The Man Who Learned to Fly

A peaceful view of Earth was all he wanted. Everyday, since the day he discovered a uniqueness which everyone around him perceived both with awe and aberration, he wished he could get away from all the trivial things humanity deemed most important in their lives, and just see the planet as it is behind clouds of summer. He longed for freedom like birds carelessly flapping their wings as they migrate during winter; or perhaps, a gently falling dry leaf in an autumn afternoon. But he waited for spring that wouldn’t come; he was young, and youth has its own plans, changing as the breeze changes with the seasons.

Gravity, on the other hand, kept him locked in a cage. In a circus town like theirs, his relatives, more of blood rather than relation, thought it great revenue to display such gifts befitted only for gods of yesterday, reduced now to an attraction with man’s progress. Negotiations were done(which sold him at a price of a sack of rice excluding food allowance), and found himself surrounded by sweaty, red-faced crowd gawking at him as he flies around his cell as spacious as a box. Naturally he became the favorite, short of a tourist attraction. People flocked around him but treated it all as part of an act, a freak show rather than acknowledge, much more respect, a grand accident of beauty; he deserved adoration as a triumph of the species, instead he was thrown with patronizing clanging of five and ten peso coins.

At first, he tried to show what strength resides in his spirit, showing them the wonders of a harmonious marriage between corporeal existence and spiritual essence. He showed them how featherlight every molecule of his body in motion, like a soft dance of anatomy with an imagined crescendo of a sonata. At times, in his darkest flair, he would furiously barrel through the metal bars clanging them as a hurricane would, often sending the crowd stampeding to a safe distance. He somehow tried to tell everyone present to celebrate the potentials of an ever evolving race, to see beyond what conformity has to offer and take risks for something as rare as a man in flight. Instead, like a bush fire, fear of the unknown burned through the multitude, quickly instilling contempt at something more human than what is conventionally accepted as human.

People started to talk. Many wondered how someone like them was able to do the things they themselves cannot perform naturally, therefore something unnatural, abnormal. Skepticism and mysticism became the outward manifestations of the many unable to rationalize something otherworldly--- minds accustomed to petty matters trying to come in grips with someone simpler but bigger than they can put reason into. Theories abound; some concluded that it was all an illusion; some offered that he cheated, a trickster hidden with invisible strings attached to his skin; some believed it was the work of the devil or angels or ghosts; some believed he was a flaw of nature and should be studied closely, dissected for scientific purposes; while some, mostly children and the child-like, see him as a hero.

“Are you Superman,” asked a boy once. “Are you here to save the world?”

“No,” he would usually smile. “I’m just a man.”

As time passed slowly, people got used to his talent, dismissing him as someone dismisses a conjoined twin or a three-fingered man; he in turn got older. At night, when the sky was at its darkest, he would usually spend his time staring at the stars standing out like lighted pearls against a velvet background. He felt something slipping away from him; something he knew he would have to fight to preserve a rare gem hidden inside his soul. Nights like these, the despair of defeat slowly overcame his nature.

Withered and forgotten, he spent less and less time flying; his body slowly giving in to the wishes of gravitational pull. His eyes became that of a tired old man with days behind him wasted without remembrance or regret; a mathematical progression of dates and numbers like useless grains of sand slowly draining away to the shores of the cosmos. And he hated that thought, that feeling of uselessness knowing that fate have given him an extraordinary gift of flying; how he longed to spread his wings again.

Eventually, he got tired of waiting for Spring to come. He summoned every strength left in his body and broke the shackles that imprisoned him for what seems like a hundred years. He did the barrel rolls he used to do and tried to force through the metal bars until his very bones broke through the cold steel. Finally, he felt the winds of freedom caress his face as he zoomed away out of the sleepy town towards the barely lit horizon. He stretched his hands touching the clouds making way for the man who flew without wings. He felt speed beneath him, knowing that the thick atmosphere could do nothing to impede his approach to the velocity of light, washing away what was left of humanity that stained his God-given fate to embrace the universe. At last, he found his wish: he now saw Earth as it is, with the pearl-like lights of a billion stars behind him against a velvet background. He marveled how a small, blue planet could bring so much life in a place cold with darkness--- an anomalous specimen in a black sea of infinite marbles devoid of the living. He immersed himself with this peaceful thought, continuing his fight with gravity until he can fight it no more. As air gave way to the cold vacuum beyond, the man in flight finally learned to fly.