Imagining at Different Altitudes

The airplanes grow larger as they move away from the horizon—narrowly escaping the vanishing point where existence finds doubt in the eyes of a jaded, stranger on the ground below.

The silver winged pills fly in and out to their destinations of hereabouts, thereabouts, and eventual whereabouts unknown. Filled with neatly arranged bodies in lines of 2, 3, or 4 that pass time via in-flight cinema, gin and club soda, plastic meal viewed through plastic film, fold-out office spread out on a flimsy fold-out desk, sounds of the cringing colicy infant cry, the old man hacking cough sounding like he’s going to die, a waitress in the sky called a stewardess looking around with a profound air of despair because she’s always so close to heaven but finds it unfair to be the servant to faces of cement frozen in lament.

I am sitting on a bench in Flushing Meadows, watching the airplanes of La Guardia soar up and down and around the head of George Washington like fruit flies on discarded styrofoam take-out containers. His statue—hardly visited, hardly heard about, hardly noticed by anyone at all—carries rarely-read messages of brotherhood and global unity on a base of milky, pink, granite. The shadow, casted by the towering figure, reaches out towards me, his hat to his side, sword in sheath, almost welcoming. But I pull my feet back—intentionally keeping a small distance between the tips of my sneakers and the top of his shadow that moves closer and closer, trying to grab ahold of me.

From the birds-eye view of a 7-year-old boy breathing against the window of the airplane, Washington might resemble a speck of pepper crossing a river of spilt-pea soup in his tiny boat, fashioned from a pencil eraser. I might even look like another speck of pepper that jumped overboard—maybe Washington’s faithful, heroic aid.

The imagination is under constant attack by the ignorant, ill-willed, and burned-out. Dreaming tends to become frowned upon if it is not the same dream that everyone else has. And with time, one-by-one, individuals will fall victim like dominoes to the structure of a carefully planned and laid out society where everything moves in one direction like a river of split-pea soup where a speck of pepper clings to the side of the bowl, trying to avoid the big spoon. The desires, morals, and beliefs of some statuesque stranger from a distant world and time will wrap around the wrists and ankles of another time, binding one-to-another.

The captain’s voice comes over the intercom, “You are not free to move about this cabin.”

But on today’s flight, a 7-year-old boy does not hear the message because he is looking out the window, gazing across a river of split-pea soup; narrowly avoiding the vanishing point.

(Treatment: Ritalin)