It's just getting off the ground, really, that requires concentration and practice. I refuse to take the easy way out, to throw myself off an edge and let gravity and adrenaline slingshot me into that other realm.
No, I want to attain that state of grace by my own efforts.
I want to become entirely, fully present, feeling the blood pumping, feeling my skin responding to the air, cooling and shrinking, or expanding and flushing, every breath flowing cool filaments through the myriad branchings inside my lungs. All colours brighter, all edges sharper, all sounds more intense and more beautiful at once.
When I am fully there, alive to every tiny sensation, deeply connected with myself, through myself to something deeper, larger, more blissful, a Leviathan of warmth and power and beauty, when I thrill in every particle of my being from the bliss that is being alive, only then can I float free of the Earth's firm grasp.
By then, of course, the bliss of the present moment is so intense that I don't want to move, don't want to change a thing, just want to hold myself there in that pregnant everything-nothing space and let everything-nothing course through me in wave after wave of ecstatic sensation.
Sometimes, I just hover there, millimetres off the ground, my flight imperceptible to all but the most observant - usually fliers themselves, traditionalists like me, who can not only see the subtle postural shifts as gravity releases her hold, but can also feel the visceral ecstasy radiating from me, and recognise it instantly from their own experience.
We're a very small club, us traditionalists, but we know know that we are on to one of the great secrets of the Universe. While any fool can fly, only a fraction of a percent will ever know flight as we know it.
Just flying itself is great, of course. The rush of air against my skin, through my hair, the swirling inner sensations of diving, turning, and peaking in that moment of almost-zero gravity - not to mention the sights. Sydney is so beautiful from above.
But those who leap straight into the air from a great height are missing the real joy of flying. The swooping and darting about is fun, and feels good, and the sights are spectacular and interesting, but that's all there is to it at that level.
Anyone can jump off a bridge, and don't get me wrong, it's still a great experience.
But when you are already in that amazing, blissful, completely connected state, and you add the sensations of flight - that is a whole new world.
A world where flying is not a way to get from A to B, or a source of cheap thrills, or a way to pass the time, or a distraction from the problems of life. A world in which flying itself is an approach to the Divine, a communion with the deepest forces of the Universe, a sacred movement in which all separateness is drowned by an inpouring, outpouring, swirling flow of pure embodied Love.
It takes concentration, and practice, to attain that state. But once you have known it, you will never want to go back.
3 comments:
Heather says:
Oh, man, Jenny, you really know what it is to fly. Do you have flying dreams? -- I do, and this is the closest I could ever come to having that sensation described.
Your imagery is breathtaking. I was hooked from the first paragraph.
The only word I might change is "Sydney" - I'd keep it generic. There's a mood of you the flier as a person of the whole world and it was a tiny shock to think you belonged to one place. "The city is so beautiful from above."
There's that lovely hint of madness that surely comes with membership in such an exceptional club.
Peta says:
I loved this Jenny. It was so real. I think you have been there. I liked the even pace, in some ways it was very matter of fact yet almost a challenge to the reader to have a shot and see what is possible.
Jenny I love how you have taken something that is amazing and mystifying, turned it into something ordinary and then lifted it up to a whole new level.
For most of us, the flying is the jumping off the bridge and experiencing the "wheeee" of it all. And that's about it. You have taken it to some ethereal level where it becomes divine.
I loved how you had me feel the sensation of being suspended just above the ground. It's like you recreated what it must be like to fly that way. A true be in the moment way to experience it.
And I liked how you wove the story into a bigger picture, not just about you. You are part of the traditionalists revealing that there is much more yet to be revealed with this flying.
Flying as a "state of grace" is what I was left with.
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