Monday, September 12, 2011

20-Minute Monday: Invincibility

Looking out over my right shoulder tonight, as we flew higher than the piled-up thunderheads, and struck yet again by the miracle of flight: our human ability to be up among this planet's highermost creations and how seemingly blithely we do this ... hopping to Minneapolis for the weekend, no big deal, just a chance to see cousins and nephews (getting older and changing every minute just like the rest of us). So easily done when there so many things in the world so difficult.

How is it that flying -- being higher than thunderstorms, God-like -- has become such a mundane, everyday thing?

Now we're making a wide-right turn past the east edge of greater Boston and out over the Atlantic, approaching as one always does at Logan, above (and in spite of) powerful ocean waves below. Spotlit ballfields in the dusk. Freeways filled with cars as big as ants, their perceived size completely belying the lives, anxieties, dramas and goodnesses within each one. Lights of the metro spreading out in a vastness all made possible by human invention, too.

It's a day in this country that, out of necessity, overflows with introspection and demands to evaluate the present and its shaping by the past and how we, as humans, live with and hurt each other not only in the most henious ways but the most ordinary, in grievance and in compassion, in selfishness and in altruism. 

Touching down now ... ripped suddenly from lofty vantage. Introspection seems more difficult when dealing with mundane issues of luggage collection, bus rides, the making of mental notes for a new Monday and the week ahead with its attendant complexities and uncertainities both tactile and vague. Despite being idealistic and financially unreasonable, it would seem easier, somehow, to just ride the air currents non-stop in the unimaginable insularity (and relative safety?) of an airplane, figuring it all out from a remove.
 
Sunday, September 11, 2011 (7:32-7:52 pm)
Aboard Sun Country 257 (MSP to BOS)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, inspiring at just the right moment.

Anonymous said...

As good as you are at expressing yourself, I would think you would be wonderful in a relationship. Well, as long as you would keep expressing yourself and not expecting the guy to read your mind! But, you wouldn't be guilty of that, would you???!!! Keep up the wonderful postings. . .

Heidi said...

I think the same thing every time someone complains about a delayed flight or lost luggage- in my head I always think "yes, but we can FLY!!!!" It's pretty awesome.