in snow
Swift white lightning dreams of nightfalls and in the middle of it, I, falling, through an open expanse to the ground below, bringing destruction to all who fall within my sphere. In the midst of falling, my body attains the near zero weight of a mass in freefall. I am reminded of sliding down hills at winter, in the children’s playgrounds at Herbergstrasse, of dreams. Balls of light, just light, open in slow motion around me. Spilled sacks of laundry when the women wailed.
One man posed for us in the flickering light that was cinema; bereft of soulful musings, the bland man as junkie, the dour face of the Capital. It was Mr. Lee as the prankster Lord of the camouflage of free market tyranny and from his countenance, one could just decipher his utmost sorrow and joy of the repetition of our fate. In snow one wonders about Germany. The camera rolling, the flicker of light is controlled by this dream- this dream in anothers eye. It will shadow as catch can.
For in snow, we have a momentary pause of remembrance, when we look to the skies and think of childhood when we looked upward in vain for that understanding that would never quite come to us. In flickering, momentary images, we are drawn to the larger part of what we cannot truly ever understand. I thought that I saw a falling star and it was then that I joined the stars, it was then that I joined the new Luftwaffe. It, at first, was all training, exercises on the ground, physical conditioning, Leni Riefenstahl and blind acceptance. I grew to love the air around me, the more that I flew into the skies with the roar of 400 horsepower engines on both sides of me, they were my wings and my hopes, my barebacked horses that I jumped on daily. They were a part of my arms, my fists. With rage sometimes and with the challenge of the almighty heft that is power, I believed I could sail with power over, even over black noon sky.
When a man dies by firing squad, there must be a moment when in the second before the gun fire takes his life, a flicker of light is the preface to the eternity of darkness that he is anticipating. That brief moment is like the second before the choir begins, the moment before we understand the mark of Cain.
I am blinking and as the eye gathers its first sight in a defiant pool of saline, I am cognizant that again I have awoken in selfish concern over the Minister’s camera. Am I on parade or in the plane? Can I reach self realisation? I am awash in a flood of memory, of the here and now, of the clinking of steel parts against one another, rubbing and running over one another effortlessly, climbing over one another and pushing the tail end of the last action over its brother in a piggybacking of motion. The pistons push forward fuel and air to mix and run the turbines of air and lift over my wings. It is a necessary evil: the mix of man and machine to combine in the skies over Tunis or London or Moscow to propel myself and my crew to necessary destruction, so that we may bring about inaction.
Inaction brings about the dream of what I took for granted: home, hearth and family. I never dreamed of anything other than to look at the stars at night and teach my children of the constellations. They, the stars are so far away from us. I wanted to be able to look up to the stars and hear nothing other than the crickets, the smell of grass freshly cut in the Bavarian noir. Now, I have the sense pounding smell of burnt and scorched motor oil, commands from distant and scratchy wing commanders, NCOs like myself preparing young crews and flight squadrons for the inevitable. It is anything but silent.
I hear the engines pounding their signatures into the night air, heavy with salt, moisture, unburned fuel. Fuel to make things excel, so much wasted, unburnt, dreams of potential and sparkplugs. Give me a signal, give me a moment. Yes, there it is! As the rune passing before my weary eyes, I am famished and the heat of the fire in the cockpit fuels my memory. That blinking light is the rapid strobe of fire lighting the floor beneath me. The rune is my hunger to evacuate, to abort, to jettison. It is the symbol for door, my release. In the the swift pull the straps of my harness I know I’ll be a creature in flight. My hunger is the desire to live.
It is this that sucks me as I take my first good deep draft of the night air. I take it in and let it take me within itself into its maw. I am within it as it is within me. I am falling. I am to leave my duty as I fall into it. What is my duty? It is to swim into the darkness as I have so many nights afore, but this night, this night, as I see the city lights fast approaching, I will take them within me, not to merely snuff them out, but to take them within me and make them one with my heart, my devotion, my soul.
I can hear the roaring cascade above me. A hurumph like an old man clearing his throat comes through the clean blankness above me. My grandfather, always with a handkerchief to sanitise his cough. Now it is revealed to me. Flames, light the stars. A small scattering of pebbles upon the asphalt. I threw stones in the streets with my friends, casting lots, who shall enter the baker’s shop? I run, my feet in motion, feeling as though I go nowhere, bread beneath arm, hobnailed shoes on the streets, built for the snows, a tug underneath my arms. I am lifted. Upwards. Towards the embracing hot breath of ministerial recompense and admonishment. I am falling away from those heights that I was once lifted towards, falling into mine own love, hate, judgment. The lights are beneath me. I fall towards them.
One man posed for us in the flickering light that was cinema; bereft of soulful musings, the bland man as junkie, the dour face of the Capital. It was Mr. Lee as the prankster Lord of the camouflage of free market tyranny and from his countenance, one could just decipher his utmost sorrow and joy of the repetition of our fate. In snow one wonders about Germany. The camera rolling, the flicker of light is controlled by this dream- this dream in anothers eye. It will shadow as catch can.
For in snow, we have a momentary pause of remembrance, when we look to the skies and think of childhood when we looked upward in vain for that understanding that would never quite come to us. In flickering, momentary images, we are drawn to the larger part of what we cannot truly ever understand. I thought that I saw a falling star and it was then that I joined the stars, it was then that I joined the new Luftwaffe. It, at first, was all training, exercises on the ground, physical conditioning, Leni Riefenstahl and blind acceptance. I grew to love the air around me, the more that I flew into the skies with the roar of 400 horsepower engines on both sides of me, they were my wings and my hopes, my barebacked horses that I jumped on daily. They were a part of my arms, my fists. With rage sometimes and with the challenge of the almighty heft that is power, I believed I could sail with power over, even over black noon sky.
When a man dies by firing squad, there must be a moment when in the second before the gun fire takes his life, a flicker of light is the preface to the eternity of darkness that he is anticipating. That brief moment is like the second before the choir begins, the moment before we understand the mark of Cain.
I am blinking and as the eye gathers its first sight in a defiant pool of saline, I am cognizant that again I have awoken in selfish concern over the Minister’s camera. Am I on parade or in the plane? Can I reach self realisation? I am awash in a flood of memory, of the here and now, of the clinking of steel parts against one another, rubbing and running over one another effortlessly, climbing over one another and pushing the tail end of the last action over its brother in a piggybacking of motion. The pistons push forward fuel and air to mix and run the turbines of air and lift over my wings. It is a necessary evil: the mix of man and machine to combine in the skies over Tunis or London or Moscow to propel myself and my crew to necessary destruction, so that we may bring about inaction.
Inaction brings about the dream of what I took for granted: home, hearth and family. I never dreamed of anything other than to look at the stars at night and teach my children of the constellations. They, the stars are so far away from us. I wanted to be able to look up to the stars and hear nothing other than the crickets, the smell of grass freshly cut in the Bavarian noir. Now, I have the sense pounding smell of burnt and scorched motor oil, commands from distant and scratchy wing commanders, NCOs like myself preparing young crews and flight squadrons for the inevitable. It is anything but silent.
I hear the engines pounding their signatures into the night air, heavy with salt, moisture, unburned fuel. Fuel to make things excel, so much wasted, unburnt, dreams of potential and sparkplugs. Give me a signal, give me a moment. Yes, there it is! As the rune passing before my weary eyes, I am famished and the heat of the fire in the cockpit fuels my memory. That blinking light is the rapid strobe of fire lighting the floor beneath me. The rune is my hunger to evacuate, to abort, to jettison. It is the symbol for door, my release. In the the swift pull the straps of my harness I know I’ll be a creature in flight. My hunger is the desire to live.
It is this that sucks me as I take my first good deep draft of the night air. I take it in and let it take me within itself into its maw. I am within it as it is within me. I am falling. I am to leave my duty as I fall into it. What is my duty? It is to swim into the darkness as I have so many nights afore, but this night, this night, as I see the city lights fast approaching, I will take them within me, not to merely snuff them out, but to take them within me and make them one with my heart, my devotion, my soul.
I can hear the roaring cascade above me. A hurumph like an old man clearing his throat comes through the clean blankness above me. My grandfather, always with a handkerchief to sanitise his cough. Now it is revealed to me. Flames, light the stars. A small scattering of pebbles upon the asphalt. I threw stones in the streets with my friends, casting lots, who shall enter the baker’s shop? I run, my feet in motion, feeling as though I go nowhere, bread beneath arm, hobnailed shoes on the streets, built for the snows, a tug underneath my arms. I am lifted. Upwards. Towards the embracing hot breath of ministerial recompense and admonishment. I am falling away from those heights that I was once lifted towards, falling into mine own love, hate, judgment. The lights are beneath me. I fall towards them.
posted by BrenGun at 7:03 AM
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