It was a “normal” flight
as if any flight could be normal,
intercity
Toronto to Boston
I’d flown it
many, many times.
Twin prop engines
on both sides
and in 6 or 7 seconds
swoooooooosh
you’re aloft
all 20 tons
of metal, plastic, sweat and blood
humming along,
the lake lapping
lowly below.
Soon enough
we get our peanuts and
choice of juice or soda
and all around me
passengers begin their chirping,
”What just a bag of peanuts?”
”My drink isn’t cold.”
”Why don’t they provide coffee?”
”My god! That humming is giving me a headache.”
I set my seat back
and the kid in me smiles.
Reaching out with
my wonderous opposable thumb
for a few of those
miraculous peanuts from
some far off shore,
I think excitedly to myself,
”We’re flying!”
”We’re actually flying!”
You got to be happy with the minor miracles.
Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.
Pablo Picasso
The people we are tempted to call clods and boors are just those who seem to find nothing fascinating in being human; their humanity is incomplete, for it has never astonished them. There is also something incomplete about those who find nothing fascinating in being.
--Alan Watts
Out Of Air