In the air

(Original post: Στον Αέρα - 16/01/12)

I’ve flown many times. Sometimes because I’m being hunted and I’m trying to get away, others just for the pleasure of flight; sometimes it’s like I’m swimming in the air, others I’m launched like a rocket; sometimes I’m having difficulties and I lose my balance or direction. I’ve flown over cities and mountains, among waves and planets.

Always, of course, in my dreams.

Yesterday, however, I didn’t fly. Yesterday I found myself hovering effortlessly. That had never happened to me before. Momentum has always been a prerequisite for my dream flight and immobility in the air immediately activated Newton’s Law.

Despite this, I found myself hovering troublelessly. And the colours! They were as wonderful as a high definition screen’s. Maybe technology has indeed reached the point of realizing our dreams; maybe it has managed to actually surpass them. I had never before seen colours like these but in movie theaters, in science fiction, in computer games, in the most advanced graphics.

But here they were in front of me, around me. A superb, crystal, stunningly blue sky was stretching out in front of me and around me and superb stunningly – unnaturally – green vegetation was covering the ground way beneath my feet.

Somewhere between the waves of wonder and admiration I felt some pinches of fear. If I made to move, would this beautiful world disappear? The moment of hesitation passed as fast as it had come. Such a beautiful world could only exist to be explored and I would be a fool not to try it. Besides, this beauty, this wondrous magic around me could not hold common emotions, mundane reactions.

I made the first step in the air and it supported me. And there I was, walking in the air, supported by nothing, holding on to nowhere; I and this magic world. And it was so magical! Trees were floating, as if they had sprouted up from the air itself, sporting weird shapes since they were unaffected by gravity, but looking quite stable, as if they had figured out a secret way of attaching themselves on the vacuum. Perhaps the trees asked the air to hold me as well; perhaps I’ve had inherent this impossible knowledge myself.

I’d seen the gorgeous sky and the gorgeous green, but what I hadn’t seen was the water. A crystalline river was flowing in the air, rising and falling and twisting as if it was dodging invisible, immaterial obstacles, or maybe it was celebrating its absolute freedom of moving in any way it wanted for once, instead of being defined by solids and gravity. One of its endings was splitting in shiny, twirling streams, like vessels in an angiogram.

I approached enchanted,

captivated by the soft iridescence, the magical, impossible aerial flow of the water. I touched a few streams and, while my hands got wet from the water, they continued to flow undisturbed, as if they were being filled from nowhere.

A few drops got detached and were left hanging in the air like intact soap bubbles, like liquid prisms refracting the light, like liquid mirrors reflecting the world around them. I reached out, pushed some of them, and watched their course as they soared through the air and upset the rich foliage of a plant creeping on the nothingness. There they met the dew that already decorated its leaves, like little lights. I drew nearer and touched the bright green leaves. They were velvet on their underside and, on their top, silk.

The flow of the water and the whisper of my breath were the only sounds in this kingdom of peace. The rich light which seemed to emanate from the objects – as if it preexisted rather than it was coming from a source – was split by the crystalline water in the colorful iris. And I was singing to them. I was singing to the trees and the sky, to the water and the colours.

The absolute aesthetic supremacy… a true masterpiece of the subconscious…