"PULL THAT," HE SAID. IT WAS PLAINLY MARKED RELEASE. | I was at a crossroads in my life but didn’t know it. I had reached a saturation point with my work in feature films, and yet I wouldn’t allow myself to consider any other kinds of work; I was unhappy and I didn’t know why. I was driving through a bleak stretch of high chaparral between Northern California and Southern California when I saw the hawk. He was soaring directly above me, perhaps even using some of my slipstream (he was that close), and was matching my velocity without moving his wings. He was gliding at a ferocious speed, in what seemed like a blissful state of aerodynamic perfection. I juggled keeping an eye on the road ahead of me and watching him tear through the air without effort, and finally I murmured aloud, “I wanna do that.” In less than a minute, a hand-painted sandwich board appeared at the side of the road: GLIDER FLIGHTS NEXT RIGHT I was so startled by the coincidence, I took my foot off the gas and allowed the car to slow down. What was I doing? The right turn appeared soon enough, and I took it. I discovered a small ranch with another glider sign out in front, and within fifteen minutes I’d signed a stack of liability forms and handed over what seemed to be just a little too much money for a ride in a glider plane. I found myself in the front seat, with a pilot seated directly behind me, and a nylon-webbing tow line attached to a two-propeller plane parked in front of me. The tow plane began its ascent and we rose into the air with it. As we flew around for a minute or two, I couldn’t help but notice that we were positioned directly in the exhaust trail of the tow plane, which meant that we were breathing fairly strong and unpleasant fumes. As anyone who has just spent a little too much money will tend to do in these situations, I decided -- with a choked gasp -- that it was part of the adventure. The tow line had a degree of elasticity, so that it slightly exaggerated the movements of the tow plane. This meant that the vessel I was in had an incessant jerking motion, which fit in nicely with the exhaust fumes as a recipe for nausea. I couldn’t remember how long the fellow had said the ride was going to last. I was making the best of all of this when the pilot tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a large yellow knob on the dashboard directly in front of me. “Pull that,” he said. It was plainly marked RELEASE. I did no such thing. Now, I’m used to being obedient, but I found myself unable to willfully detach us from the thing that had pulled us up in the air. I knew that we had no motor or propellers of our own. “Pull the tow release now,” he said, firmly. His tone jolted me out of my stupor. I pulled the release and as the tow plane turned right, we veered left. Two things happened immediately. The air we were breathing was suddenly clean and clear, and the vibrating and shaking stopped completely. We were soaring. Like the hawk, we were careening through the air at high speed, with only the wind to listen to. I was transported. The pilot let me steer. It was exhilarating. It was a thousand times more amazing than I’d hoped. It was only a few months later that a good friend helped me notice how unhappy I had become in my work. In case I needed it, he said, he gave me permission to try doing something else with my life. Apparently I did need permission of some kind, because I quit the movie business the next day. As I adjusted to the new rhythms and priorities of my post-movie-industry life, that big yellow knob would appear in my thoughts, and I marveled at how resistant I had been to pulling it. It saddened me that I could so readily adapt to the exhaust fumes, the jerking and the shaking, as if they were part of a perfectly acceptable ride. Since then, I suppose I think everyone should yearn to fly as the hawk flies, fast and effortless, and be suspicious when tempted to accept less. And above all, keep an eye out for that big yellow knob marked RELEASE. |
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the authorThe author was once able to command vast numbers of troops to do his bidding on movie sets. He is now content to be able to decide when to go to bed and when to wake up, every day. |