When I was standing there on top of the world
you become so humble,
you do not think about breaking records anymore…
The only thing you want
is to come back alive.
-Felix Baumgartner
1.
The footage is harrowing,
if you’ve never seen it.
A camera points straight down
this strange apparatus,
completely alien
save for the spaceman,
Felix Baumgartner.
He looks down at the earth,
a mere marble in the abyss;
he is twenty-four miles high.
A couple seconds pass,
then he salutes, speaks
I’m going home now.
With one step, he transforms
into a white humanoid silhouette
rapidly shrinking tinier and tinier
until even the speck disappears.
In that moment, he becomes
a brand new syzygy.
The weather balloon that rose to the stratosphere,
the Earth and it’s gravitational pull,
and a man
just hoping to touch the ground again.
That’s when
he suddenly begins to spin.
2.
The journey of life has brought me
to a place of no wrong answers,
but there is a way to answer wrong.
In this space, I face my own
capacity to deal damage
should I allow myself to get careless.
Behind me, the only world I’ve ever known,
the world that has grown me, made me
into the man, the poet that I currently am.
Ahead of me, a future overcharged with potential
full of plot twists and unexpected meetings,
pathways to carry me a long way from home.
I float within the gravities of each
part leader, part acceptor, all dreamer
given to the freefall of time moving forward.
I can’t afford to mess this up.
3.
Spinning collecting
G-force los-
ing sense of
down spinning
arms flailing
slow
try to slow
no air resistance
adding G-force
spinning rushing
blood to brain
blackened vision
spinning
eight million watching
what to do
what to do
what to do
spinning
collecting G-force
blood forcing
its way
out the eyes
if you don’t stabilize
the mind
spinning
barely hanging on
G-force
like a centrifuge
arms flailing
finally finding
thicker air
feeling movement
resistance stability.
The spinning
gradually comes to a stop.
The body is laid out flat.
The rip cord is pulled.
4.
I’m not sure if I have the courage
to let go of what’s known
but there does come a responsibility
when the heart of another has gotten involved.
I don’t want to hurt anyone.
And in this moment,
I find myself in the shoes of villains
who have done me wrong in the past,
realizing how easy it suddenly becomes
to trip over unfamiliar shoelaces.
One blink, and life is now fuller than ever
with untraveled paths; I spin in the crossroads.
To go one way may take away the possibility
of ever seeing the other destinations,
the lives I won’t know I’m maybe losing.
To find my way requires a marriage of opposites.
Assertiveness and receptivity.
Decisiveness and emotional depth.
Logic and intuition.
A capacity for action and a capacity for connection.
Thus the individual is realized.
The whole, unified personality will shine
generating it’s own magnetisms,
gravities and attractions–
the completion to the most important goal:
to stay true to one’s self
no matter what life throws at you.
5.
After nearly twenty-three miles of freefall,
Felix pops his parachute,
lifts his visor
and breathes real air
for the first time in hours.
Not long after,
he glides to the ground,
his feet running forward with his momentum,
but otherwise safe,
to the celebration of millions.
Now I may not be jumping from the stratosphere
but my journey toward the man
I’m meant to become
is no less grand or impactful.
And if I can be satisfied
with who he is
when his feet
finally touch the ground,
I will know
I have lived a good life.
