Posted on 04/30/2008 10:28:57 PM PDT by JustAmy
In order to share expenses I foolishly became a the passenger of either one of them as they increased their flying hours and illegally practice dog fights over parts of the countryside and out at sea where no one would report them, they hoped.
Now, that is flying, with the wind in your face rolling sideways over the edges of clouds into a spinning dive hoping like hell the guy at the back knows what he is doing. Realizing how difficult it is to spot anything when your eyes do not have a horizon, the sky looks so vast when you are trying to spot another tiny plane. These biplanes really want to fly, they seem to jump off the ground with their two wings whose lift makes up for their slow speed.
It made one think of that poignant poem, High Flight.
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
CAMERA
Light disperses the silver
on film in the shadow
and memory is trapped
in the blink of an eyelash.
The kiss, the laugh, the poised hoof
are framed in an instant.
A century ago Daguerre dipped a pencil
in the eye of the sun
and etched an image of man
on the surface of metal,
making the past present
and the dead men to linger
pursuing the living
with love from the lintel.
Memory clings to the wall
bent sapling, hair blowing
mast bent to the starboard.
The wind forever in motion
because time stumbles in darkness
on a splinter of light.
A.M. Sullivan
.
You have the licence but I had to close my eyes and hope for the best. I wish we had a digital cameras in those days.
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You have the licence but I had to close my eyes and hope for the best. I wish we had a digital cameras in those days.
Thankyou for bring that poem to my attention I have never read that before - surely he did dip a pencil in the eye of the sun.
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I left that for my passengers to do. (We had to divide our duties somehow.)
However, I recall flying over Chappaquiddick on Martha's Vineyard when my friend's wife, sitting in the back, yelled "smoke." I cut the throttle and immediately glided for a grassy strip only to find out--upon landing--that she had not put out her cigarette completely. Woe is me. (Generally, I don't allow smoking, but she was a nervous twit.)
.
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Talking about poems from my youth - I remember Rudyard Kipling´s IF painted on each side of the stage in the assembly hall of the Naval Training School.
[IF]
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
—Rudyard Kipling
Playwright and US Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987) once said, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Sadly, it sometimes seems as if this aphorism is true.
David, soon to be king of Israel, had an experience that corroborates this idea. While hiding from Saul, he and his men watched over the property of a rich landowner named Nabal. But later, when David asked a favor of Nabal, he was met with scorn. “Surely in vain I have protected all that this fellow has,” said David. “He has repaid me evil for good” (1 Sam. 25:21).
Before David could carry out revenge, Nabal’s wife intervened and kept David from acting rashly. Soon, God struck Nabal dead (v.38). Then David praised God for keeping him from evil and for returning “the wickedness of Nabal on his own head” (v.39).
Perhaps you’ve had an experience when kindness was repaid with ingratitude, a generous gift was treated as an entitlement, kind actions were interpreted as an attempt to control, or well-intended advice was received with scorn.
David’s story reminds us that even when it seems as if we’re being repaid with evil for doing good, we don’t have to take matters into our own hands; we can trust God with the outcome.
Graphic by MamaBear Wonder no longer, we can fly,
Down here we dominate the sky,
The main thing, as I demonstrate,
Is that you must first levitate.
With wings spread wide, and posture straight,
And mental focus, levitate!
You’re dubious, I see,
You cannot hope to copy me.
Well, here’s the rule, please pay attention,
There’s something I forgot to mention,
The Force is limited to few,
There is no “try”, but only “do”.
NicknamedBob . . . . . . . April 20, 2008
© 2008
That is what they would have liked to have done I am sure, but I insisted on being seated comfortably inside the fuselage.
Flight is so different in small planes. By the way that is a great picture yorkie.
Wow! That is so beautiful, Cardi, and I am glad you didn’t change one word. The words as they were written, seemed to make it even more inspiring. Thank you for sharing this with us all!
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