I wish I were a bird.
It’s simply not enough to ride in an airplane anymore. To be a part of the wind, weaving through the quiet clouds, is all I could ever want. But an airplane will have to do for now. And it does – get the job done, I mean. I’m not so sure what said job is exactly, but my point still stands no matter how confusing & whimsical it may be. Being in the air makes me feel like a better person than when I’m on down on earth. As soon as I leave the ground, all of my troubles seem to stay stuck to it, unable to follow me. It reminds me of when I used to play “Jackpot” at recess & I’d (inevitably) risk it all to go for the mystery box, only for the game’s head honcho to scream “STICKY FEET” in my face. As soon as the words came out of their mouth, all heads whipped my way to make sure the figurative, yet oh-so-real, green (or so I imagine it to be), gucky, gorilla glue was keeping me in my place for the next 2 rounds.
And it always did…
That’s what it feels like every time I take off on a plane. Almost as if certain thoughts & feelings are incapable of leaving the earth – as if there’s some unwavering force that keeps them stuck (Jackpot-style) to the earth – as if there’s a barrier right above the ground, and when I cross over it’s bounds, I can feel the things that aren’t meant to enter into the air being sucked out of my mind – as if my cell service dropping as I ascend directly correlates with my mind. Wait, am I permanently on Airplane Mode?
Sound woo-woo? For sure. But some things only fall out right when they’re described in a woo-woo way, and that’s just how my cookie crumbles.
Up here, there’s no concept of time. Punctuality is a nonfactor. You eat whenever the flight attendant tells you to. There are no exact coordinates. Up here, I’m un-trackable (please don’t look up my JetBlue flight on the way back to track me).
Up here, nothing matters…
And I like it that way. It’s always been funny to me the phrase “nothing matters”. It’s such a rock bottom, “this isn’t a phase mom” term. Seems like it should only be used in bleak, “no one understands me”, hopeless contexts. But the cool thing about rock bottom is it can be whatever you want it to be.
It’s a clean slate.
I always enjoyed sitting at the bottom of the pool growing up (still in the process of growing up, in case that was in-question). I’d release all of the air in my lungs to sit as sturdy as humanly possible once I got down there. It’s so quiet. No one can talk to you or infringe on your chlorine-infused solitude. You have the space to just sit, look around, & be. The bottom is an oddly liberating place to spend time. But at some point, you realize that you need to breathe & have to push up for the ascent. You’re not meant to stay down there forever after all.
Being in an airplane reminds me a bit of my days at the bottom of the pool. Kind of empty, but in an open-ended, open-eyed way. The “nothing matters” phenomena, yet in a serene, untethered & free manner. Even death doesn’t seem to matter up above the clouds. Don’t mean to go morbid on you, but it does cross my mind every time I fly. After all, it is a chunk of man-made metal, soaring through the clouds. You saw the Titanic… and now they’ve got one floating in the sky? You’re out of your mind if you don’t think that’s bonkers. It’s a pretty logical thought to have come about if you ask me. Yet every time I do, I’m met with peace. What can I do? Honestly. I have no control. If the plane drops out of the sky, the only piece of the equation that I can do something about is whether or not I enjoy the ride down. And that I would do, watching every last cloud pass my window; maybe even with a “wee” somewhere mixed in.
Nothing matters.
Except the way the sun hits each ridge of the clouds… and maybe the way there’s a pastel rainbow cast across their peaks. How does it do that anyways? Or maybe the way I can feel the plane ricochet off of each patch of turbulence. Like that game Racing Penguin I used to play on my iPod where the penguin glides across the slopes on its belly. Wildly addicting for about 5 minutes. Remember when I just mentioned (a few lines ago) about the colors cast atop the clouds? It’s two minutes later & they’re entirely different. As if God went in when I wasn’t looking & sneakily switched the color palette out for a more richly-pigmented, gold-hued one. Good call, Big Guy.
So, maybe some things do matter up here. But not any of the silly things that did before. I hope I still feel this way when I land – detached from any… wait, what was I before I got on this flight again? Drained? Directionless? Unworthy? Misunderstood? I think… but, then again, I don’t really remember anymore. I don’t think I’m meant to either. All I know is that cloud is shaped like a fruit fly with chicken feet.