Almeida Life
Men were meant to fly.
It's easy to believe, sitting so casually, with a leg bent over the arm of a chair, forhead pressed to the cool windowpane of a plane in fleight. A beautiful young woman brings you a glass of water and a bag of snackfood, as though this is nothing. As though people do it every day. Every hour. Every minute.
And as that pretzel dissolves in your mouth, you're observing the biggest picture that you've ever seen. The most incredible reality check. In the darkness below, clusters in shades of orange and gray, glowing with the intensity of so many flames, but without smoke, without reflection on the velvet expanses of nothing at their outskirts.
And what makes them so completely breathtaking is the understanding of this expanse which stretches into the horizon- into infinity- this is the rare comrehension of it's complexity. Everything that can be seen was placed there with conscious intention, with effort and centuries of accumulated knowledge. This is a real glimpse of the whole world, and the enormity of humanity.
Then you wonder... or I did... how much each of those tiny little dots signifies. How many people are breathing in each twinkling speck? How many lives had to be lived just so, for that dot, for this cluster, for that glow beneath or the splotches of gold in the distance, to get there?
And it makes me wonder... if an airplane flew directly above my life, would there be any light to indicate that I had been there? That I have lived, have understood, have produced? Maybe, if it were flying low enough, there might be a pinprick for me. Maybe just the dot of my headlights as I pass through the few square inches of darkness which is somehow so large to my grounded eye...
It's easy to believe, sitting so casually, with a leg bent over the arm of a chair, forhead pressed to the cool windowpane of a plane in fleight. A beautiful young woman brings you a glass of water and a bag of snackfood, as though this is nothing. As though people do it every day. Every hour. Every minute.
And as that pretzel dissolves in your mouth, you're observing the biggest picture that you've ever seen. The most incredible reality check. In the darkness below, clusters in shades of orange and gray, glowing with the intensity of so many flames, but without smoke, without reflection on the velvet expanses of nothing at their outskirts.
And what makes them so completely breathtaking is the understanding of this expanse which stretches into the horizon- into infinity- this is the rare comrehension of it's complexity. Everything that can be seen was placed there with conscious intention, with effort and centuries of accumulated knowledge. This is a real glimpse of the whole world, and the enormity of humanity.
Then you wonder... or I did... how much each of those tiny little dots signifies. How many people are breathing in each twinkling speck? How many lives had to be lived just so, for that dot, for this cluster, for that glow beneath or the splotches of gold in the distance, to get there?
And it makes me wonder... if an airplane flew directly above my life, would there be any light to indicate that I had been there? That I have lived, have understood, have produced? Maybe, if it were flying low enough, there might be a pinprick for me. Maybe just the dot of my headlights as I pass through the few square inches of darkness which is somehow so large to my grounded eye...