Looky looky here it me trying to be regular as my after work poo and post a little sumthin sumthin on this here website for the second week in a row. Ima tryin to prioritise the gettin words done stuff more, I got lot’s of books to write and time ain’t move backwards. If my brain melts out my ears I’m blaming your hungry and thirsty arses for it. Anyway without further french here it be:
Bungee Cord
Of course flying looked easier in movies, but it also looked worse. Especially coming just out of eighties special effects. And though I was barely five, I relished the challenge. Training with blue monsters in an abandoned quarry I’d never seen outside of my dreams. They taught me the skill over several nights, and I never mentioned it to my folks. How do you talk about that? To a failing marriage with overworked parents and probably one or two too many kids. I can’t remember specifically why I didn’t mention it, but part of me knew there were some things just for me, and like a lot of what I’ve seen or done in my 34 years, this was one.
Back to the quarry. Rust red Queensland dust. Rolling smooth walls, like deep sea waves in water not shallow enough to break. A sky as blue as a neon sign, fluffy white clouds in perfect cartoon clarity. And even back then I felt the clean air and smelled the fresh smell of dust. My dreams were always hyper-real. A thousand other lives I’ve lived, shared with no-one, my own to keep and shape myself with. Precious and vital. I wouldn’t have survived without them.
The monsters, random, refracted images of toys and cartoons and animals, taught me with joy. They welcomed me like toddlers bringing adults into their game. Gleeful and earnest. We ran at full pelt across the compacted earth of the quarry, the monsters whooping beside me as they leapt, showing me what to do. As they reached the arcs of their leaps, they’d be drawn up into the air, as if attached to an invisible bungee cord. Swinging skyward in erratic movements.
I jumped with them, and something in my core showed me what to do, a feeling like longing. I used all of my willpower and burgeoning imagination and pulled upwards, like grabbing a rope attached to the deep of my gut and wrenching it upwards. I flew and tumbled and ran again without stopping. The creatures pulled at my arms and shouted and I was in the air again. So high I was sure I would die if I dropped, the red earth now far below and I in the neon blue. The wind filled my ears like cotton wool and I felt blissfully alone. Like I was the whole world.
I never saw the monsters again after those dreams, but something strange and special had happened. In all my dreams from then on, I could fly. I knew the physicality of it, and it came easy. It was so real in my dreams it felt like it could bleed into real life. Like any moment I could wrench that rope up and take to the air. Like all the things that life tried to beat out of me were more real than the mask of the mundane.
And I’m not completely sure why I’m telling you this, now, to everyone. Maybe I’m just again baring my throat to the universe and saying, “try and take mine from me”, because you can’t. Because I can fly.
Skydekkerix 