Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Kindle Single) (7 page)

   Seven months, Puff had rested in the hangar, bent wings and struts alongside, the wreckage of her tail and hull a still photograph of a crash.

   I went to our hangar, not to see her, but to see her body, the way some had seen mine.

   It was as if a monster, giant hands fifty feet wide, had snatched her from the air, crushed her, thrown her on the ground. When she stopped moving, fires scattered in the grass, the beast lost interest, stalked away.

   She was not hurt, the spirit of her. She was asleep, dreaming of flying.

   Puff had done all she could, in two seconds, and she saved my life. It was my turn, now, to save hers.

   A man who’s built and rebuilt many little seaplanes, an expert named Jim Ratte, came not long after. A coincidence. His business is not in the northwest, it’s thousands of miles south and east, in Florida.

   I was glad he was here, but I was not hoping for the best. Most likely he’d say it was a pretty difficult crash, so much has been broken. Better get a new airplane.

   Not a word as he looked at her body in the hangar: saw holes in her hull, the foredeck split, aft fuselage smashed, engine and propeller broken, radiator flattened, pylon crushed, a shower of pieces broken loose from the impact.

   I looked into the cockpit. Through the broken plexiglass, Puff’s instruments shattered, the panel was twisted, the controls frozen. The aluminum tubes of the frame were bent, one heavy piece was sheared in two, an inch from where my leg had been.

   The fabric of one wing, and the tail, was wadded up, a writer’s page of useless words, thrown toward a wastebasket. The canopy had shattered an inch above my head.
Why wasn’t I killed?

   At last Jim spoke, in the silence of the hangar. I was steeled for what he’d say.

   “I’ve had a lot worse than this.”

   I couldn’t speak. He’d had rebuilt broken airplanes
a lot worse than this?

   He put his hand, gently, on the broken deck. “I can rebuild her if you want. You’ll need to put everything in a closed van, broken wings and tail, of course, drive to my shop. She’s not as bad as you think. We’ll have her flying again, a few months, perfect shape.”

   For the first day since the wires, since the crash, I was glad for Puff. By the time I had taken the test to regain my own flying license, by the time I traveled back to Florida, she’d be ready to fly, herself!

   Simple. Instead of a dead end road for her, Jim Ratte all of a sudden appeared in the hangar. “I can rebuild her.”

   In seconds, quick as the crash, a weight lifted from my heart.

   Puff and I, the way we’d promised, we’d fly!

Chapter 12

If this world is a fiction, then soon as we discover what's fact, we've found our power over appearances.

   “What’s going on, Don? My last seconds of the crash, it was a perfect landing. But now I know what happened … my own memory, it was fiction!”

   “All lifetimes are fiction, Richard.”

   “Are you fiction, too?”

   He laughed. “The me you see, the you I see, we’re all of us fiction.”

   “I’m not so sure…”

   “Let me tell you a little story,” he said. “Once, before anyone thought of time, there was a single force in all the universe. Love. It was, and it is and it will always be, the only Real, the only principle of all life. It does not change, it does not listen to anyone. You can call it God or Demon, nonexistent, cruel, or loving, it doesn’t hear, it doesn’t care. It is All. Period.

   “When we came to appear to be,” he said, “our worlds of form and fantasy, our universe shifting changing images of stardust, it did nothing. Love is the only Is, beyond space, beyond time, anywhere, everywhere.”

   He stopped.

   I listened to the silence. “And?” I said. “What did it do?”

   “Nothing.”

   “Go on with your story. I want to hear what happened.”

   “You did. The story’s over.”

   “What about us?”

   “Nothing. We’re fiction. Does reality have anything to do with dreams?”

   “What can we do to be real?”

   “Nothing. We already are. The deepest life within us is love. There is nothing else. Reflecting that reality, we cannot die. We don’t live here in the world of spacetime. Nothing does. Nothing lives, anywhere, except love.”

   “What’s the purpose of life here?” I said.

   “Where?”

   “In spacetime. There’s some reason for it.”

   “No. Reality doesn’t talk with beliefs, doesn’t listen. Reality does not take form, for forms are limits, and the real is All, unlimited.”

   “Doesn’t matter,” I said, “if we’re good or bad?”

   “No. What’s good to one is bad to another. Words mean nothing to the All. It is indestructible, it is forever, it is pure Love.”

   “We are nothing to the…the All?”

   “Our only life,” he said, “is the expression of the Is, of Love. Not what we do, but love itself. You have no way of understanding this, while you live in the world of spacetime, the land of beliefs of harm and death.”

   “You’re telling me I can die any time?”

   He laughed. “The love you know, it can’t die. The annoyances, the hatreds, the wish that things could be different, gone the minute you let go of the world that seems to be. Gone. What’s real, what does not dissolve, that’s yours forever.”

   “Soon as you realize you’re immortal,” he said, “declare the power of Love even when it seems invisible, you’ll go far beyond the illusions of space and time. In all history, the one power you never lose is your power of letting go of space and time, the joy of dying that is no wicked thing, it comes in love, to everyone.”

   “Then, who are you? Are you an image, a friend who’s just a thought-form, comes around when I’m ready to die?”

   “We’re all shifting out of the belief of mortals,” he said. “I’m shifting, too. “

   “What do you look like? When you’re not wearing your thought-form for me?

   “I look like nothing. No form. Maybe a faint little sparkle of light, maybe not.”

   “Some day that’ll be me? I’m a friend of yours, has no form?”

   “Some day? How about now?”

Chapter 13

I don't pray for the Is to recognize me.  

I pray for me to recognize It, perfect everpresent Love, way beyond my silly beliefs

   After eleven months of believing the power of Love, I thought I was pretty well invulnerable from failure. I could walk, run, I felt light and healthy, didn’t want to be what I was before.

   My assistants, those dear souls who had helped me every day, were gone to other patients, the story of my success part of their own.

   I was cooking my little meals, exercising on my own, caring for the Shelties.

   Thinking back, as I did every day, I wondered. I understand there’s no such thing as death, the total end of awareness. I understand we can shift from one consciousness to another, a smooth easy switch, easy as keeping, easy as losing a dream.

   Why, though, did I have the event in the room/dirigible, with no one to say a word for me? Everyone else, dying, had some kind words from the people here. Yes, someone had printed the
Please don’t fall out of the door
sign. Honestly, though, I didn’t need the sign. I would have welcomed a guide, explaining what I saw:

   “Welcome to your dream of the after-life. I am your conductor for this ride. We wish we could have supplied an airplane for you, but considering the haste of your journey, my idea of a flying machine had to do, so we hope you’ve been comfortable. You will have three chances to stay here, or go back to Earth…” someone was correcting him: “…or go back to the Earth you know. Please speak clearly for your three answers.”

   “Some of your tour you will not recall, as those may suggest different choices from your designed lifetime. We hope you have enjoyed your tour, and hope that you will not share it with anyone. Your tour has been solely designed for you and will not be a journey for others.”

   Dreams done, back now to my decisions as a mortal.

   I saw my friend Dan Nickens after I had healed from the crash. He offered me a guest room in Florida, at his house and Ann’s. I don’t do that often. Ever. Yet meeting the tests and the obstacles two years ago, with him flying our little seaplanes coast to coast…the worst was the sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, the sands of Death Valley…that’s a different story, but we were friends.

   Our adventure now was to discover whether I still knew how to fly.

   Dan and Jenn, his own airplane, a twin to Puff, how important they are for us!  After the crash, Dan had flown the same path that Puff had flown. Almost, since the wires had been reconnected.

   “No way you could have seen them,” he said. “They were blocked by the sun, they were sitting up on the final approach. Your only choice was to have flown final approach the other direction, in a tailwind.”

   “Makes no difference,” I said. “I was responsible. I was flying the airplane.”

   “I know. You just couldn’t have seen the wires.”

   Dan mentioned, by the way, that Jenn had a spare set of wings and tail feathers…would Puff like to have those? She’d be welcome to them, if she did.

   Amazing, I thought. Puff’s right wing was mostly wreckage, her tail was smashed, an accordion crushed against the ground. Yet, the two airplanes had flown together across the country, they shared all those miles together, lakes and rivers and deserts. Now Puff was down. Jenn, her sister, offered life of her own.

   For Puff’s dreaming state, I accepted the gift.

   I slid down into Jenn’s cockpit, next day, Dan in the copilot’s seat, and after ten months on the ground, I started Jenn’s engine, taxied her down the ramp into the water. Wheels up as she floated, we taxied slowly while the engine warmed. Wheels up, boost pump on, flaps down, trim set. A few seconds for an engine run-up. Jenn was ready when I was.

   “OK, Dan?”

   “She’s your airplane,” he said. “Any time.”

   Throttle wide open, in seconds Jenn was on the step, feathers of spray flying like summer snowflakes behind her. We were flying.

   Ten months on the ground, a mind of fallen memories, worried once if I could ever walk again, fly again, here was the ground falling away beneath us, worries falling, too.

   For all my concern, flying was home, same as ever it has been.

   It wasn’t as if flying is a difficult skill, or that flyers love the challenge of the thousand tests it charms from them.

   Pilots like the tests of instrument flying, aerobatic flying, soaring flying, seaplane flying, multi-engine flying, business flying, cross-country flying, airlines, formation flying, racing, homebuilts, antiques, ultralights, warplanes. Beyond each of those brings the sense that we are one in the art, touching the beauty of flight.

   For all my worries, flying was home, same as ever it had been. I tried a few water landings, simple as always. A few landings on grassy runways, each one familiar. If anything, flying had become easier than it had been, months ago.

   In a few weeks, I took my flying test, an hour of talk, an hour of flying. I was legal again, after the test, to fly by myself.

   Why did I think it could have been difficult? The worlds we love, are they ever difficult?

Chapter 14

What would our lives be like without tests, odds against us, adventure, risk?

   A few days later, word from Jim Ratte, the rebuilder. It had been eleven weeks, Puff’s body had been in his shop. All her wreckage had been lifted away, the broken silhouette, the shattered windshield, bent metal and fabric and fiberglass, the engine taken off for overhaul. Switches and wires had been replaced, looms of circuits had been tested, radios repaired. Puff’s gift of wings from Jennifer had been finished, painted, installed.

   One day after her body had been rebuilt, Puff blinked again, her engine breathing, ready to fly! She had no memory of what had happened.

   That night I couldn’t sleep. I saw her in a half-dream, sparkling new, her bow resting on the lakeshore sand. It was pure delight, to touch her again. No words, joy.

   “She’s a pretty soul, little Puff.” Shimoda sat on the sand, watching the sunlights of the airplane.

   “Do machines have souls, Don?” I knew she did, I had talked with her all our flying hours.

   “Everything that reflects beauty, of course she has a soul.”

   “She’s metal and fiberglass.”

   He smiled. “You’re blood and bones.”

   “Are you?”

   He laughed. “I’m a thought-form, remember? Everything else you invented. We invented.”

   “You have a soul, Donald, a spirit to express perfect Life, perfect Love. Puff didn’t?”

   “Spirit overlies body,” he said. “Spirit heals all things.”

   “Heals death.”

   “Not required. Death is a different face of life. You saw…it’s love, shifting from one lifetime to another.”

   He was right. Once we visit death, once we see the beauty waiting for us, our fear’s gone. Used to be never a book written, of our experience with dying. Now there are shelves, waiting to be read. The beliefs, the experiences of so many others, now.

   “And Puff?”

   “You saw for yourself. When she crashed, her body was lifeless, like yours was almost. Yet you could talk with her. She had no pain, no distress. You didn’t either, while you were out.”

   “I wish I could have talked with her, then.”

   “Ah, that belief of seven days when you think you remember almost nothing. What could have happened then? You didn’t talk with her, did you? How strange.”

   “Something happened. I remember, it was desperately important for me to make Puff’s body ready, for her spirit to meet us again, in this world. I’d say I made a promise to her, that we would fly again.”