Float Plane Quotes

Night flight to San Francisco; chase the moon across America. God, it’s been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet we’ll have reached the tropopause, the great belt of calm air, as close as I’ll ever get to the ozone. I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them and was repaired. Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so.

When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheads girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing to her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the golden highlights in the strawberry hair. it was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.

mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home.

If you won 600 million dollars in the lottery, would you go out the next day and break into cars to steal the change from the cup holders? That’s what sleeping around is like when you’ve already found a woman who will pledge her life and her entire being to you for the remainder of her existence. You tell me that you are in an “open marriage.” I will probably be lambasted for “judging” you for it, but, sorry Professor, an “open marriage” makes about as much sense as a plane without wings or a boat that doesn’t float. Marriages, by definition, are supposed to be closed. Actually, I’m getting rather tired of people like you trying to hijack the institution, strip it of its beauty and purpose, and convert it into some shallow little thing that suits your vices.

I ripped the pages out of the book. I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first was last. When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky. And if I'd had more pictures, he would've flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of. Dad would've left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plane would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston. He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor. He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop. Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked home backward as he read the New York Times from right to left. He would've spit coffee into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor. He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward. Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day. He would've walked backward to my room, whistling 'I Am the Walrus' backward. He would've gotten into bed with me. We would've looked at the stars on my ceiling, which would've pulled back their light from our eyes. I'd have said 'Nothing' backward. He'd have said 'Yeah, buddy?' backward. I'd have said 'Dad?' backward, which would have sounded the same as 'Dad' forward. He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from 'I love you' to 'Once upon a time.' We would have been safe.

the one who stole the small float plane at Yellowknife.

He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. THe lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone- flowing. The stone had the stillness of one last movement when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. THe stone glowed wet with sunrays. The lake below was only a thin steel ring that cut the rocks in half. The rocks went on into the depth, unchanged. They began and ended in the sky so that the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff. His body leaned back against the sky. It was a body of long straight lines and angles each curve broken into planes. He stood rigid his hands hanging at his sides, palms out. He felt his shoulder blades drawn tight together. The curve of his neck, and the weight of the blood in his hands. He felt the wind behind him in the hollow of his spine. The wind waved his hair against the sky. His hair was neither blonde nor red, but the exact color or ripe orange rind... He stepped to the edge, raised his arms, and dived down into the sky below.

All of these patients have experienced a floating out of their physical bodies, associated with a great sense of peace and wholeness. Most were aware of another person who helped them in their transition to another plane of existence.

Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to have nothing keeping you attached to the ground? When we were taking off, the plane was rolling along the runway on its wheels, right? You could feel every bump and every jolt. And it went faster and faster and then all of a sudden—nothing.” Kath snapped her fingers, the excitement of the memory suffusing her face in a rosy glow. “The wheels lift off the ground, and you don’t feel it anymore. There are no more bumps. Everything is miraculously smooth. You feel like—well, like a bird! Nothing’s holding you down. You’re floating. You’re flying. And the ground just falls away below you, and you look out the window and everything becomes more and more distant, and none of it matters anymore. You’re up in the air.

They say you fly when you die. Basically, when you die, your spirit leaves your body. Actually, at first you can see all your life, like, reflected in a magic mirror. Then you start floating like a ghost. You can see anything happening around you, you can hear everything, but you can’t communicate with the world of the living. Then you see these lights, all these different lights, of all different colors. These lights are the doors that pull you into other planes of existence, but most people actually like this world so much that they don’t want to be taken away… So the whole thing turns into a bad trip and the only way out is to get reincarnated. It’s funny you know, DMT only lasts for six minutes but it really seems like eternity. It’s the same chemical that your brain receives when you die. It’s a little bit like, dying would be the ultimate trip.

The school was located on its own private island in the Pacific Northwest not far from the small community of Gold River, British Columbia, Canada. Through natural means it could only be reached by boat or float plane.  However, many students reached the school by means that were far from natural. There were portals in various parts of the world that brought students to Fairhaven the moment one stepped through them.

Leni looked around. The beauty of this place, the majesty of it, was overwhelming. A deep and abiding peace existed here; there were no human voices, no thumping footsteps, no laughter or engines running. The natural world spoke loudest here, the breathing of the tide across the rocks, the slap of water on the float plane's pontoons, the distant barking of sea lions lumped together on a rock, being circled by chattering gulls.

In a flash, the very instant he had risen clear, the pilot found a peace that passed his understanding. Not a ripple tilted the plane but, like a ship that has crossed the bar, it moved across a tranquil anchorage. In an unknown and secret corner of the sky it floated, as in a harbor of the Happy Isles. Below him still the storm was fashioning another world, thridded with squalls and cloudbursts and lightnings, but turning to the stars a face of crystal snow.

I watched as he ignored the world and focused on his hands. He creased a simple paper plane and dreamt of other lands. I watched him reach to throw that plane into the open sky. A passing breeze upheld its wings and made the paper fly. I watched a pleasant smile control his lips throughout the flight, until the little paper plane had floated out of sight. I hoped to see him chase the plane into the light of day. Instead, he creased another one and threw it too away.

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you. It stays on through October and, in rare years, on into November. Day after day the skies are a clear, hard blue, and the clouds that float across them, always west to east, are calm white ships with gray keels. The wind begins to blow by the day, and it is never still. It hurries you along as you walk the roads, crunching the leaves that have fallen in mad and variegated drifts. The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die – migrate or die. Even in your house, behind square walls, the wind beats against the wood and the glass and sends its fleshless pucker against the eaves and sooner or later you have to put down what you were doing and go out and see. And you can stand on your stoop or in your dooryard at mid-afternoon and watch the cloud shadows rush across Griffen’s pasture and up Schoolyard Hill, light and dark, light and dark, like the shutters of the gods being opened and closed. You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation. And if there are no cars or planes, and if no one’s Uncle John is out in the wood lot west of town banging away at a quail or pheasant; if the only sound is the slow beat of your own heart, you can hear another sound, and that is the sound of life winding down to its cyclic close, waiting for the first winter snow to perform last rites.

to test. Would weightlessness put them off their game? It did. The turtles moved “slowly and insecurely” and did not attack a piece of bait placed directly in front of them. Then again, the water in which they swam was repeatedly floating up out of the jar and forming an “ovoid cupola.” Who could eat? Von Beckh quickly moved on from turtles to Argentinean pilots. Under the section heading “Experiments with Human Subjects”—a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased—von Beckh reports on the efforts of the pilots to mark X’s inside small boxes during regular and weightless flight. During weightlessness, many of the letters strayed from the boxes, indicating that pilots might experience difficulties maneuvering their planes and doing crossword puzzles during air battles. The following year, von Beckh was recruited by the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead... ...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin. It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair. Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus... ...Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.

Mollya suddenly floated back from the wall with an expression of recognition and brought her hands together. She blurted something in Kiswahili, and Rydra laughed. “That’s right,” she said. To Ron’s and Calli’s bewilderment she translated: “They’ll move toward each other and their paths’ll intersect.” Calli’s eyes widened. “That’s right, at exactly a quarter of the way around our orbit, they should have flattened out to a circular plane.

When landing the J-3 Cub, the proper technique is for the tail wheel to touch the runway a millisecond before the main wheels touch. So before landing the pilot must raise the nose of the plane, which blocks his forward vision. He now must gauge his distance above the ground, and his location on the runway, by again using the side windows as he floats on down. After touching down he will again be blind to the front. After coming to a stop the back-and-forth taxiing begins again.

If you don’t know what became of someone, if you don’t attend a person’s funeral or hear word from a friend of a friend, these persons who float from our lives attain a kind of immortality, always hovering around the next corner. By closing your eyes, you can attach to them any set of attributes: the various chairs he reclines in, the soda she might sip from, the dreams they have of you they can’t remember in the morning. This brings me to life’s great paradox: for someone to truly be a part of you – to live in your thoughts, roaming your memory and vision, occupying planes of hope, nostalgia, and speculation in your mind – he or she must be wholly inaccessible to you. Twin

We rested, people and octopus regarding one another for several more minutes. And then, to my surprise, she floated up again to us. As she rose, we scanned the bottom of the barrel and saw that she had dropped the squid Wilson had fed her. We wished she had eaten, but we learned something new: Hunger was not the reason she had surfaced earlier, and it wasn't what brought her now. The reason she surfaced was abundantly clear. She had not interacted with us, or tasted our skin, or seen us above her tank for ten full months. She was sick and weak. In less than four weeks, on a Saturday morning in May, Bill would find her, plane, thin, and still, dead at the bottom of her barrel. Yet, despite everything, we knew in that moment that Octavia had not only remembered us and recognized us; she had wanted to touch us again.

Part of my interest was scientific, zoological. I’d never seen a creature with so many freckles before. A Big Bang had occurred, originating at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies of freckles hurtling and drifting to every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe. There were clusters of freckles on her forearms and wrists, an entire Milky Way spreading across her forehead, even a few sputtering quasars flung into the wormholes of her ears. Since we’re in English class, let me quote a poem. Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty,” which begins, “Glory be to God for dappled things.” When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheaded girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing in her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the gold highlights in the strawberry hair. It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.

Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me. "Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically. The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend? "Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together." "That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds. Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight. We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle. "At least they're practical," he says. "What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall." "At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?" "I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?" "Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!" We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase. There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears. After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there. He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here. I'm home.

But wait, stop, it’s not supposed to end this way! You’re the fantasy, you’re what I’m leaving behind. I can’t pack you up and take you with me.” “That was the most self-centered thing I’ve ever heard you say.” Jane blinked. “It was?” “Miss Hayes, have you stopped to consider that you might have this all backward? That in fact you are my fantasy?” The jet engines began to whir, the pressure of the cabin stuck invisible fingers into her ears. Henry gripped his armrest and stared ahead as though trying to steady the machine by force of will. Jane laughed at him and settled into her seat. It was a long flight. There would be time to get more answers, and she thought she could wait. Then in that moment when the plane rushed forward as though for its life, and gravity pushed down, and the plane lifted up, and Jane was breathless inside those two forces, she needed to know now. “Henry, tell me which parts were true.” “All of it. Especially this part where I’m going to die…” His knuckles were literally turning white as he held tighter to the armrests, his eyes staring straight ahead. The light gushing through the window was just right, afternoon coming at them with the perfect slant, the sun grazing the horizon of her window, yellow light spilling in. She saw Henry clearly, noticed a chicken pox scar on his forehead, read in the turn down of his upper lip how he must have looked as a pouty little boy and in the faint lines tracing away from the corners of his eyes the old man he’d one day become. Her imagination expanded. She had seen her life like an intricate puzzle, all the boyfriends like dominoes, knocking the next one and the next, an endless succession of falling down. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. She’d been thinking so much about endings, she’d forgotten to allow for the possibility of a last one, one that might stay standing. Jane pried his right hand off the armrest, placed it on the back of her neck and held it there. She lifted the armrest so nothing was between them and held his face with her other hand. It was a fine face, a jaw that fit in her palm. She could feel the whiskers growing back that he’d shaved that morning. He was looking at her again, though his expression couldn’t shake off the terror, which made Jane laugh. “How can you be so cavalier?” he asked. “Tens of thousands of pounds expected to just float in the air?” She kissed him, and he tasted so yummy, not like food or mouthwash or chapstick, but like a man. He moaned once in surrender, his muscles relaxing. “I knew I really liked you,” he said against her lips. His fingers pulled her closer, his other hand reached for her waist. His kisses became hungry, and she guessed that he hadn’t been kissed, not for real, for a long time. Neither had she, as a matter of fact. Maybe this was the very first time. There was little similarity to the empty, lusty making out she’d played at with Martin. Kissing Henry was more than just plain fun. Later, when they would spend straight hours conversing in the dark, Jane would realize that Henry kissed the way he talked--his entire attention taut, focused, intensely hers. His touch was a conversation, telling her again and again that only she in the whole world really mattered. His lips only drifted from hers to touch her face, her hands, her neck. And when he spoke, he called her Jane. Her stomach dropped as they fled higher into the sky, and they kissed recklessly for hundreds of miles, until Henry was no longer afraid of flying.

Growing up I was afraid of heights; if I looked down I got instantly queasy. So what did I decide to do a few years ago? Go skydiving with my sisters. I stood on the ground, waiting for my turn, watching them jump out of a small plane strapped to some dude’s back. All I could see were these tiny blond dots floating in the air. Then one of the instructors (thankfully he was on his own and not tied to a Hough!) lost control of his chute. It got twisted and he began to spiral toward the ground. Everyone watching below gasped; he was plunging to his death. At the very last second, he pulled his auxiliary chute and glided down to safety. After landing, he walked right over to me. “Phew, that was a close one. Okay, Derek, you’re up next. You’re comin’ with me.” I felt my stomach leap into my throat. Are you serious? You’re a dead man walking and you want me to go up with you? Then reason kicked in: What was the likelihood lightning would strike twice and his chute would fail again? And if it did, clearly the guy knew how to get out of trouble. “Um, okay…I guess.” I read the disclaimer and signed it. In a nutshell, it said, “If you die, we’re not responsible.” Thanks a lot.

Leaning back in the couch, she let her mind relax. Think, Heather. Think. She visualized a grid containing the origin of a coordinate system. A perpendicular set of lines labeled “x axis” and “y axis” appeared to float before her. She drew a single point located right three ticks and up four ticks from the origin on the grid, then followed up with another point, connecting the two with a line. It was there, floating perfectly in the air before her. Right, she thought. She added another dimension to the grid to form a cube, and into this cube she drew spheres, ellipsoids, cubes, and pyramids. It was easy. The equations came faster and faster, as if she had fumbled around and found a switch in the dark. A part of her mind turned on, big time. Adding a fourth dimension was easy. She took her three-dimensional grid cube, shrank it to the size of a pinhead, then formed a line of these cubes. Five dimensions formed from a plane of the 3D grid cubes. Six: a cube made of cubes. Seven dimensions: a line made of the new cube of cubes. On and on the mental sequence spun from her mind. Easy. Oh so easy. She no longer had to think about the equations that represented the shapes. Merely visualizing the shape brought the corresponding equations to her mind. She didn’t have to solve them; she just knew them. It was beautiful beyond her wildest imaginings.

Ночной перелет в Сан-Франциско. Погоня за луной через всю Америку. Господи, уже сто лет не летала на самолетах. Поднявшись на 35 тысяч футов, мы достигли тропопаузы, огромного пояса безветрия. Ближе к озоновому слою я еще никогда не была. Вот бы оказаться там, вот бы самолет поднялся выше тропопаузы и достиг внешнего слоя - озона изношенного, рваного, продырявленного, как кусок сыра, и от того страшного. Но я бы видела больше остальных, благодаря своей способности замечать такие вещи. Я бы видела души, поднимающиеся с поверхности земли. Души людей, которые спаслись от голода, войн, чумы. Они взлетают как прыгуны с трамплина, только наоборот, с широко раскинутыми руками, кружась вокруг своей оси. И достигнув высшей точки, они берут друг друга за руки, формируя огромную необъятную сеть душ. Именно души состоят из трех атомных молекул кислорода, которые и латают износившийся озоновый слой . Ничто не пропадает навсегда. Даже в нашем мире есть пускай и мучительный, но все же прогресс. Он оставляет все былое позади, а мечтания - впереди. По крайней мере, я в это верю. "Ангелы в Америке" Night flight to San Francisco; chase the moon across America. God, it’s been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet we’ll have reached the tropopause, the great belt of calm air, as close as I’ll ever get to the ozone. I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them and was repaired. Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so.

Alchemy is the name of this temple of images. Here a towering wall of video flashes glamorous vamps and alien androgynes over the heads of the crowd; the black cupid’s bow of Louise Brooks’ lips, the arch of David Bowie’s eyebrow, the Art Deco planes of Fritz Lang’s subversive female android. The demigods of the modern world, as glimpsed through shattered glass. She comes because she wants to believe in magic. Not the bunny-out-of-a-hat kind; the Alistair Crowley kind. This is a ritual.

This no-land was exactly the place in which my self was pushed and started to float without points of reference, and at the same time to resist the forced choice of only one identity and the erosion of my plural cultural belonging. More then ever before, certainly more than at any other time of my geographical and cultural dislocation due to the experience of migration, I was convinced of the necessity to reinforce my pertinence not to the single reality, but to a multiplicity of spaces. As never before, I kept remembering irrationally the shape of my country still entire and unbroken, without the scars of the new borders drawn on a mainly historically incorrect ‘ethnic basis’. My imagined country was visible only from the window of a plane flying over the Balkans, as only from the air are the new states’ borders and walls of ethnic separation invisible. In my stubborn conviction I was keeping all the scattered pieces together as a mental map of my non-existent homeland.

How do you do? I’m Henry.” So he was Henry Jenkins. “I’m still Jane,” she said. Or, squeaked, rather. He was trying to fasten his seat belt and his look of confusion was so adorable, she wanted to reach over and help, but that wouldn’t be in keeping with the…wait, they were on a plane. There were no more Rules. There was no more game. She felt her hopes rise so that she thought she’d float away before the plane took off, so she pushed her feet flat against the floor. She reminded herself that she was the predator now. Tallyho. “This is a bit far to go, even for Mrs. Wattlesbrook.” “She didn’t send me,” said Nobley-Henry. “Not before, not now. I sent myself, or rather I came because I…I had to try it. Look, I know this is crazy, but the ticket was nonrefundable. Could I at least accompany you home?” “This is hardly a stroll through the park.” “I’m tired of parks.” She noticed that his tone was more casual now. He lost the stilted Regency air, his words relaxed enough to allow contractions--but besides that, so far Henry didn’t seem much different from Mr. Nobley. He leaned back, as if trying to calm down. “It was a good gig, but the pay wasn’t astronomical, so you can imagine my relief to find you weren’t flying first class. Though I’d prefer a cargo ship, frankly. I hate planes.” “Mr. Nob--uh, Henry, it’s not too late to get off the plane. I’m not writing an article for the magazine.” “What magazine?” “Oh. And I’m not rich.” “I know. Mrs. Wattlesbrook outlines every guest’s financials along with their profiles.” “Why would you come after me if you knew I wasn’t…” “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re irresistible.” “I am not.” “I’m not happy about it. You really are the most irritating person I’ve ever met. I’d managed to avoid any women of any temptation whatsoever for four years--a very easy task in Pembrook Park. Things were going splendidly, I was right on track to die alone and unnoticed. And then…” “You don’t know me! You know Miss Erstwhile, but--” “Come now, ever since I witnessed your abominable performance in the theatrical, it’s been clear that you can’t act to save your life. All three weeks, that was you.” He smiled. “And I wanted to keep knowing you. Well, I didn’t at first. I wanted you to go away and leave me in peace. I’ve made a career out of avoiding any possibility of a real relationship. And then to find you in that circus…it didn’t make sense. But what ever does?” “Nothing,” said Jane with conviction. “Nothing makes sense.

Back in August 1960 an American pilot called Joe Kittinger climbed into the open gondola beneath a balloon called Excelsior III and floated up to 102,800 feet. At this point, 20 miles above the Earth in what is technically space, he jumped. Moments later he became the first man to go through the sound barrier without the benefit of a plane. It was, and still is, the highest parachute jump ever, and it proved you can ‘abandon ship’ even when you’re in space.

is July 2009. We step off our respective planes and lug our gear into the sweltering Vegas sun. Our taxis creep through downtown tourist traffic, swing around the airport, and unceremoniously drop us off in a giant, industrial-looking parking lot. The Las Vegas Sports Center sulks unimpressively in the heat, but under the sounds of arriving planes, there’s also a low hum and periodic whistles. Inside, the air is cooler and smells vaguely of . . . what is that smell? Sweat? Feet? Happiness? And when our eyes adjust to the light, we see skaters from every corner of the world—their helmets whiz by in every direction looking as if they are floating on air. On their feet are skates—black skates, white skates, blue skates, camouflage skates—propelled by a rainbow of wheels. On the sport floor, coaches with names like Carmen Getsome and Miss Fortune are drilling a centipede line of skaters in the fine art of knocking each other’s asses to the ground. Refs and skaters gear up for the mixed league, multination, battle du jour: Team Australia vs. Team Canada. Someone hobbles by with an ice pack strapped to her knee, still smiling. We smile too. Across town, nearly one thousand other skaters throng the casino and head to seminars in the meeting halls of the Imperial Palace Hotel, with nothing but roller derby on their minds. This is the fifth annual derby convention known as RollerCon.

Facing It" My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

A pair of 4-megaton hydrogen bombs, each more than 250 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, broke off a damaged B-52 over North Carolina. One of the bombs disintegrated upon impact, but the other floated down beneath its parachute and armed itself. It was later found in a field outside Goldsboro, North Carolina, with three of its four safety mechanisms tripped or rendered ineffective by the plane’s breakup. Had the fourth switch flipped, a vast section of eastern North Carolina would have been destroyed, and nuclear fallout might have descended on Washington, DC, and New York City.

The castle loomed over head. It was dark, built on top of a large hill, the clouds meeting up to nearly hide it in a foggy mist, swirling around it. Machined planes flew around it as to detect whether or not someone was climbing the walls. A dragon stood to the side of it, guarding the main stairs to the top. Around it was a river of blood floating with skeleton heads. The river went into a dark, pitch black tunnel where you could hear the sound of water dripping overhead. I could feel a pair of animal eyes watching me. This was terrifying, but if it was for Peter, I would have to continue

M. and I have plagued each other with our differences for more than forty years. But it is also a tonic. M. will hardly look at a bush. She wants a speedboat; I want to sit down on the sand and look around and get dreamy; I want to see what spirits are peeking out of the faces of the roses. Years ago M. took flying lessons. In the afternoons I got to stand at the edge of the harbor and watch her stall the small plane over the water. That means you cut the engine and let the plane drop, nose first, down. Then you start the engine again, while the plane is dropping, and you level it, hopefully, and swoop away. Week after week M. came home looking the way I feel when I've seen wild swans. It was terrifying, and wonderful. Along with the differences that abide in each of us, there is also in each of us the maverick, the darling stubborn one who won't listen, who insists, who chooses preference or the spirited guess over yardsticks or even history. I suspect this maverick is somewhat what the soul is, or at least that the soul lives close by and companionably with its agitating and inquiring force. And of course all of it, the differences and the maverick uprisings, are part of the richness of life. If you are too much like myself, what shall I learn of you, or you of me? I bring home sassafras leaves and M. looks and admires. She tells me how it feels to float in the air above the town and the harbor, and my world is sweetened by her description of those blue miles. The touch of our separate excitements is another of the gifts of our life together.

Airmen would later speak of sharks arriving almost the moment that their planes struck the water. In 1943, navy lieutenant Art Reading, Louie’s USC track teammate, was knocked unconscious as he ditched his two-man plane. As the plane sank, Reading’s navigator, Everett Almond, pulled Reading out, inflated their Mae Wests, and lashed himself to Reading. As Reading woke, Almond began towing him toward the nearest island, twenty miles away. Sharks soon began circling. One swept in, bit down on Almond’s leg, and dove, dragging both men deep underwater. Then something gave way and the men rose to the surface in a pool of blood. Almond’s leg had apparently been torn off. He gave his Mae West to Reading, then sank away. For the next eighteen hours, Reading floated alone, kicking at the sharks and hacking at them with his binoculars. By the time a search boat found him, his legs were slashed and his jaw broken by the fin of a shark, but thanks to Almond, he was alive. Almond, who had died at twenty-one, was nominated for a posthumous medal for bravery.

The fervour accompanying these events may be deceptive. If it expresses nothing more than the zeal with which the countries of the East are casting aside the bonds of ideology, or if it is a mimetic fervour - a tribute, as it were, to those liberal countries where all liberty has already been traded in for a technically easy life - then we shall have found out definitively what freedom is worth, and that it is probably never to be discovered a second time. History offers no second helpings. On the other hand, it could be that the present thaw in the East may be as disastrous in the long term as the excess of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere, that it may bring about a political greenhouse effect, and so overheat human relations on the planet that the melting of the Communist ice-sheet will cause Western seaboards to be submerged. Odd that we should be in such absolute fear of the melting of the polar ice, and look upon it as a climatic catastrophe, while we aspire with every democratic bone in our bodies to the occurrence of just such an event on the political plane. If in the old days the USSR had released its gold reserves onto the world market, that market would have been completely destabilized. Today, by putting back into circulation their vast accumulated store of freedom, the Eastern countries could quite easily destabilize that very fragile balance of Western values which strives to ensure that freedom no longer emerges as action but only as a virtual and consensual form of interaction; no longer as a drama but merely as the universal psychodrama of liberalism. A sudden infusion of freedom as a real currency, as violent and active transcendence, as Idea, would be in every way catastrophic for our present air-conditioned redistribution of values. Yet this is precisely what we are asking of the East: freedom, the image of freedom, in exchange for the material signs of freedom. This is an absolutely diabolical contract, by virtue of which one signatory is in danger of losing their soul, and the other of losing their creature comforts. But perhaps - who knows? - this may, after all, be the best thing for both sides. Those societies that were formerly masked - Communist societies - have been unmasked. What is their face like? As for us, we dropped the mask long ago and have for a long time been without either mask or face. We are also without memory. We have reached the point of searching the water for signs of a memory that has left no traces, hoping against hope that something might remain when even the water's molecular memory has faded away. So it goes for our freedom: we would be hard put to it to produce a single sign of it, and we have been reduced to postulating its infinitesimal, intangible, undetectable existence in a (programmatic, operational) environment so highly dilute that in truth only a spectre of freedom floats there still, in a memory every bit as evanescent as water's.

4) On life: ‘Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don't let yourself believe it will happen to you.

I was able to demonstrate this for myself in the Vomit Comet armed with a model of Einstein. When we were weightless, I let a little plastic Albert float beside my head. One way of understanding why we floated next to each other is to simply state that we were both weightless, so we floated, but think about what this looks like from outside the plane. To someone on the ground looking up at us, the plane, myself and plastic Albert are all falling towards the ground under the action of Earth’s gravity, and obviously we are falling at the same rate. If I fell faster than Einstein, he wouldn’t float next to my head. Indeed, if the much more massive plane fell faster than both plastic Albert and myself, we’d both bump into the ceiling! The fact that we all floated around together is a beautiful demonstration of the fact that all objects, no matter what their mass, fall at the same rate in a gravitational field.

Dreams leave our minds at night, From there they go about floating carelessly through the ethereal planes until they freeze into a crystal formation. Then they fall slowly back to earth, that's why no two snowflakes are the same.

Gasping desperately, she clenched her hands on his shoulders, fingers sinking deep. His lips firmed, he suckled gently- Patience felt the earth quake. The heat of his mouth shocked her- the wet sweep of his tongue scalded her. She gave a strangled cry. That sound, keenly feminine, acutely evocative, caught and focused Vane's attention. Focused every hunter's instinct. Desire heightened, need escalated. His demons turned frenzied- her siren's song lured them on. Urged him on. Compulsion swelled- tense, turbulent, powerful. Desire seethed hotly. He drew a ragged breath- And remembered- all he'd nearly forgotten, all her wild responses had driven from his mind. This was one seduction he had to, need to, manage perfectly- this time, there was meaning beyond the act. Seducing Patience Debbington was too important to rush- conquering her senses, her body, was only the first step. He didn't want her just once- he wanted her for a lifetime. Dragging in a shuddering breath, Vane caught hold of his reins and hauled his impulses up short. Something in him wailed with frustration. He shut his mind to the relentless pounding of his arousal. And set himself to soothe hers. He knew how. There were planes of warm desire on which women could float, neither driven, nor quiescent, but simply buoyed on a sea of pleasure. With hands and lips, mouth and tongue, he soothed her fever flesh, took the sting from her aches, the edge from her passion, and eased her into that pleasured sea. Patience was beyond understanding- all she knew was the peace, the calm, the profound pleasure that welled and washed through her. Content, she flowed with the tide, letting her senses stretch. The whirling that had disoriented her slowed; her mind steadied. Full consciousness, when it came, was no shock; the continuing touch of Vane's hands, the artful caress of his lips, his tongue, were familiar- no threat.

He saw how the virginal circles of Eudoxus had led to a more coherent astronomy, how the conic sections of Apollonius had prefigured the spirit of universal gravitation. The world had its uses, yes; ideas could be rotated to expedient planes. It wasn’t his method to test the disposition of the physical universe but this didn’t “mean he reacted skeptically to those who drove hooks into nature. He considered the case of Archimedes, son of astronomer, floating body, lever adept, nude runner, catapulter, weigher of parabolas, tactician of solar power, sketcher of equations in sand and with fingernail on own body anointed in after-bath olive oil, killed by dreamless Romans.

Poem of the Phalanx (Perception as Visual Personal Art) Memories, shard, intersect and twitch, Create images anew as they inter and switch. Amid blackness eternal, the ground breaks the day And the shape which cuts the ground— Phalanx in time—reapers way. 5 Thoughts as geometric planes galley the night mind, Images thoughted, float raging ever by. Comets to the mind–bolt outta the black they mortise and fly– Disappear they do–into their midnighted cry. (Yea, evil is wrought from the want of the want of Love’s lost ought. 10 Goodness wrights of the abundance of Love in blood ’twas bought. —Live the moment within God’s Mind too, For once missed she will pass by you. But He alone shall remember thy days, For in His Heart He will hold thy ways. 15 (. . . Surmount untold; reproaching its summits hidden self face, Can’t make for a daydrop of lost opportunity and regret’s disgrace. Yes, eternities of regrets can never create The day’s bested instance that was forsaked). Fleets of illusion harbor and snag, 20 Bristled spears impale with emotive jags. Willish anvil beaten and enhammored in bers red embs, Guards the hellgates unhinged in forged remembered contems. (Aye, the anvil of will beaten and wrought Sentinels the gate ripped in forged oughts). 25 Phalanx of dreams penetrate they deep, Guard thy soul they do lest the enemy storms thy keep. They rancor and barb thyself under penalty of arms, And kill the dragons that would do thee most harm. Yea, in the Belly of the Beast thy wounds do feel pierced, 30 For Love Eternal must cut darkness as the Spirit is so fierce. The hour of shadows exalt—! ’Gainst the Christ in His plain splin‴try array– Yet curshed in a moment on that ill-fated day. The way of caution doth forbear to tread beyond the mire In those bleak hours when the ‘Powers that Be’ seek to solace thee in thy soulish desires. 35 Mercy travails deep upon the Fires of His Winds To heal by His cut; His own everlasting His– Is to die to Love Eternal with He, –as He now does and is . . . Hell for others, heaven for some, His work ’tis finished all given and in all thrust done. 40 As Love rejoices His shed blood run red for thee—, —Things Divined and precioius for you and for me forever in He (The spear that killed Him gave Him life –the enemy’s travesty). Phalanx comes, phalanx goes, Wither are thou—dost thousest know? 45 Are ye pierced through and through out within? Seek his face so life may begin Sharp keys to hell the warriors doth say, Yet unlock they the gate to heaven’s pathway. End

In addition, the float plane aviators got fewer hours and were not the same quality as carrier aviators.

The trip had been a dream for almost two decades, relegated to the back of the line behind an ever-growing list of responsibilities. Each passing moment brought a new list of reasons for putting it off. One day, Julie realized that if she didn’t do it now, she would never do it. The rationalizations, legitimate or not, would just continue to add up and make it harder to convince herself that escape was possible. One year of preparation and one 30-day trial run with her husband later, they set sail on the trip of a lifetime. Julie realized almost as soon as the anchor lifted that, far from being a reason not to travel and seek adventure, children are perhaps the best reason of all to do both. Pre-trip, her three little boys had fought like banshees at the drop of a hat. In the process of learning to coexist in a floating bedroom, they learned patience, as much for themselves as for the sanity of their parents. Pre-trip, books were about as appealing as eating sand. Given the alternative of staring at a wall on the open sea, all three learned to love books. Pulling them out of school for one academic year and exposing them to new environments had proven to be the best investment in their education to date. Now sitting in the plane, Julie looked out at the clouds as the wing cut past them, already thinking of their next plans: to find a place in the mountains and ski all year long, using income from a sail-rigging workshop to fund the slopes and more travel. Now that she had done it once, she had the itch.

It wasn’t easy at first. He had expected difficulties with his parents and he wasn’t mistaken. His mother had a terrible fear of the bush—which had developed in the weeks when he had disappeared and she had had to believe he was dead. They talked many nights before she relented. He was older now, more seasoned, and she knew that. He had done well the past summer, when he had returned with Derek. With Caleb’s help, his mother came around. “How will you find the Smallhorns?” she asked. “The pilot, the man who flew me out, will know where they are.” Brian had kept the pilot’s name. The man had a one-plane operation working out of International Falls, on the Minnesota-Canada border, and Brian called. “The Smallhorns? Yeah—they’re up in the Williams Lake area in a fish camp but I’m not due to go up there until fall. I’m booked solid all summer with fishing charters. I can’t take the time to run you up there.” “How about getting me close? I can make my own way in a canoe.” “Just a minute.” Brian heard papers shuffling as the pilot went through his records. “Yeah, here. I’m due to take a couple of guys fishing in ten days. We’re going to the Granite Lake area and with my fuel I can take you maybe another hundred miles. That’s still a hundred miles short of the Smallhorns’ camp but it’s all chain lakes up there and you can do it without any really bad portages. I’ll give you a good map. How heavy is your gear?” “Maybe two hundred pounds, plus me and a canoe. Can you haul a canoe?” “Sure. On the floats. We’re taking one canoe and I can fit yours on the other float. When are you figuring on coming out?” “I’m not … sure.” “I’m due to make a supply run to them in the fall before trapping

overloaded horses bent backwards by the chisel of the mason who once sculpted an eternal now on the brow of the wingless archangel, time-deformed cherubim and the false protests, overweight bowels fallen from the barracks of the pink house carved with grey rain unfallen, never creaking, never opening door, with the mouth wide, darkened and extinguished like a burning boat floating in a voiceless sea, bottle of rum down threadbare socks, singing from pavement to pavement, bright iridescent flame, "Oh, my Annie, my heart is sore!", slept chin on the curb of the last star, the lintel illuminated the forgotten light cast to a different plane, ah the wick of a celestial candle. The piling up of pigeons, tram lines, the pickpocket boys, the melancholy silver, an ode to Plotinus, the rattle of cattle, the goat in the woods, and the retreat night in the railroad houses, the ghosts of terraces, the wine shakes, the broken pencils, the drunk and wet rags, the eucalyptus and the sky. Impossible eyes, wide avenues, shirt sleeves, time receded, 'now close your eyes, this will not hurt a bit', the rose within the rose, dreaming pale under sheets such brilliance, highlighting unreality of a night that never comes. Toothless Cantineros stomp sad lullabies with sad old boots, turning from star to star, following the trail of the line, from dust, to dust, back to dust, out late, wrapped in a white blanket, top of the world, laughs upturned, belly rumbling by the butchers door, kissing the idol, tracing the balconies, long strings of flowers in the shape of a heart, love rolls and folds, from the Window to Window, afflicting seriousness from one too big and ever-charged soul, consolidating everything to nothing, of a song unsung, the sun soundlessly rising, reducing the majesty of heroic hearts and observing the sad night with watery eyes, everything present, abounding, horses frolic on the high hazy hills, a ships sails into the mist, a baby weeps for mother, windows open, lights behind curtains, the supple avenue swoons in the blissful banality, bells ringing for all yet to come forgotten, of bursting beauty bathing in every bright eternal now, counteract the charge, a last turn, what will it be, flowers by the gate, shoe less in the park, burn a hole in the missionary door, by the moonlit table, reading the decree of the Rose to the Resistance, holding the parchment, once a green tree, sticking out of the recital and the solitaire, unbuttoning her coat sitting for a portrait, uncorking a bottle, her eyes like lead, her loose blouse and petticoat, drying out briefs by the stone belfry and her hair in a photo long ago when, black as a night, a muddy river past the weeds, carrying the leaves, her coffee stained photo blowing down the street. Train by train, all goes slow, mist its the morning of lights, it is the day of the Bull, the fiesta of magic, the castanets never stop, the sound between the ringing of the bells, the long and muted silence of the distant sea, gypsy hands full of rosemary, every sweet, deep blue buckets for eyes, dawn comes, the Brahmanic splendour, sunlit gilt crown capped by clouds, brazen, illuminated, bright be dawn, golden avenues, its top to bottom, green to gold, but the sky and the plaza, blood red like the great bleeding out Bull, and if your quiet enough, you can hear the heart weeping.

Life is a beach & you are that much needed vacation I look forward to taking. Your eyes, the sky I float through on the plane. Your lips, the way the water splashes against me. Your heart, the volleyball I hope that bounces off my head and into my hands.

He wondered what on earth had made him suppose that academics would play straighter than the rest of the world—that they would be fair, that they would be sincerely devoted to learning, that they would float proudly above the physical plane instead of playing games to distract their pain monitors from the ravages of baldness, menopause, irritable bowel syndrome, impending deafness, having drunk too much for alcohol to work anymore, outgrown miniskirts, and erectile dysfunction …

Mark Cendrowski: We had to make Howard look like he was in zero gravity. I asked to put the cameras on a gyroscope so they floated and you had a constant feel of motion. Then, with a greenscreen we sent one of the other astronauts floating through the background. One problem was that we had the Russian astronaut (played by Pasha Lychnikoff) hanging upside down talking to Simon, who’s right side up. But with zero gravity you can’t have hair falling down, so we shot him right side up, on the floating chair and flipped the image on the greenscreen. It was a great puzzle to figure out, and once we did, it looked great. People thought we used the plane from Apollo 13 to film it. We were like, “Oh, we fooled ’em.

Guilty as charged. Insane I bought the thing. You know what they say: If it flies or floats, rent it.” That was, in fact, not the expression. Darley had heard it a million times: “If it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it.” Paying for a plane, a boat, or a wife was a waste of money. She appreciated this stranger’s sense of decorum.

Commander Fuqua’s Deck Department had one major task to complete, however, before it could relax. Having been at sea, Arizona needed to replenish its fuel tanks. In expectation of the upcoming voyage to Long Beach—some 2,500 miles—a full load of 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil was pumped aboard. Despite the trade winds blowing across Pearl Harbor that December morning, an oily smell lingered and lay heavy in the air. Elsewhere aboard the Arizona, storage tanks contained 180,000 gallons of aviation fuel for the three Vought Kingfisher scouting planes, and ammunition lockers brimmed with more than a million pounds of gunpowder. Crew members had long learned to take such explosive cargo as a matter of course, but each of the seven battleships moored along Battleship Row—and Pennsylvania momentarily on blocks in Dry Dock No. 1—carried the ingredients to readily become floating bombs.8

He is drow,” Zak answered before Jarlaxle, who was now floating back down. “As are you—you cannot levitate?” The surrounding aevendrow stared at him as if they had no idea what he was talking about. “Now, this is an interesting turn,” Jarlaxle said, setting down beside them. “So it was the Faerzress all along, the barrier to the lower planes, which gave us this inner magic.

I floated away into that omnipresent timelessness of baseball, where boys with a dream and long-expired Major Leaguers orbit forever on equal planes.

We are currently in an environmental crisis, as islands of floating garbage pile up in our garbage. Reclaim and recycle with Repurposed Cocks .com. Go carbon neutral using discarded dildos as neck rests on planes, foot rollers for arthritis, blackjacks for self defense, dog chews, or very short bungy cords. Repel rubber bullets. Uh, note to self, test this first. Use them as dog toys for fetching or stuff into cribs for baby bumpers that double as teethers- (You should wash them first.)

I feel like I should be able to float away from this. I should be able to drift off to some other plane because this one is too painful for me to exist in. Because no one should have to feel this way. I know other people must, but I think they can just forget it or something. It always sticks with me, though. It marks me up good.

Also – for there had been more than a few migrants aboard, yes, quite a quantity of wives who had been grilled by reasonable, doing-their-job officials about the length of and distinguishing moles upon their husbands’ genitalia, a sufficiency of children upon whose legitimacy the British Government had cast its ever-reasonable doubts – mingling with the remnants of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother-tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home.