Whoa, J, you fly? Like...with wings and stuff?
Isn't it something? How many a time has a human being looked up into the air, or down from the great heights of a mountain or a cliff, and wished they had the power to fly. It's one of the most compelling human desires. How we wish we could fly! (This is why I am so dismayed and repulsed when people on air flights routinely exhibit nonchalance teetering on the edge of boredom, reading books, listening to music, taking naps...doing anything but looking out that tiny little window or reflecting on their circumstances. One of humanity's greatest dreams!, fulfilled! in a roundabout way, and it bores the multitudes!
I wonder to myself, how many a bird, if birds had the brain for it, would look down at us and our civilization and think, "I wish instead of these wings I had a pair of hands..."
I love to fly; it's one of the most romantic things in the world for me, and I do so wish that I could fly under my own power directly, but in my probably lifetime I will have to settle for the fabulous machines we have invented for ourselves. Still...I think that we have it better than birds. Birds can fly. Humans can do just about anything except fly. And even that limitation deserves two asterisks: aviation itself, and the conditions of the Earth. Give us an EV suit and a planet with lower gravity, and those feathers-glued-to-the-arms of yore would work just fine.
I feel like I should ask a question about actually being in the air, but for some reason what I'm really wondering is whether the economic climate has forced a lot of amateur fliers to give up their small planes, or if they're actually making a killing by transporting other people for pay, undercutting the airlines. Like, instead of carpooling...plane-pooling.
LOA (low-occupancy aircraft) flight is not cost-effective compared to jetliner and large turboprop travel. The ownership and operation of pleasure aircraft, company aircraft, and transportation light aircraft have all suffered from the recession. I read an article on this with regard to corporate jets not long ago. If the article is to be trusted, the bottom really fell out of the market on that one.
I like it that birds integrate with our cities as well as they do. We'll go to the limits of what is safe and affordable trying to destroy just about every ground pest imaginable, but most urban-acclimated birds are accepted and, within limits, welcomed.
One of the more artistically compelling images I've seen over the years was a bird with a totally broken leg; it's leg was literally snapped so that the bottom part and the foot were splayed at a useless angle. Watching it walk was emotionally painful, and I imagine it was painful for the bird too in a much more physical sense. Every morning at the bus stop I'd see pigeons hopping around, scrounging for food. Seattle pigeons have a funny walk and colorful necks; they were guaranteed company in the mornings and I was happy to see them. I would wonder for myself from time to time, how many of these were the ones I had seen yesterday? I'm not very good at telling individual animals apart. But when this pigeon with the broken leg showed up, I couldn't miss it. And it was there the next day, and even after that...although not for long. I don't know if it moved elsewhere, or died, or what, but that was the last I saw of it.
Still, I haven't told you the really touching part yet. That bird's leg was ruined, and it would never be able to walk on the ground normally again. But there was nothing wrong whatsoever with either of its wings. When that bird
flew, it flew as perfectly any pigeon ever did.
That imagery flouts our expectations--or it did mine. Wings are fantastically more complicated, sensitive, and expensive. The reason most of a bird's volume is breast is because that's where the wing power is generated, and the reason much of a bird's surface area is wing is because that's what it takes to achieve the magnificent power of flight. Contrast this exquisite system of biological adaptation to that of a bird's ground locomotion, especially the stick-like lower legs, which are evolutionary pieces of cake in the grander view of the animal world. For the one to remain intact while the other wavers is poignant and much more compelling than the far more typical image of a bird whose
wing is wounded.
Such an image as that of this bird was immediately apparent to me as a metaphor, whence much of its artistic value came. Powerful stuff.
