Weird things happen to people who don’t experience fear in a
normal way. One of those things is that they develop a nearly constant ache for
some kind of adrenaline rush. When I was sixteen-seventeen, I was obsessed with
jumping off cliffs. I made my friends drive to outlandish locations far and
wide in upstate New York and dragged them on endless hikes miles into the
wilderness to feed my need for freefall. (My parents would not sign a consent
for skydiving or bungee jumping, so I had to improvise). Now, a million years
later, I am restless and desperate for that sensation again (and again and
again).
There is a moment, a split second really, that happens
between the safety of the ground and the plunge downward. Maybe other people
don’t feel it because they are too filled with fear. But in the blip, my mind
gives up, goes completely blank, my emotions are numbed beyond numb as I surrender
to fate. As soon as I register that I am falling, reality rushes in to kill
that peace, but an echo of it returns deep under the cold water where
everything is silent and slow.
As a writer there are moments when I experience this too.
There are rare and sublime moments where my ego is so obliterated by a
character, a scene, or an interaction that I can let everything else go. In
these moments my writing is more than good. I had one of those moments this
week and I want to share it here so badly, but then again I don’t. What I
really want is to pass it on to the other writers in and should-be-writers in
my life, especially Cathy and Jeremy. I want to take them to the edge of the
cliff and like Elena heal them of every vestige of fear and self-criticism. I want
to show them how to fall, ugly and ungraceful, but most of all uncaring,
through the air. I want to pull them down deep into the muck at the bottom of
the river where light cannot filter in. I want them to fly.
Postscript: This
post comes with a warning. There is a distinct downside to flight. Once you
take to the sky, walking and even running seems so ordinary, slow, and pedestrian.
The higher you go, the further you fall. Gravity is inevitable and unalterable.
