Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)
Practice.
Chapter 9
What'll be your biography?
"At that point, life seemed pretty bleak. Then (insert your name) did a surprising thing..."
When I was a boy, I’d lie on the grass and imagine myself to the edge of a cloud. They were fluffy warm places. Since my spirit was lighter than summer air, I could stay there as long as I wished, drift where they went, watch this place of Earth. I’d wonder what adventures I would meet, know I would live here till it was time to find different places and times.
“Is this what happened, after the crash? I floated on a cloud?”
“Felt like it.” Shimoda said. “Something like that.”
“Why did it happen?” I said.
“You forgot. Want me to guess?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted your life to end in chaos. You wanted it to make no sense at all, a beautiful life till a bunch of wires snagged you and killed you and wrecked your airplane. That was the end of your story, and this...”
“Wrecked my airplane? End in chaos, maybe, Makes no Sense not like me, but the wires wreck little Puff? Not possible!”
“I guess I’m wrong,” he said. “Why do you think you hit the wires after fifty years missing them, missing other airplanes, missing the ground, missing a world of ducks, eagles, vultures, thunderstorms, lightning strikes, snowstorms, engine failures, night, icing, fog, fires…“
“I was lucky?” I said.
“You were lucky for fifty years and then your luck quit?”
“You want me to know, don’t you? You think ‘bad luck’ won’t be the answer. You think I’ll not happily live with ‘bad luck.’”
“Lots of people live with ‘bad luck.’” he said. “Not you? Tell me why you hit the wires, nearly killed yourself. The injuries can still kill you, everyone says. You killed Puff…”
What he said woke my silent, secret mind.
“No, Donald. I didn’t kill myself, I didn’t kill Puff.”
He shrugged.
“Don’t you see? I’ve lived a charmed life,” I said. “Nothing happens without a good reason for me. Never had something that put my life, and Puff’s life, on the line. Never had to work hard against something that could kill me.”
“So you thought you’d hit the wires, Richard, and maybe stop living?”
“I knew exactly what would happen. I’d go off and talk with my spirit friends while my body struggled with death. No dying, though I knew I could change my mind if I got tired and gave up. I wanted to fight a long difficult fight, come out a year later the winner. I wanted Puff to come back, too. She did everything to keep me alive, and that worked, what she did. Her wing took the crash…”
“A long difficult fight, isn’t that exactly what’s happening?”
“Well, yes.”
“And when and if you fly again, your story will end?”
“One part of it, sure enough.” Flying again is a lovely end for the story, from where we struggle with death, meet with spirit guides, characters of our books, strive to live again. “That’s why the crash. That’s why I met up against the wires, the big invisible high-voltage wires. I brushed against dying, to live again.”
?
?And you’ll write what happened?”
“Maybe. Puff took the crash step by step in the last seconds, so I could live, don’t you see, till we could fly again. My challenge is not to die before the story reaches its end.“