From Above

Flying through the clouds, I stare and stare at the sea of white puffy puffs and wisps of air catching my eyes for minutes and minutes. 

Suggestion:  Don’t read the end of Farewell to Arms while you’re flying.  Not only is it tragic, but in my copy, it has an appendix of other endings Hemingway thought about trying, one of which is:

“That is all there is to the story.  Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you."

Our plane bumped over a touch of turbulence as I read those words.  Death isn't something any of us have overcome ourselves, yet it touches our lives, molding them so forcefully.  As I sit up on my seat in the sky - 30,000 feet above the land - I think how precarious it all is, how the plane is perhaps one of the strongest vehicles yet entirely fragile.  As I was driving to Trader Joe's yesterday, I watched a tall light that hovers over the road fall over - so gracefully and quietly.  Thankfully, there seemed to be no people or cars in it's path.  The snow piles are gigantic enough to block my eyes from where it actually fell.  In reality, we courageously traverse the precarious sky every single day. 

And yet we continue, we traverse on.  From a conquest over the sea, across lands - horses to planes, 

plus cars and trains, to the moon in a rocket ship, through the air in pixels - moments held in my own hands - in pictures.  There is a miracle of flight, of light and of course, life itself.  

The Book Thief gives Death a different voice, where Death introduces themselves and talks a bit about their trade - how they see the world in color which "merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment" and how "I can be amiable.  Agreeable.  Affable.  And that's only the A's.  Just don't ask me to be nice.  Nice has nothing to do with me."  They go on to talk about their love of distraction and vacation:

"Still, it's possible that you might be asking, why does he even need a vacation?  What does he need distraction from?  Which brings me to my next point.  It's the leftover humans.  The survivors.  They're the ones I can't stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail.  I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise.  They have punctured hearts.  They have beaten lungs."

Here's to all the survivors, courageously fly through this precarious world everyday.