Friday, December 03, 2004

Taking flight for the first time

These next few weeks are hell weeks; I'm sure every student that is or was can agree with me. Because of our multiple hell weeks, there is not much living that goes on, and hence not very much inspiration. It's amazing I can string together a sentence. That's actually not true; I study by stringing together elaborate sentences.

Regardless, there is no inspiration; these sentences might be going down the crapper. I will have to resort to remniscing about my strange childhood which seems so physically and mentally separated from the person that child has become.

The first time I flew on a plane was, to say the least, not under the happiest of circumstances. We had been waiting for about six hours to board. The flight was deyaled, you see, because the airport was under attack by either the governemnt or the anti-government forces, or maybe some paramilitary group; it was hard to tell in those days, and I was seven years old. Eventually we were taken outside and had to make a run for a huge cargo plane while directionless gunfire sounded off to the distance; or maybe it was close; I could not tell. The cargo on the plane today was people: old women with babushkas crying, clutching the baskets which contained all their belongings; shrewd, cynical urbanites talking politics and lamenting their foresight and the failings of man; my mother who had never thought life could come down crashing so hard to the sound of gunfire, artillery and wwailing sirens; soldier children herding the civilian rabble; old men with honeyed moths and fists full of money; and me, looking out the window, for the first time seeing the clouds from above. I kenw them all bakc then: cirrus, cumulus, stratus; my prefixes weren't quite up to scratch, but that would change. It was a beautiful, well-lit afternoon and I had a window spot on the long crammed bench. I like to think sometimes that this story is symbolic.

Consider: "the solstice comes at the beginning of winter. The most bitterly cold winter days and the darkest winter days, while each suck out human spirit in their own paiful ways, never coincide."

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home