A FLYER'S DREAM

Up with me! Up with me, into the sky!
- William Wordsworth

I woke. Who clouded over the
magic windows of my dream?
- Antonio Machado


I dream of flying.

When I was a kid, I was a huge flyer-dreamer. I spent many a moments in many a summers on our rooftop, by my lonesome, pretending to fly. My aspiration to fly was all-encompassing, all-sweeping. In my childhood, flying was my sovereign and a flyer was my philosopher-king.

It did not matter to me if wings were physically my own, as enormous feathered ligaments and bones protruding from my narrow back, or as enormous steel attached to a craft that I myself maneuvered to fly. As long as I was part of the skies, going up, going down, going up with the wind at my whim, the manner by which I flew did not matter.

But despite the dreams of my innocence, I lived with my reality and found contentment with my small arms in lieu of wings. At times, I fluttered them in slo-mo fashion, imitating a hawk; other times, I held them stiff and straight, gliding and wheee-wheeeeinngg to the image of a fighter plane. And everytime a real plane flew by, I stood straight at attention while screaming in delight, "You go, sir, you go", then followed it up with a snappy salute as an act of endearment, my sign of respect, a request for altitude, an innocuous prayer for safety. I beamed in pride while they entered into the realm of the clouds, and just as soon I would come back to my wheee-wheeeeing, soaring and paratrooping, high and mighty, (translate: the height of our house, the might of our roof).

I was a real flyer, too. A good one. Many times I flew in expertise this formidable kite called boca-boca, and discriminating as I was, I only picked the industrial-strength materials in building this kite: grade 2 paper, my mom's pool of thread para ganchillo, and cutout newspaper for tail. Really formidable. Myself and my kite were formidable partners in the sky, ingenious and indigenous, respectively, and those moments were my stepping stones to the promise of my dreams.

A couple of years ago, I tried to re-live that dream. My co-worker C introduced me to her hubby E, an interesting person with interesting features (dark skin, green eyes) when I voiced out my intention to learn how to fly. E was a flight instructor, and I thought he was a good match because he did not seem to have the cold quality of a commercial pilot. The couple became my good friends and everytime they went island-hopping, to deliver newspapers and whatnot, they asked me for company. One time E took me to a flight simulator to assess my pilot vision, in the figurative sense, and what transpired crashed me, in the literal sense. In five attempts, my plane did not go past the control tower and I went down. I probably did all types of crash-landings, belly, nose..., I half-expected the lights to go flashing like when you hit the jackpot in a casino.

"Angle of attack, angle of attack", E would scream, asking me to lift the nose to an angle for proper lift-off. "How?", I asked, rattled by the presence of all these instruments in front of me.

"But I wanted to enjoy the view from the window", I pleaded to E everytime I failed to pay attention to the stupid gadgets. "In flying", he told me in exasperation, "you did not even need to look out the window because all of these instruments in front of you will take care of the job. A cockpit did not even need a window."

"What?" I asked in amazement, "now where is the beauty of flying then?"

And so he taught me the basic rudiments of flying, the basic functions of the gadgets. Altimeters. Tachometers. Altitude indicators. Voltmeters. Loadmeters.

Their functions? I couldn't care less.

"Full throttle..." Yawn. "Hydraulic pressure..." Yawn. "Vertical speed..." Yawn some more. "Clear for take-off..." Clear my yawn.

Now, I still dream of flying. Did you say "Taxi into position"? Ow, c'mon.

I really meant: I dream of flying my kite.