Walking the Winds at Dawn

(Falling Through the Clouds at Night)

© Justin Curtis

Each step is like a leap of faith, you can clearly see that there is nothing there physically but you have to convince yourself that somehow you'll manage to stay up. I'm sure that there's a lot of BS that could be read into that statement but that's not what interests me while I'm up there. When I'm walking I can't help but get caught up in the millions of lights glimmering on the horizon, like some vast ocean reflecting the starry sky above but glistening instead with the florescent hues of the neon city. I know its corny but sometimes, just sometimes it takes my breath away. Really it does. I have to stop in my tracks and wait for my heart to stop racing, which I really hate to do because that only gives me the chance to look down. That's when I get really unsure, with the icy wind whipping and howling at me, staring down at all the smoke stacks on soot stained rooftops. Can you believe it? I have the ability to walk miles above the world and I still get vertigo!

The first time I did it seems like some vague dream now. Of course maybe this is all some sort of dream. I was riding the train to school so early in the morning that I could just barely see little amber rays of sun bursting over the silhouette of the skyscrapers. My home is on the edge of the city so I have to wake up really early to catch a train that can get me to class on time. That means that I'm always half-asleep on the things, swaying on my feet with a limp hand wrapped around a ceiling rail, gazing at the concrete world whirling by on the other side of the glass window. Maybe I was dozing that morning, I don't know, but I thought I caught something just out of the corner of my eye. It was tiny and went by like a flash but I could swear that I saw it. A young girl, just above the telephone poles, walking along the thin air, like the cables were a garden path and the street lights were nothing but little lanterns. And she looked just like me.

Maybe it was a strange reflection bouncing out into the purple sky. Most likely I had simply nodded off for a moment and imagined the whole thing, but what I couldn't deny was the feeling that it stirred in me. It felt like some great wind would come at any second and sweep me off my feet, out into that twinkling dawn. I knew that the girl I had seen was real, that she really could walk across the sky, and, most importantly, I knew that I could do it too. I really can't explain it...I just knew. I was so certain that I pulled the signal for the train to stop a full fifteen minutes early and practically leapt off the station platform. All of it seems so silly now I suppose but that fluttering in my stomach, that electric tingling which ran the length of my arms to my fingertips, made me feel like I could do absolutely anything.

I don't remember what happened for a bit after that, it was kind of a mad panic. I didn't know where I was or where I was going, except that I was absolutely sure that it was up. Somehow I found myself in a dark alley way, the kind filled with old fish boxes and five years worth of foreign newspapers. I was staring at a brick wall. I didn't know what was going to happen but I was sure it was going to happen right there. I remember staring at the bricks, concentrating really hard, studying each crack, each fleck of mold, and each grain like I was trying to burst through them. Then I closed my eyes. That's when it happened. One moment I was staring at a brick wall and the next, I could see nothing but the soft rolling of autumn clouds. I was standing in space, I mean not outer space with the stars or anything, but up there in the morning sky with the swirling flocks of dawn.

It was incredible. Of course it was. There was nothing holding me up, but I wasn't flying. I was just standing there like I was perched on some invisible walkway that stretched as far as the eye couldn't see. Looking down I saw my long skirt flapping in the wind, revealing pale and boney legs which ended in tattered running shoes. Below them was a twenty story drop right into the heart of the city.

I would like to say that the first thing I did was to spread my arms in a triumphant v and dash through the thin clouds like an exuberant meteor burning through the heavens. I would like to say that, I really would. The fact is, I hate heights. The sad, sad reality being that the first thing I did on my first ascent into the morning sky was puke. Yep, thats what I did. I emptied the entire contents of my stomach right into the corner of a busy intersection. Now here's the really embarrassing part; I'm pretty sure most of it landed smack dab in the middle of an open stroller. Seriously. It was if the winds themselves tore the sick spray right from my lips and funneled them directly onto the poor tyke. Fortunately no one was looking when it happened. They must have thought that the kid had done it to himself. But they all looked around to see where the hysterical laughter was coming from (I couldn't help it, the wind must have carried it) except that none of them bothered to look up.

Hardly anyone ever notices me though. At school I mostly just sit at the back of the class and stare at the trees swaying in the breeze outside the window. I eat lunch by myself in the middle of the large sports field, which is usually abandoned, and watch the clouds drift by. After my classes I sit in a comfortable silence for over an hour as the train slowly carries me home. When I get there my parents are usually too busy or tired from work to speak to me much so I eat a quick meal and go upstairs to my room for the night. My favorite way of spending an evening is watching a fresh rain fall through the soft glow of the street lamp outside my window. Then I doze to the sounds the raindrops make as they pass through the treetops. Before I know it I'm half awake and riding an early morning train headed for my school all over again.

Then one day, there I was, walking in the sky. After the whole baby thing I decided it was best to try to move on some very shaky legs. I want to say it was horrible, walking like a newborn fawn trembling and sliding with every unsure step, but it really wasn't. I didn't know how I was staying up or if my next move would be my last, and yet there was a fluttering in my stomach that seemed to pump 10,000 volts of pure energy into each of my limbs. It may have just been the adrenaline but I felt like I could shoot lightning bolts from my fingertips.

That's when I tripped. For a few unspeakable seconds the whole world was spinning. The buildings rushed at me as all the spit was sucked from my mouth. The wind stung at my cheeks and that was it, I was sure that it was over. I clenched my eyes shut and hoped for a quick death.

When I opened them again I was back in the alleyway. I'm going to say that my shorts and the inside of my legs were completely dry and that I had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. That's what I'm saying here anyway. I must have laid there on the grimy cobblestones amongst old candy wrappers and fish guts for at least an hour. I'm not sure at which point I remembered how to breathe again. Much later, no one seemed to notice when I slipped back into the classroom with the rest of the students after the lunch break.

I never told anyone what I had done. I was too nervous. They probably wouldn't believe me anyway. Some might even laugh and point. Worse yet, they probably would just stare at me. You know what was worse? Trying to live my ‘normal' life like nothing had changed. Can you imagine having to sit through a geometry class when you could be up there running your hands through the cool mists of a nimbus only moments before it gave birth to a gentle evening shower? I mean, I was absolutely terrified of heights but I was still finding myself stumbling about in each passing twilight. Eventually my steps became firmer, my stomach grew steadier, and my thoughts grew more and more certain. I could stretch my arms out to either side of me, palms open, and march calmly forward into those wide open spaces. Luckily enough I still don't think anyone has seen me, which is kind of strange. Who would think that, in a city so full of people, no one bothers to look out their windows anymore? Then again if any one did see me, who would believe them?

After all this time I'm still not sure how it happens. I do it almost every day before I ride the trains to or from school. I associate those trains with it so much now, it almost feels like I'm flying just riding them. When I'm about to go out I'll look for an alley way or an abandoned shop that is dark and quiet. There I can close my eyes and stand for a moment in the silence. I picture myself floating above the world, as if all my worries, my fears, and my loneliness are cast off like ballast until I am soaring above them. I can see that girl walking above the wires and know that its actually me. Then my arms and legs start to tingle, all the tiny hairs on my arms and neck prick up like someone is waving a wand over them, and I just step forward. All it takes is just one step, it's as simple as that. Kind of like Alice going through the looking glass. When I open my eyes again, I'm there. Each time its someplace different. Once I was over the south bank watching all the grandmothers hanging their laundry between the windows of their tenement. Another time I appeared just above the green hills at the edge of the city and saw the wind rip through the long grass like waves in an ocean. One time I opened my eyes and almost walked right into the top story of the huge national bank downtown. I'm not sure if the cleaning lady saw me but if she did she must have had a heart attack.

I kind of like being a mystery. That is what this gift of mine really is, a total mystery. Every night I lay in my bed with endless questions spinning around the inside of my head. At first they are the obvious ones like, how do I do it, why do I do it, and who chose me to do it? Hours later I'm feverishly pondering if this is something I'm going to be able to do for the rest of my life or is it a passing phase like puberty. Then I start to get nauseous and pass out from the exhaustion. Now I'm starting to wonder if there are really any answers out there.

To be honest, I don't really care anymore. All I know is that when I am out there, among the surging winds and clouds that loom like great castles in the sky, I feel something flow through me that cannot be described in any words, something that cannot be tethered to any plain earth. When I'm out in the skies I feel like my heart is beating for the first time and that I can see that world with new eyes because everything, absolutely everything look so immaculately clear.

But those are the good days.

I had a maybe a month of innocent freedom before it happened for the first time. I call this thing a gift but it comes with a price, everything does. Just as I can never tell where I'm going to end up whenever I close my eyes, I never really know whether or not I am going to fall. That's the worst of it all, that's when you realize that its all one big gamble. Some days I'm reaching out to graze the tail feathers of a flock of geese preparing to migrate and some days I'm quietly walking through the electric charged mists of a billowing thunderstorm. And sometimes, just sometimes, I end up in that other place.

I don't like to even think about that place, its enough to make me want to stop going out all together. Its enough to make it so that I never want to do anything ever again. I can't...I can't describe it really. When I'm there, I'll open my eyes and suddenly I'm falling, just plummeting down a thousand miles an hour in a spiral of pure panic and terror. I suppose terror describes it pretty well actually. Its always nighttime when I'm there, regardless of the time of day when I first close my eyes. The air is so dark. There are no stars, there are no city lights, there is nothing but the emptiness like the sky after a full moon. There is just the panic, the panic and the doubt. In that moment everything is a lie. Every step and breath I ever took in those spaces was a mistake, every single charge I felt race through my heart was just an illusion to lead me to that drop. Every dream was a failure. I wondered why I ever thought I could actually do anything like this.

I reach out to grasp hold of something, frantically clawing at the void and touching nothing. Then I realize it. Every cell and molecule of my being tells me that I'm falling, but I'm not. Not really, it just looks that way. That's how I know that I'm not in the sky anymore, not my sky anyway, but in that other place. I fall for it every time...okay that might be a poor choice of words. I'm not sure how I escaped back then. All I remember is that I woke up in some random alley way, just like I did after my first walk in the real sky. Eventually I learned that to get out of that place all I have to do is close my eyes and imagine myself on the ground. Then I have to repeat to myself that I don't want to be there anymore and that soon I will be safe. Can you say, “there's no place like home?” Sure enough, when I open my eyes I'm practically hugging the cement. But its not actually being in that other place that truly gets to me, that's hardly the worst of it. No, the worst is that feeling which stays with me afterwards, sometimes for days at a time, sometimes for weeks. I can only compare it to a sort of hopelessness, a lingering memory of that doubt I felt when I thought I was falling but it's almost physical, like a bruise. It feels like there is a gaping hole in my stomach, through which everything inside me is slowly being sucked out, and nothing I will ever do will be able to fill it. I just feel so tired, the exact opposite of how I feel when I'm in the sky. It almost feels like maybe...maybe its all just a dream.

The night, right after my fall, I cried myself to sleep, curled up in a ball at the foot of my bed, like some helpless little kitten. Like a little baby. I felt so dumb, so useless. I promised myself that I would never close my eyes and wish for anything ever again.

But of course I did. Besides, its not like I would ever have anything better to do. How do you top strolling through the sky? I could never go back to that ‘normal' life. Yes, I was frightened. Yes, I was still unsure. Then I found myself in an open field staring up at the sprawling heavens above. I couldn't control the butterflies that swarmed my stomach. I couldn't fight the overwhelming urge to close my eyes and fall backward, imagining that I was plummeting through the blue infinity but rising forever up, reaching out to grasp that which others can only dream of. Then I was. Why not? Why would I stay chained to that dirt and clay when I could level the land beneath me in a surge of ozone and erupt into the skies like some heavenly creature? Icarus never had such dreams of grandeur.

So what? No one will see me. No one will care. Nothing else is important except for that sensation in each new breath, like the dawn itself is swelling in my lungs. That's all that matters to me. That is all that I have. Up there it doesn't matter if you are alone. There are no other witnesses in that second when the towering clouds suddenly part to reveal an endless cascade of golden sun. Nobody else sees when those rays shine down and stroke your cheeks with their amber warmth. You alone stand above the world, bathing in the streams of light, palms upturned to the open graces of no one. You need to learn this. You need to learn how to stand on your own...

Talk about BS. I wonder if there are other people out there like me? The light fades and the weather changes its direction. The atmosphere softens and the wind presses me on. I know I can't stay here forever. I have to keep walking.

This seems to have started so long ago. Has it been weeks, days, or years? Time seems to move differently now, like all these moments just blur into the haloes tracing the sun. Today, I think it was today, I was looking down at the tops of telephone lines, trying to guess where their spiral wound patterns might lead me, when I noticed something in a passing train. It was right behind a flash of glass, a pale phantom hovering in the steel movement. A young girls face hung suspended there for the briefest moment, eyes wide and mouth slack in awe, still like a photograph within a shuddering frame. And then she was gone. It might have been my imagination or simply just some trick of the light. Yet, there was something so familiar about it all. I think she might have seen me.

I have become invisible to absolutely every one else down there. No one notices me at all anymore, not even when I stopped going to school completely. I can't remember the last time I went home. All my days are spent out here with the wind at my back and the sun at my fingertips. I am walking so much longer and farther now. Soon I won't have to stop at all. I'd like to say that I would miss the earth, I feel like I should, but it simply isn't true. I don't think I ever really knew it. My eyes and my thoughts have always been right here.

Now I look toward even farther limits, beyond where the sun sets. Nothing can describe the perfect beauty of the city lights shimmering behind me as I walk out toward the distant sound of the ocean. I don't bother to look down anymore, to me its all different shades of the same ethereal sky. I know that there's something for me out there, something incredible just beyond the horizon. I follow the gentle pull of the wind, trying to believe that it is guiding me, hoping that these gilded cloud lanes will lead me to the right place.

I still get dizzy sometimes, straining under the limitations of this frail body, and sometimes I wonder if the next step I take will be the last before I tumble into the black otherness forever, but I have to keep walking. Grey clouds obscure the last great wall at the edge of my world. What new beauty will they reveal to me? I walk forward with my arms raised, each step surer than the last. I'm so close to those clouds now. If I manage not to fall, I feel as though I may disappear into them completely.

Each step is like a leap of faith, but up here there's no one to trust in but yourself.

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