flight

A man clings to the side of a sheer granite face with only chalked fingers and an ipod. He is thousands of feet above the valley floor and there's no doubt that he will die if he loses his remarkable grip. This isn't possible, this is not possible. Flesh does not stick to millennia-old rock, there are hardly any holds, but he must find them anyway. And he has practiced, this we know. He has mapped a path, a zigzag that takes advantage of every flaw in the otherwise clean and vertical grey expanse. We watch him, stunned. We are afraid. 

He can't fear like us, though, who hug the dirt so far beneath him, comforted by the X- axis of our everyday reality. If he felt fear he would detach just like that and freefall, back first, arms and legs still cocked in climb position, fingers still arched in awkward double-jointed bends, a look of disbelief on his face, surf punk still thumping in his ears until a white bud pops free and the rush of ether wooshes into his consciousness. 

 We would gasp! and instinctively our own clenched fingers would scrabble for the remote, our thumbs slamming an invisible pause button to halt his fall. There would be no time, no fourth dimension then, no air, until one of us would scream, and another would reflexively jab his hands into his pocket for his phone, not to call emergency, but to tape this final moment of freedom for a truly stupid and courageous man. We would shout nonono! and make grunting painful whining noises as our bodies jerked helplessly. Turn! we'd shout, flip! And it would be as if he hears us because he would do his own scrabble in the air and twist about, arms flailing as he tried to swim the atmosphere surrounding him. But he's not a cat and some calm voice, the soothing collective voice of our mothers calming our infant tears, whispers to us wordlessly that not even a cat, nine lives still intact, would survive this fall. Let him go, she whispers, you have to let him go. We don't yet know how to fly... 

 He makes it to the top in three hours, a remarkable accomplishment! He has survived! He is a superhero, at least in the eyes of his community of crazies willing to stake high that sheer thought-power and determination, sheer skill through practice and belief in self is going to save their extreme sport lives. Many die trying, but not this one! And where then do we go from here? If he's done what no human has ever done before, then there is no this anymore to stop the fantastical force of human willpower and consciousness. He joins the ranks of those who have reconfigured our human story. And now the whisper that we hear is this: you can do it, you have to try, push farther, go longer, believe in the impossible, create your existence, create your universe, don't be afraid... 

 One day, under this very sun, we will let go on purpose and one of us won't hit the ground a dank thud, but will sweep the pressing ether below his or herself and will ride it, and will, for all of us, finally take flight. 

© Madia (Maria Alva Roff) January 16, 2012