I was grinding away on the elliptical this afternoon, listening to the Moth podcast on my i-pod, staring through the floor-to-ceiling window in an anaerobic stupor, out across the vacant field behind the Y. Blue-gray clouds hung over the flat central Florida plain. Beyond the field lay the municipal airport and the sky-diving school. First one, then two, then a swarm of brightly colored parachutes emerged silently from the low ceiling, midway between the top of my view and the horizon.
They fell in swelling uncountable clusters, each chute dressed in its own multi-hued pattern – as if a circus troop were invading the Dutch low country in ’44. Masses of vertical squiggles twisted and swayed from their horizontal vessels of air, as they descended soundlessly from the billowy vapor – an HD video of sperm invading a viscous cloud of salmon eggs ran in reverse just for my amusement.
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4 comments:
Sort of reminds me of that awful movie "Red Dawn". Hope those guys in the chutes weren't Russkies?
What is it about skydiving?
Tom Friedman said today that you think you are flying until you hit the ground. Is it just me, the whole concept deals with believing that you have control over your fate. I too am stuck on control. But I see it as a desire for harmony and balance with forces that cannot be controlled. Skiing to me is about the turn, not the run out. I can't see skydiving as anything other than riding the rush.
I love watching them and dream of doing it, but I think I'd freeze in the door.
I passed on the opportunity when I was in the army. They really tried to make the 82nd Airborne division sound sexy but I'd seen The Longest Day and knew what happened on the way down. No thanks. Haven't given it another thought since. The army cured me of this and camping.
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