atop her wings and on her sides, but somehow, she still looked dignified. Perhaps it was the black river-like bifurcations etched into the brown leather on the seats, reflecting a certain experience. Or maybe the utter brittleness of her engine’s song when she sang. She sounded wounded but determined. In a way, I sympathized with this machine, the difficulty of pain.
Though it is not in fear, that one grows weak, but ashamed. Of not being able to attain control of your emotions. Reality drowns with chaotic commotion. I feared nothing being foolish until I saw fear in the eyes of wise men. Their eyes changed my heart and taught my mind to bend. I learned to appreciate time and flow with change. Fear became wise and less strange.
When I was younger, I daydreamed about being a bird. I envied their wings. They could fly away from the ground and into their own worlds, gliding with the wind and developing perspective; imagine all of the stories they could for books bring. I often wondered what they saw, and if ever they came across the Eiffel tower, would they be in awe? As a child, I flew often. I loved the powerful sensation of flying…the birds eye view. The landscapes painted my imagination and became my muse. Though more than anything, I loved the magic. Didn’t you?
Didn’t you know that a great giant carries the plane across the sky with their large, invisible hands, and their great breaths make the wind? Or did you forget that when it rains, it is the tears from the goddesses mourning the loss of flowers, not in sin or in vain? What about thunder? Have you forgotten that the Gods perform in a band and Zeus is the conductor? Did you realize that the clouds outside your window are plump, snow-white marshmallows that giggle when they are poked? Do you remember seeing all the cloud figures and silhouettes that would dance then fade like receding waves? Dream worlds inspired by imagination are for the creatively brave. Do tell me, that you have not forgotten that the sun rides in a boat and that the moon is made of cheese? Do tell me, you remember your childhood fantasies.
Flying was my dream, and I created a physical paracosm of what I wanted to see. I dreamed because I saw a bird. Imagining soaring and flying, I gave power to this four-letter word. I lived in my innocently foolish head more than reality. My mother would tell me, “Get your head out of the clouds, you must walk on the ground now”, I never did, for that would be a dreamer’s fatality. Many times, I would be scolded in class for staring out the window and being absent-minded. My teachers said my mind was filled with inane imagination and that I should focus on my studies, in which their dull realities to me reminded. Nonetheless, I lived in these colorfully, puerile worlds I created, with myth and magic in a beautiful caress. My imagination was my escape, it was where reality and fantasy coalesced.
As I settled into the plane, I was startled to see the cracks in the dashboard and the fragileness of the instruments. I thought my own clumsiness would surely break something within these incipient moments. I would have doubted her strength more if it wasn’t for the great bellowing crescendo of the engine. It sounded like a great dragon expelling fire. Somehow, this weak looking plane; somehow this tin can with wings came to life. I smelled the fuel and orphic nepenthe was breathed into me. I no longer felt acataleptically bereft. I finally obtained what I needed: the power to fly. The magic to soar like a bird in the sky…the potential to even slow time, to live in the moment.
Thoughts dashed through my mind like a freeway. I was thinking about death. Not the fear or gloom of dying, but the uneventfulness of it. In a matter of seconds, I was thinking of hundreds of memories. Each memory was like a leaf painted on the great tree in my mind. Each layer like a swirl of smoke and each stroke like bristled impasto. I recalled a Buddhist explaining the concept of reincarnation. And I thought, how lovely it would be if I died to not just die and disappear forever…into an abyss of nothingness. How wonderful would it be to return as something else! A bird perhaps! Oh, how I envy their freedom and their flight how I- the memory dissipated rapidly as my flight instructor began to taxi. How quickly I lost thought and lost myself.
The sky was scintillantly crystal and cirrus clouds were delicately placed, the air was crisp and fresh, and the sun strung strong, cascading rays of halcyon. A beautiful day to fly. After our run up, we called our takeoff. The plane gained velocity on the runway until it was whining with eagerness to jump into the sky. At its signal, I lifted. The lift of the plane gave me power I never knew I possessed. Just the action of pulling up, a light motion with some back pressure. The ground became smaller, the sky expanded, the fast movements synergized into a serene pastiche. Flying next to the birds, their feathered wings flapping and my metal wings lifting…I felt I was equal to them. I felt weightless. I felt I was a cloud drifting in the wind, a flower bending in the breeze. I felt I possessed the flexibility of water, moving so freely. The glissando of the wind carried me. I was defiantly living in this moment. Maybe, I could preserve time.
I remembered when I was younger, how bright the sun used to shine. I had no care in the world, I never seemed to run out of time. Now, my life has quickly elapsed into a golden gossamer of the past. I have, relapsed into a memory I can never reach or catch. Childhood dreams and the magic fade. Reality becomes dark, filled with bleak hate. Imagination dies in our past; in our small, childish hands. Memories that took seconds to build take years to last. Every day we drift further from our youthful past. I was scared to grow up, which is why I wanted to slow time. I wanted to live in the present, in a lasting moment that I could call mine.
No moment is sempiternal, for it was 10:30. The world was so calm and steady, all was conflating in the chaos. All became peaceful. My instructor let me touch the yoke once again, each touch was like a brilliant, fleeting spark. Pulling, pushing, shifting, I controlled this tin can. I flew in an adagio of wanderlust, having no intention but the desire for liberation. Though in drifting, I felt inspired to fly towards something, igniting my passion for peregrination. The water beneath us, the ocean, looked like cyanic porcelain and appeared so vast. We flew over it and I wished this moment would last. I wanted to fly away from it all, the chaos of reality. But in flying away from one thing I was flying into my gold, childish past.
Erstwhile, I felt I was in a reverie. Did minutes go by? Did seconds? I was unsure. Before I knew it, my instructor was calling in the final landing, my transient metanoia-like experience would come to a denouement. I was astounded. I knew I paid for two hours and it was now 12:30, I seemed to have lost track of time. As we landed, I realized even up here in the calmness of the air, away from the chaos…time flies. My young, nifty hands released before me the yoke. I descended from the ephemeral kingdom of clouds into the noise once again.
By Serenaty Lumpkin
Dedicated to E.H
