LANDING THE HELICOPTER

LANDING THE HELICOPTER

I’m floating in space in a helicopter, somewhere between the sun and the earth.  About all I can about my home planet is that it’s a blip of light, like the illuminated tip of a fingernail. It seems, when I reach my hand toward it, as if I might be able to hold the whole earth between my thumb and index finger.  But, of course, it’s an illusion—I’m only squeezing stale cockpit air—a false sense of control, to think I could hold a planet in my hand.  Even the image of the earth entirely disappears between my finger pads.

It’s quiet here.  The rotors have no work to do because there is no gravity to resist.  No sound, other than the vents and my own breathing.  No smell other than the accustomed ionized air.  Little motion.  I am utterly alone.  Utterly trapped.  Once my supplies diminish, I will have no recourse but to expire. 

            Better descend toward earth, while I can. The cockpit fills with the sounds of chattering instruments and the thump-thumping rotors. A million miles away, I notice colors—the blue of oceans dividing the mottled green and brown lands, the white, paisley shaped patterns of clouds.  I have a lot more to say about the earth.  There’s North America on the upper left, South America to the lower right.

             I want to go home.  So I steer my chopper over the United States.  I’ve lost my view of South America and most of the Atlantic, but there are the two crazy zippers that are the Rockies and the Appalachians.  And the Great Lakes reach into the continent like a ragged umbrella or a monster hand.  And, hello, the states are not divided neatly into alternating red or blue splotches. 

            At 62 miles above the earth, I hit the Kármán Line—where the earth’s atmosphere hits outer space.  My craft is shaking, my instruments rattle, I feel as though I’m going to explode into smithereens.  But what safety do I have with dwindling supplies?  Better to disintegrate in an instant than to freeze, suffocate, and starve out in space. 

            I survive the re-entry.  I descend over the trickle that seems to be the Mississippi River.  As I veer south, I lose the monster hand to the north.  The waters widen.  I descend over Louisiana.  Zoom in on New Orleans.  And here are the streets, like the grids on a digital chip, the buildings rising like bristle, the sunlight glinting off glass.

            In time, I land—the whip of my chopper blades scatter a stray plastic bag, like jellyfish on a mission.  The gravity tugs hard on me—come on down. It will take the most fuel and concentration, now, not to land hard.  I’m still spinning my rotors.  I can hardly hear for the roar of thrusters.  I’m dizzy with anticipation and fear.  I have been out in space, too long.

            Then the thud.  Solid ground below me.  As the chopper blades whip to rest, my ears feel as if they are stuffed with cotton.  I have trouble focusing, so unused I am to stillness.  But I’m OK.  I can let go.  No chugging engine, no spinning wheels, no fear.  I push open the door, against hard suction.

            A gentle breeze, wafting with the sweet smell of—yes, gumbo.  There is life here.  Out of the cramped helicopter and zero gravity, it will take me some time to reorient myself.  But oh, how much to experience with my ears, eyes, nose, tongue, skin.  Although I can’t seem to hold the entire earth between two fingers, I am happy to hold what I can—a greasy potato chip, the slight moist of a warm palm held out to me.  All of my body—held and holding what is real.  Just look at this feast for the senses:

                 “Land the helicopter,” I tell myself and my student writers and readers.  There is a false sense of power in interpreting the world from the far distance of generalities and abstractions. “But if I don’t write about the whole play, cover every aspect, I won’t be able to get five pages out of it.” That’s like saying, “I have to write about the USA, France, and Kenya to fill up five pages.” Instead of writing a general paragraph saying things about Shakespeare that everyone knows, anyhow, I land my helicopter on the first word Horatio says in the Hamlet—“Friends”—and let that word lead you through how Horatio is a friend in the play. I’ll have only ten lines to write about love, in general, before realizing that it’s all clichés; and that I’m straining to find more words; and that I’m writing to get it over with. I write, instead, about feeding my ailing mother her favorite Kozy Shack chocolate pudding, how I choose a red plastic spoon because she’ll be able to see it and it will be easy in her mouth, and so on, until I wipe her lips—with what? I’ll have to specify.

            And, yes, I have to relinquish the sense of power that comes from the illusion of holding the world in my hands. And I have to take courage to confront my fear of  nothing to say, just as I had to weather the fear of exploding as I entered the Kármán Line in my helicopter. But rather than “spinning my wheels” in the la-la of blah-blah-blah empty, ungrounded talk, I choose the life-supporting particulars that sustain, nourish, and validate. All that coming home, being real, and belonging—the soft hemlock trees waving their tops to me from my window, the gurgle of my humidifier, the clicketying and the soft edges of these keys.

            How are you landing your helicopter?

© 2014 Susanna Rich