This is from a manuscript "Measuring The Sky" of Pop's written in the fall of 2003. LS
Kites themselves are uncommonly
special, but a vehicle, and like all vehicles, for me, it is the kite journey
where kites lead the mind and the soul that make them so special.
Even the
simplest of kites on a short length of string have this ability to carry us
deeper into the cosmos.
A world-wide kite community has discovered this
feeling: The universality of the language of kites is similar to that of music;
distinctive in each culture, but sharing details in its roots, capable of bridging
otherwise impassible chasms of language and cultural differences.
These kite
strings do indeed connect us, bringing us together, stretching around the
globe, as one famous kite personality, Domina Jalbert, inventor of the
parafoil, described kites, the foundation of a “Brotherhood of the sky.”
This is not about kites specifically, and only incidentally
about a man’s pants falling off (though I recognize the gravity of a man’s
pants falling off whenever and wherever that might occur). But there!
We have
stumbled upon the falling pants problem, one and the same, the interloper in
the mansion of flight: Gravity! How do we escape, in a manner of speaking, if
only briefly, gravity? And why was it such a long drawn out process, finally
overcoming gravity, uncovering the secrets of flight?
One of Einstein’s useful aphorisms, “Everything is simple:
But not too simple,” comes into play here, not just for kites, but the
principles underlying everything, including things that fly.
Once it was
figured out for kites, an airplane was not far behind. And then it became
possible for humans to fly…not quite
as freely as birds diving and flitting between the interwoven limbs of trees in
the forest …but in their own way, flying very nearly anywhere one might imagine
needing to go.
These basic
necessities of human flight, however, the “simple” elements of flight, as we
are all well aware, were such a long time in revealing themselves, but once
they were revealed, very soon, making up for lost time…human kind was able to
walk on the surface of the moon.
Complicated, yet simple: The actual circumstances of flight’s
discovery: complicated yet, on reflection, perhaps it too is simple.
I would like to believe it is entirely reasonable to imagine
that the underlying principles of flight may have occurred in a manner not so
dissimilar from the story that follows: wedged between the common occurrences
of everyday life, in autumn when fall leaves live up to their name sake,
falling.
In this brief passage through the sky, the colorful fall leaves
becoming one with their moving shadows on the ground; piling up, all a jumble;
waiting for a family pet to acknowledge a question put it by its human
companion; a person approaching or passing middle-age, pausing pondering the
fall leaves; gaining a moment’s respite from the thoughts accompanying an
expanding waist line, the embarrassing thoughts—perhaps only plausible and
embarrassing in locals and times when pants were a common feature of
clothing—of a man’s pants falling off.
In short, it is a fact that we can’t be at all certain where
or when the revelations of flight signaled closure on one of the all-time great
mysteries, but moving forward, then—postulating the circumstances surrounding
the discovery of the common engine underlying the secrets of all flight, from
birds, to kites, to airplanes—to one fall day, a day following the day when a
man’s pants were in fact observed, stopping just short of falling off.
AMan’sPantsFallingOff
It was never easy for me, as an adult, to own up to the strange
malady I came to associate with the autumn season.
Everyone in the Hudson Valley except me it seemed, looked
forward to falling happily under autumn’s spell: Here and there among the
maple-covered hillsides of the Hudson Valley, a small dab of orange soon to
dazzle the eye with autumn’s Joseph Coat colors. People spill out of New York
City’s steel and glass canyons, leaving behind city sophistication, willing to
put up with countrified ways for the sake of enjoying the brilliant colors of
New York’s countryside.
I don’t for a moment dispute autumn beauty. Without a doubt,
it is spectacular. Having said this, I’m all the more perplexed to admit that
autumn invariably marked the beginning of a depression, a descent for me,
sending me “down in the dumps,” as such a malaise is too benignly portrayed.
While others sprung out of bed ready to enjoy the colder fall weather, I
preferred to sleep in, tucking myself further down under warm covers, the
bedroom blinds pulled tight against the autumn light.Down under the covers, I reviewed earlier autumns.They
hadn’t always been accompanied by this dull lethargy.
At the top of my list from childhood, my “ten, all-time
favorite things” was the time spent with neighbors and my mother and father and
later my brother, nine years younger, raking leaves into big piles, then
setting them on fire.
The tangy, acidic smell so peculiar to burning leaves was
a special part of the treat: wanting to keep the tears and coughing at bay, to
prolong the delicious olfactory fragrance. As the early evening light waned and
the temperature went down a few degrees, the warmth of the fires drew everyone
in close.
Tiny orange sparks rose from the piles, doing a crazy dance, climbing
helter-skelter, into the darkening sky. Running around, in an out of dense,
gray clouds of smoke, our rakes were poised to stop errant wisps of fire from
leaping our fire line.
We called out through the smoke at each other,
excitement in our voices, frightened by little fires that sped toward the
bushes planted at the house foundation. Small clouds of moisture appeared and
as suddenly disappeared in front of our faces.Our breaths sharing the same
cold, tangy air drew us closer together.
Actually, my love of fall leaf raking
and burning memory extended even further back in time: younger still, the rake
handle three times my height, I jumped and rolled in the fallen leaves heaped
into big piles at intervals across our lawn. As far back as I can remember, the
smell of burning leaves immediately turned this early home movie on in my
brain.
In the light of my earlier happiest memories, my later adult
fall maladies, the turn from joy to depression, caused me some consternation.
The problem seemed to emanate from the pit of my stomach...to be continued !
Lissa's note:
At some point the Dream of Flight Family will publish Measuring the Sky in its entirety ! Thought you all might enjoy reading just a bit of it this fall 2015 . Beautiful writing.
Till then,
Many Smiles !
