Wednesday, July 28, 2010

I am free, free fallin'

There must be something awfully attractive about gravity. (No pun intended.) Especially when you're looking down from way up high. Someone called it the self-destructive, maddeningly addictive urge-of-the-plunge. People throwing themselves off of skyscrapers in a million movies, with a million whooshing wind effects. Trying to make a clean or not-so-clean dive into oblivion. Nietzsche in your head whispering delightedly about a certain abyss that likes to stare back at folks foolishly staring into it.

All the backflips your tummy's hellbent on performing the moment one of those giant boat-shaped pendulums in amusement parks throws you up into the air, right before you throw up the dosa-chutney you had for lunch.

The momentary chill that swims up and down your spine when you lean too far back in a park swing you've been goading higher and higher, right before you realize you wont really fall. Swings always helped me colour my childhood fantasies about flying. If you cud only successfully will the cold steel chains holding up the wooden seat of that wonderful, wonderful swing out of existence, it would be like flying through the air. It wud be an almost-flight before the fall.

And falling, in the span before realisation or even the ground hits you, falling can be wonderfully freeing. Thats why its called a free fall, no?


9 comments:

Gustaf Valström said...

so do you want to fall or fly?

Ramya said...

paraglide :)

Tangled up in blue... said...

Mefisto, you know that thing that birds do, falling for a bit and then pulling out of it and soaring up..I'd love to do that!

ramya, wow! Exactly! Paragliding!

Anushka said...

What do you think of this- fear of heights is the fear of an urge to jump. This line, or an equivalent of it is from Kari the graphic novel.

Vyzz said...

yup ure right crazy woman

Srishti said...

You title's the lyrics of a song naa?

What about bungee jumping? :D

Tangled up in blue... said...

Anushka I am still to read Kari..its just sitting in my cupboard since May, now I have one more reason to get to it..the thought is very intriguing!

vyzz, ;)

Srishti, yup! Free-fallin' by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers! ;) and I've actually tried bungee-jumping in Goa..trust me, I was really scared to jump, and I was praying real hard the whole time..and when that jolt kicks in and you know you're not going to go splat at the last second you pretty much thank every deity you cud possibly imagine! :D I dont think I'll be doing it again in a hurry..

Deeksha said...

:) Brings to mind something written by Milan Kundera although I am not sure what.

Tangled up in blue... said...

I know what you mean. This -

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

Milan Kundera,
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

It was on my old blog. :)