Would you like to learn to fly...

How would life change if your default orientation switched instantly from straight forward to down? What's it like soaring through the sky? And how far from the ground can I get before I start missing it?

Those are only some thoughts going through my head while waiting to embark on (no exaggeration) one of the coolest surprises of my life. While I can't say I enjoy airline flying, I do adore the sense of leaving everything behind and disappearing into the open heavens, the freedom that comes with it. And what better gift is there than freedom? When @godfish told me we would go flying this weekend, I honestly didn't know what to expect. I had some ideas, but they were all, at their core, intrinsically human ideas, to which @godfish insisted~

It's not falling, it's flying.

Falling makes more sense for us humans, because it better iterates our bittersweet relationship with the ground that keeps us forever tethered. Falling is something our feet can understand. Flying, not so much.

And yet, that's exactly what you do at Hurricane Factory Praha, a skydiving center on the outskirts of Prague that puts you in a nifty little uniform (that I forgot to take a picture of, so here~)

then bangs you straight into a wind tunnel that can go all the way up to an impressive 270 km/h. You can probably tell the huge excitement for someone who spent her entire life wishing she could just...fly away:

After a brief instruction that was kindly translated to me (damn strange how we mimic understanding even for languages we can't make sense of - like our body knows how to people even when our brain is baffled), we were ushered into the apres-flying chamber, where we were fitted with earplugs, goggles and helmets, accordingly. And so the fun began.

I wasn't inside myself scared to go into a hurricane, for one because I've the name of one, and for another because I was far too curious to see what it would be like. Which is an interesting thought in itself - we're the only species (probably) who thinks "I wonder what it's like to be a bird?", and then goes and builds a simulator to let other humans experience it. Do you think birds go around, wondering what it's like to walk, and is it just our human nature that's got us forever questioning whether we drew the evolutionary short straw, after all?

Mid-flight, I thought about the intricate complexity required of our brains to adapt to all sorts of new, unnatural situations. Like flight. You would think it'd be scary, though frankly, with wind bellowing at 160 km/h under me, there's little room for falling, and thus my natural impulse to fear impact is bypassed... leaves room for so much more interesting experiences and questions.

Obviously, there's an instructor there with you to keep you tethered, and make sure you don't start flipping about, which of course I did. I thought I'd listen, but as soon as I went inside, I sort of forgot he was there. It didn't stop me turning around looking at him from time to time, but my mind was mainly focused on the present experience.

I'm told I even started flapping my arms about like a bird at one point, much to the instructor's dismay, as he fought frantically to keep me still. I don't remember doing it, though perhaps it spoke to a deeper question, the desire to know what birds feel and see, buried deep inside our human selves - and is it strange? And does it speak to man's eternal dissatisfaction with existence? If I am forever trapped in this race to experience more, how do I know when I have experienced enough?

If God had meant for man to fly, He would've given us wings.

Except He did, in a way. He gave us inventivity, the creative drive to find new solutions and dig out new ideas, no matter how outlandish. He, if He be at all, left us with all these buried questions inside ourselves that we often devote entire lifetimes to answering.

What's it like to be a bird?

Volatile. Curious. I'd like to say the higher you get, the less fucks you give, but I realize those are inherently human fucks - birds get high every single day, and still, they don't manage to outrun their problems.

When we look to the sky, we imagine freedom, but not also the great unpredictability bespoken to flight. It is not so much freedom as it is obeying natural laws in a different way, holding the delicate balance between the raging wind and the pull of gravity - is that freedom, or is that just another form of existence, as bound and as liberating as human existence is itself?

Or perhaps would be to creatures that do not take it for granted.

In the end, I felt myself become a strange hybrid between a bird and a balloon, an epitome of freedom, though perhaps only in its rarity. In the end, how high I get to fly still depends solely on me, regardless if I'm on my feet or lying like a pancake on my belly.

What a fantastically fun experience though. To get to shed my human skin for five seconds is five seconds longer than I would've hoped for. <3