Flying And The Thingness of Things
(written in the air)
The flight is good, actually. There are about 20 people on it and I’m sitting next to the propellor. The way the plane is built, I’m sitting under the wing and about 5 feet off the ground. Or where the ground would be if we weren’t thousands of feet over icy water.
And instead of feeling vulnerable, it feels really good. The acceration off the runway was something you could really feel, with all the eager rumbles of a small plane instead of the lumbering whines of those big jet liners being coaxed into taking off.
Even when I was piloting a 4 seater Cessna, I felt safer than I did bobbing around in pockets of warm air inside a tin bird nursing a little bottle of Jack Daniels while watching a movie, instead of sitting with the flyingness of flying.
By the way, next time you have a miniature booze bottle, you can pretend you are a giant on a bender. Or, get four of those giant Kit Kat finger things together and you can pretend you are a little pixie having an enormous snack.
Are we there yet?