Monday, April 14, 2008
8 seconds
Nope, no wakes, nothing but blue skies. Not to be too fatalistic, but on the inside there is 20 seconds left... give or take. On the outside maybe 45 or 50. Unlike most times... at this time, you can count it and count on it. Unless the Theory of Gravity fails like Evolution. Not really all that different in the end than the other seconds of your life. Just more bounded perhaps. Course you can be the one to stand up to Yama and explain how you decided that avoiding any and all risk in your life made it last longer. I can just see him cuing up the laugh track now. "...put the clock on you boy, you can't miss my friend.... tight. --swingfly"
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There are topics that I know a story for that I can never tell.
We all probably have stories like that, the dark secrets that we picked up by chance as we just wandered along through the world, the stories that we're never allowed to tell, for whatever reason.
Not just for legal reasons, or for something weak like money, or because we're cool spies or vampires or something, or any other kind of braggery, or to avoid any kind of braggery, but for some more serious reason, or reasons, y'know, like the confidence and honor of someone you actually care about, or the kind of story that leaves people with a wound that will never heal.
Topics that we're never allowed to discuss, topics that probably color and shape the way we're perceived as storytellers by the strangeness of their absence, by the omission of all the things that could ever be considered a reference to them, mysteries that bind us, because we need to avoid leading people in that direction, or we would break our oath, or dishonor someone's memory, or give even more power to a great evil, something that is better left to starve, to be unknown, and to be forgotten.
Skydiving is one of those dangerous topics for me.
And at the same time, its obviously one of the coolest things ever to a guy like me, you just can't fly more into the face of the Earth than that, there's no louder Fuck You you can possibly scream with your entire being, no greater temptation of fate than to boil it all down to a single thing.
And the Entire Earth is definitely the biggest and most powerful brute (well, around here, anyways) that you can possibly tease and start some serious shit with that you don't need to finish.
Its just the tiny little speck that you are and the Humongousness of the Earth, suspended for a moment with nothing but the sleepiest and mightiest force of physics between the two of you, that unbreakable line, the distance being devoured, the synapses in your brain going wild, mental sparks flying out in a shower behind you.
And then you're both rushing at each other, as fast as it can possibly tear you through the thickness of the air, and faster, until there is no faster, that's the noise in your ears, the force against your body.
And you can see all the little creatures that live on its skin, creatures that could trip and fall just a few measly feet and be in for a cruel and perhaps even deadly treat from the rocky and heartless hide of the great blind idiot that they ride.
And the magnitude of the forces you are caught up in, the forces you are playing with, are so much more powerful, a million times more deadly.
And you know that those creatures down there would never look up this far into space, or it would be unusual for them to do so, and that is strange, and sad, because there's a part of them that dreams of being up here, where you are right now, every night.
Up there where only the dreams of flight live, far above the place where even the birds, that merely zip and zing for their short flights, criss-crossing the shallows of air far below you, would even think of looking.
And then the compromise of the parachute, your scientific friend, pulling you away from the fight that you are sure to lose, and the Great and Beautiful Idiot, the most powerful beast we know, is cheated, you cheater.
But it knows nothing of being cheated, just like it knows nothing of your joy in cheating it, or the way your joy is sometimes tempered by the need to cheat it.
And it knows nothing of the horrors that meet all those unfortunates who fail to cheat it.
And all those who love those that fail to cheat it, and all those who love those who love those that fail to cheat it.
There is the joy of flight in the face of Everything, the Great Dare of Azathoth, with all the angels pulling at your sleeves, and a foe that will only kill you once, and swiftly, but will then visit a cruel and relentless and painful sort of knowledge on the imaginations of everyone who knew you, and everyone who knew them, for the rest of their lives.
I suppose, then, that its the smallest of prices to pay, really, to be the storyteller that isn't allowed to tell a story.
Such a petty and pedestrian thing, really, when you consider his context and the magnitude of the forces at work, the great joy of those who can fly, and the great sorrow of those who don't.
And if there was a silver lining in all this, he couldn't speak of it, because it was another story that he isn't allowed to tell.
A story that might even make up for the bad one that he can't tell.
And I know I'm not allowed to really say anything about it, but MAN is it ever a good one heh.
Stories lose their power in the telling. The best must remain forever locked up. Experienced but not shared. The best thing written or to be written was ripped to pieces and handed to a friend to throw into the gutter. From beyond thence consigned back to the ocean.
While I wasn't going to write a eulogy for the departed this will do quite well. Hopefully it will go noticed by a few and unnoticed by many more.
Those who dance are often thought mad by those who cannot hear the music.
No way to explain the door, the sky, the roar, the burning freedom as everything stripped away. It is real. Yet only another experience. As is death. No way to explain that either. No better thing to say. Sure a picture of my hand may make it more tangible, close to home, and human. Sure the sky, life, death and reality all are caling.
"when I told the blind man
we're all here alone
he said the strong wind
was taking us home --the samples"
Blue skies.
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