Blue skies, smilin’ at me
Nothin’ but blues skies do I see[...]
Those blue days, all of them gone
Nothin’ but blue skies from now on[...]
—Louis Armstrong
Today you could say I flew for the first time. That’s not counting the being-allowed-to-participate in the flight my grandmother got for her sixty-somethingth birthday, or all the airline flights that have become part of “normal” life nowadays. Instead, I flew in a Cessna 172 in a bid to find my vocation. (I’ll also do a one-week course in Egyptian Arabic at the end of April and visit the HGB Leipzig school of photography on my next return from Dresden.) But this flying thing … really struck a nerve. Don’t get me wrong — it was actually far from what I had expected. For example, you’d think an airplane as small as that Cessna might be frightening a bit, but far from it! Instead you feel so safe it is almost unreal, as if some mighty, docile giant was all around you, caring for your well-being. Indeed I would recommend anyone, especially people afraid of great heights I guess, to book a flight in such a small airplane at least once in their lives. It is fascinating in many a way, mostly because you feel so alive, because you feel that the air doesn’t ask who you are, it just accepts you as another traveller and carries you toward your destination. And at the same time it is a very humbling experience because you realize how much one has to learn to be able to operate such an aircraft, but also because you realize in awe the value of life itself and the world below you… that really makes you be left awestruck afterwards. I only wonder how the heck can anyone ever learn to be comfortable with all the instruments, having to steer the airplane and, most of all, having to navigate at the same time. Like all things, it is probably just practice.
