I am a bird, I thought. But I quickly realized I was not a bird, partly because I wasn’t actually flying and partly because the idea of a person trying to be a bird reminded me too much of that line from the movie The Notebook, where Allie is in the ocean water and crazily yells at her boyfriend, Noah, to “Say I’m a bird! Say it!” (I think that scene had something to do with them being birds in another life so they could fly away together. Gag.) So yes, confirmed: I did not feel like a bird. Birds don’t fall, for the most part — they glide or coast or majestically soar through the air. Horizontal movement versus vertical movement is the key. Even though I was in flight territory, what I was doing was not flying. It was falling. I was free-falling out of the fly zone. And fast.
But I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t feel a pending death. My life did not flash before my eyes. In fact, I felt pretty glorious, all things considered. Free, somehow. Falling, falling. Wind rushing up and trying to support me, and me going down anyway. Atmosphere! I thought, you are awesome! How do you let me fall but make it feel so pleasant?! Oh, but haha, wind! You cannot use your resistance to make me float upon you forever – I will cut through you and keep falling!
This was physics at its finest. For a moment, I thought it was too bad that I didn’t really care about physics — but just for a moment. Gravity exists and I can’t control it, and knowing how it works won’t really help me much, for my general purposes. So I let it be, and instead focused selfishly on myself, determined to cement the current feelings and sensations in my mind. I was parallel with the ground, flattened out against some invisible force. I spun, like I was splayed out and plastered on a merry-go-round that had come off its bearings and just kept spinning. Unlike being face down on a merry-go-round, where I would inevitably be staring right into the cold metal (or probably closing my eyes), I tried to look around so I didn’t miss it. I was forced to squint, for it was a very sunny day. Tears collected on my eyeballs – I strained to see through them. Was I happy? Was I exhibiting a reaction to a latent fear I was experiencing? It really was super windy, which was probably the culprit. The tears slipped upward on my face. Well, that’s new, I thought. Crying up. Tears streaming up. I wondered if they’d fly off my face and fall down eventually, too, or if they would evaporate. What happens to the salt, then? I wondered, trying to recount my elementary knowledge of the water cycle.
Indeed, I felt glorious; maybe at that moment some type of healing light was shooting out of my body toward other people many thousands of feet away from me, and I just couldn’t see it. That’s what I felt like I had the power to do in those few moments. And if I only had a few more moments in this rushing bliss, I’d best take advantage of whatever special powers I had suddenly gained and would probably lose just as quickly.
I then realized that when those few moments had passed, when I no longer felt like a superhero, I would have lost out on the opportunity to ask what I had planned to ask while I was up there, to someone or something, or maybe to nobody or nothing (and yes, before my fall I had planned out a speech, to both plead for guidance and to show my desire to be altruistic, just in case anyone else was listening in). And so, presumably geographically closer to whatever being or thing could answer my questions, I thought my speech in my last free-falling moments: “So, Universe, while I’m up here, got any answers for me? Where am I on the continuum of me, and which way am I supposed to be going? Who am I going to influence? Who will I help? I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to do something great for other people at some point, right? But when? And why?”
I barely made it in time; I think it was too late to get any answers. It’s funny how the mere act of falling — doing it, feeling it, trying to observe it from both inside and outside myself — caused me to so easily forget what I had assumed would be the most important things to contemplate while I was ground-bound.
Whoosh! Open. Parachute. Actual falling time slowed down. I began to regain a sense of realness for the next nine or so minutes.
It’s now hard to believe I could fit so many thoughts into 60 seconds; another thing I never bothered to try to learn or comprehend, and that also is related to physics (errr, maybe?), is when you get that feeling that time has slowed down. I also wonder how I managed to feel so free when I was probably as constrained in harnesses as I’ve ever been in my entire life. I wonder if experiencing a fall and not dying is as great a victory as flying would be.
Will my life be different? Will I be different, after experiencing just such a fall in itself? As I said before, the act of falling seemed to have distracted me a bit from my original purpose. But I still gained an experience — a flash, an adrenaline rush, an aberration of my normal life. Maybe I was expecting too much from the experience. Maybe it’s that way for a reason.
If my actual, future attempt at skydiving is not as I’ve imagined — how I’ve been imagining it for months now — I’ll be utterly disappointed. Intellectual, curious, exhilarating, confirming, though probably not totally enlightening (but at least the whole thing would help me contemplate the idea of enlightenment). It could be all those things and more, really.
I could just remain grounded; I probably wouldn’t lose out on anything (and I wouldn’t risk getting injured, I suppose). Except then I still would not have felt my cheeks flap in the wind, in that frenetic way that’s pretty funny to watch. It probably feels funny, too. I’d like a picture of my cheeks doing that.
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