Number 2

10/10/11
“Put your left leg into ‘ere,” Klaus says to me, and I step inside. He holds open the loop for my other leg, and naturally catch my shoe. “End pool it up onto yo’ beck, round yo’ shouldehs.” It’s a set of black straps interconnected I don’t know how over my back, hooking around me somewhat like stars in Orion. Much of it is of a material that reminds me of the adjustable part of my backpack straps, but there are several thick rubber bands and metal hooks about half the width of my finger, mostly on the front of my shoulders. “Nehw, I need to make it toyt, so it’s good to meyk shuh it’s only legs in them leg streps, if you understend,” Klaus says, draping his blond dreadlocks behind his shoulders. “I’ll leeve it to you. I don’t get paid enough for thet.”

He does something behind me, and the leg straps pull up to an amble-adjusting height, but I can still maneuver around it. He explains to me something they call the magic trick, where you bend your legs backwards as far as they go, head back and up, and pelvis forward. It seems more to be “The Big Thrust” and I suppose he’s heard it before, even if in his own head. He will tell me when this is necessary. He doesn’t seem to mind my being a head taller than him, which I was afraid might be an issue. We walk out into the noon day sun.

We make small talk on our way, he’s been somewhere I’ve been, wants to go back. How long have you…? Yes, very excited. No, not scared. I’ve been wanting to do this since I was five or so, maybe longer. My desire is as old as my memory. This red one? No, the blue over there. I actually have this list…

Inside the plane, there is not enough room to stand, hardly enough to crouch. There is only the floor space of a sedan if you removed the seats. He gets in first. Watch your head – I watch my head. I sit between his legs on the far side, and altogether six of us cram into the space, there literally is no space for another person. Suze and her guide are literally crammed into the place where a co-pilot should be. I stick my feet the only place they fit, and one of the other experts slides closed a clear plastic shutter that covers where a hole has been carved into the fuselage, like it suffered a bite from a bigger plane. The rest of the fuselage looks to be one layer in most places, like a car when the upholstery is removed, like you are the last slice of meat in a gutted fish. We hear the propeller begin, unfiltered, and are in motion. We are in the air. “We’re not gonna land,” Ingrid realizes aloud. We exchange looks.

“I’ll explain evrythin’ when we’re ‘alfway” Klaus shouts into my ear, and I nod, because he will not hear me if I say anything and there is not space to turn around and face him. We climb. I see the flat veld fall away, to the south is the picturesque outline like on an EKG machine. One bump, Devil’s Peak, flatline, Table Mountain, recovery bump, Lion’s Head. The coast is a whisp of a painter’s brushstroke, the waves crash steadily into the shore until they are simply all white. I spy a sliver between the windows and the grounding, and I can see raw sky. “We’re at 1000 feet!” Ingrid’s guide shouts, non-plussed with battling the engine for aural superiority. He flips the camera on his glove around the plane, catching the view, our faces, the view again. We can tell he likes this part.

Ingrid and I cannot exchanging looks, I cannot see our other friend Suze. I hold up my hand, hold it flat, and it stays like that. Ingrid holds hers up, her stomach no longer tying itself in knots as in the car, her hand is flat. Klaus holds his hand up and shakes it. I cannot believe how calm I am. My mind must be elsewhere, but it isn’t.

How can I be this calm? Envisioning is usually my way of preparing, but I’ve been envisioning this since I can remember. In my vision, the door of a plane is open, the guides standing, the clients sitting. The clients shy away from the door, I grab the edges, look out, and throw myself out either nonchalantly or with wild abandon. I should be bouncing with excitement. I am now sitting calmly between another man’s legs. My one leg is falling asleep, and the leg straps have pulled my pant legs above my socks. I know better than to try to adjust them. It occurs to me they’ll be more or less in the way, as far as appendages go, until we land.

Klaus points out to me Table Bay, which I had recognized, and the bigger features, Robben Island, Table Mountain, etc. We fly in one direction, turn, fly over the sea, turn, fly along the coast. When Klaus explains to me what we will be doing nothing is new or unassumed, but I take it all down as if I will be tested. I turn and struggle to ask him about something he said. It is an easy procedure, I could have anticipated the answer. He tells me to grab a small load-bearing girder running up between two windows and hoist myself onto his lap. I do so, making sure to set myself down easily. “This is the part we won’t mentien agein,” he tells me. We are now strapped together, but I still have no visual basis for the strength of the straps. I realize now I have known Klaus for most of an hour, and I easily trust him with my life. At the time, my life doesn’t seem to be at stake.

All three guides have what looks like a watch that they keep checking, but I realize early it is an altimeter. Ingrid’s guide checks his as if he were waiting for a bus, scoots himself forward, and as we are banking, throws open the shutter. I actually gasp. I have felt this way on a roller coaster when I was little, going up the first hill of the wooden Texas Giant: powerless against known impending doom. Canceling flashes through my mind, the words arrange themselves into a sentence in my head. I know better than to speak; it is my instinct but not my inclination.

Ingrid inches to the edge of the opening very bravely, more than she led us to believe, and dangled her legs out. She believed this was far enough, but her guide knew it wasn’t, and inched her further, until she had no seat at all. For a moment, her guide is sitting with his legs dangling out of the plane, and she is attached to the front of him, and that is all that keeps her from falling. I wonder about myself talking her into this, talking her up to it. They sit for a moment, then she puts her legs and head back. A second later, they are gone. They are gone too quickly to register where they went. I try to register it, but it fails, and in that time, we have begun moving forward.

Seeing the outside of the plane is not startling, because I saw it earlier, and several times I’ve thought of fight scenes in movies with this setting. The ground does not startle me since I’ve been watching it this whole time. The wind does not startle me as I have been feeling a lot since I’ve been here, like on Table Mountain. We sit for a while, waiting on I don’t know what. I am holding my shoulder straps as instructed, and my head goes back several times. There is only the moment when we fall which does not come. My heart has finally begun to thud, pound.

“Magic trick!” Klaus shouts, and I curl backwards as far as I can. Before I am in position, we are falling.

The first moment is like falling into a cold lake, and pulling breath is difficult. We spin into orientation and are falling face first towards the ground, but are too high to notice it increasing in size. I am not falling, but flying. All around me is the cool blue line of the horizon, splitting the white-speckled brown veld and the deep blue of the African sky. The wind is not unbearable like I imagined it would be. I am existing in a Cartesian point in space, floating, able to move in any way I want, moving faster than anything I could care about to catch up with me.

I hear and feel the chute before it catches air, and we rotate to what feels like a sitting position, sitting on the leg straps which pull tighter. We are still very high up, the world does not seem to be any bigger. I now know exhilaration. Is it of adrenaline? I lack the tenseness of escaped danger, high speeds I cannot control. Like cuddling after sex, my mind has not left the act, I am warmed, open, receptive, calmed, at peace, speechless.

Klaus hands me the controls for the parachute, gives me the simple instructions for manipulation. I gingerly pull one, and he instantly yanks it down, and we spin until we are horizontal. He lets up and we straighten out. I try the other way, the exact same actions play out. I can see a black elongated speck floating from a parachute far from us, on a plane that is not earth and as we move, it moves independently of the earth. As we stop spinning, I realize I have gone tense, cannot move, the straps are pulling tighter, I would not go any faster for fear of significant discomfort. I can see us falling finally.

Klaus begins to explain to me landing instructions, takes back the reins. There’s nothing for me to do until we land, and we are getting close to the ground. I hold my arms out to either side. This is flying I say to myself, with no need to convince or imagine, I’m flying. I’ve forgotten this desire, yet fulfilled it perfectly. I bob my head back and forth as we lightly turn, trying to anticipate the movement and pretending it’s my own, acting like a child, not caring, smiling like one too. I cannot feel another person near me, I am coming in for the landing, I am visiting the ground.

I am still a head taller than Klaus and cannot reach my legs up very far in these straps, even if I use my hands. He gives up trying to land on our feet and we fall backwards in the sand. We wait a moment to recover and he disengages me, and we stand independently. Ingrid is already on the ground, jumping with excitement, I look up, and Suze is coming in almost over our heads. She and her guide make a perfect four point landing, their chute coming down on its side right in front of Ingrid, and her guide gets a great shot with the camera on his glove.

“How was that, hey?” Klaus asks as he begins packing away our parachute. But I am breathless and I do not know what to answer, or if I do.
-Schuyler

Summation of the Action: #2 crossed off (two days ago). This was a bit of practice to get back into real writing after finishing the meat of the thesis, and I will have ample time to finish the big book by the end of the year. Less than two chapters remain. Volunteers to read and comment?