Up Where the Air is Clear
I was walking
along the street outside my office, just like normal, nothing unusual.
I was in my suit with my Wednesday blue pinstriped shirt, and black dress
shoes. I was carrying my briefcase in my
hand like always and I distinctly remember thinking about poor Margie being
reprimanded because she had filed the flight plan to
I was thinking about that, but I was also thinking about what I would have for dinner because I couldn’t remember if I had used up the last of the frozen chicken, and, as I was walking, I also became aware that it had been raining, which I found a little odd because I didn’t realize it was raining once while in my office all day. It was nippy, but now the sky was clear blue with puffy white clouds, and I wished I had one of those heaters on a timer, but no, the landlord wouldn’t have it.
It was when I passed the Charles Schwab building that the weird thing happened. A puddle I was approaching caught my eye. It was shiny and clear, small and shallow. It made a perfect, sharp reflection of the sky. I thought it was quite beautiful and would probably be a good subject for photography if I had any artistic talent at all. I was very absorbed in this puddle. I was staring into it, and, well, I fell into it. I fell into the puddle. Yes, fell. I know if I think about it logically, the sidewalk was just under my foot covered by no more than an inch of water. But sometimes you simply can’t use logic. Or maybe not so simply – how can we just give up what we take to be truths everyday? I’m still struggling with this. Anyway, my leg fell straight through the ground as if nothing was beneath it, and shocked and off balance, the rest of my body went tumbling in after. Just like that.
I was all of a sudden up in the clouds. Upside-down. If I looked straight above me I could see the tops of the distant skyscrapers. I looked down at my feet and I was initially surprised. I was wearing nothing but my new polka-dotted boxers. The whole suit top was there – shirt, jacket, tie, even the ballpoint pen was clipped in place in the pocket, so where had my pants gone? I wasn’t self-conscious because I knew no one else was there to see me. I examined my bare feet, which sunk into the cloud so that it oozed over them. It was a cushy, comforting feeling. It was new, but it was also nice. I wondered why I wasn’t panicking and trying to figure out what happened, and trying to take control. But then I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about why I wasn’t doing those things. I just wasn’t doing them, so I wasn’t supposed to be doing them. I tried walking. It was just as easy as on the ground. I looked down (or up in my case) at the city and I could see the exact puddle that I had come from. It gave me a funny feeling, but I felt quite at home here. I wondered if it was my portal to heaven. And she’s buying the stairway to heaven…cause you know sometimes words have two meanings…sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven…
Ooooooo, it was so nice here, I sighed. I liked my new boxers. HAHA!! I was like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds! Except I didn’t think I was wearing any diamonds, and I knew my name wasn’t Lucy. Hee Hee. Imagine that. Imagine there’s no heaven, above us is only sky. Ah, YES! To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free…Gee, I had to admit that I actually did want to do a little dance. Sometimes down below I think clouds are the epitome of freedom, and I could tell you that floating upside-down with no pants on and my hairy toes blanketed by cloud I felt as free as a bird. Ah what a silly expression, not free as a bird, free as a cloud! But…I’m free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change. Hmm hmmm, I wanna turn the whole thing upside-down….lalala…. I don't want this feeling to go away…this world keeps spinning and there’s no time to waste.
I was rather entertained on my little cloud, dancing around a little bit, quite unlike myself actually. Humm dee dum. Oh, that was fun. And then I paused – what was I doing!? Did I loose my brains as well as my pants? Who? How? Why? Oh good grief! I was spluttering around trying to take control again. I should be asking, who cares if I’m acting unlike myself? How have I not let myself feel like this recently? Why do we put so many restrictions on ourselves? I was settling back down into that fuzzy, happy feeling again. Hallelujah zig zag nothing. A-zig, a-zag. A-ziggedy zaggedy, ziggedy-zag. A-all you gotta do is swing. Yeah swing. A-swishin’ and a-swingin’.
Oh boy, people really ought to do this more often. Not to find their portal to heaven or whatever I had done to get the slacks taken off me and thrown into the wild abyss of the sky, per say. But yes! Find something in order to… oh I don’t know, go a little crazy! Really, the laughter is literally bubbling out of me when I let myself. At this point I couldn’t keep a straight face if I tried. Oh we’re never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy…
I think I was really having a moment there. I was figuring out something important. So I looked at the city again, so small now. I thought about all the hustle and bustle, but what is it all for? All the people rushing off to do who-knows-what, but why? And time, it swallows everything. From the mighty to the meager thing…What’s been going on? I thought about all the people like me. People who had to wear suits to work and who came home to an empty apartment. People who had to attend those formal dinners when they’d really rather be at the rock wall at the gym, or club hopping, or maybe just slouched on the couch with a TV dinner. Why do we do the things we do? Why even try to stake our lives out as important or meaningful when most of the time we don’t even let ourselves do what we want. Is desire so bad?
I figured that
as a workaholic who was thrown into the clouds, this was probably my chance to
do all those things. Stop analyzing
and thinking, just go out and defy the limits, take the time to be happy and do
something fun. Thinking too much isn’t
healthy. So I let myself go
completely. I flung myself face
down on the cloud so I wouldn’t have to look at the limitations of walls,
streets, stoplights, and other people in general.
And this could be my last chance,
this may be my only chance. Yeah
this could be my last chance, no more keeping my feet on the ground.
It was the best feeling I’ve ever felt.
You know how when you lie down in bed you can never get quite comfortable
because there’s always a lump on your side, a pressure on your neck…well none of
that was there. If I wanted to
stick my face in the cloud, there was a perfect spot just for my nose.
If I wanted to let my arm hang down, it just floated into the cloud.
It was wonderful.
What a wonderful world. If only you
let it be.
Let it be.
All that relaxation and all that peace was suddenly interrupted by an increasingly loud whirring sound. I pulled my head out of the clouds, chuckling even as I thought of the pun. I whipped my head around terrified of what it was. An airplane was approaching me! I couldn’t believe it! A trick was being played on me. Hey! Hey! You! You! Get off of my cloud. I couldn’t even think about all my thoughts. The thing was coming at me, and coming fast. Really fast, and really big. Huge. Enormous! Straight at me. What to do? Jump to the next cloud? No, that’s ridiculous. I had to do something!
But before I
knew it, I was swung up and over and on to the plane’s wing.
I was riding on top of an airplane’s wing.
Incredible, I wouldn’t
have thought it possible! I
expected a massive force to pin me down, but it wasn’t like that at all.
The plane was rapidly descending, and the drop was exhilarating, so I
quite enjoyed it.
Gonna free fall
out into nothin’, gonna leave this world for a while.
And I’m free, free fallin’.
I guess I couldn’t really say that I was leaving this world, when it
appeared I was coming back to it.
But I knew it would be different when I got down.
I won’t let you
let me down so easily…you gotta spend some time with me.
I could see the
airport runway at that point and knew we would be landing soon.
I felt weird. I didn’t
really want to go back, but I wasn’t sad or mad.
I guess I just wasn’t ready.
Go figure, right? You finally find
a way, a place, a time, to let loose, and you have to leave right when you’re
really getting into it. But it
didn’t really feel like that. I
knew I was happier and would be happier back in the city on ground.
At least I think I knew that.
How can we say what we really know and feel?
It’s all emotion, and you can’t tie words to feelings.
And everyone feels differently.
Or perhaps not? Maybe we all
feel the same, but it just seems different because we express it differently.
I don’t know. How can I
know? Heck, I don’t even know what
I feel half the time.
So I walked
through the airport and saw all those businessmen with the bland faces who were
just coming or going to somewhere not-so-important.
I knew they were thinking about that presentation they were about to
give, or that never-ending, pointless meeting that they sat through.
But they weren’t actually thinking about that stuff.
Really they were thinking about the
novel they were reading because they didn’t have time to finish the last chapter
before the plane landed, or thinking about how they’d really just like to have a
nice mimosa brought down to the hotel pool they wish they were floating in, or
thinking about their daughter’s ballet recital which they were missing.
I knew I could and had been someone just like them.
But as I walked through the airport I was thinking about the end of “Mary
Poppins”. I had no clue how I
remembered it, but it had popped into my head.
You know, the scene where the kids get the dad to sing about the kite.
Yes, well I walked through the airport humming that song.
Oh,
oh, oh!
Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Let's go fly
a kite!
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