Soaring to new heights: Believing in the art of flying

We see our lives as a chain of events, one leading to the other, carving out a path in a dense forest of possibilities. A "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. But what do these isolated events tell us about who we are? How do they define us as unique individuals? Upon asking such questions, it occurs to me that the purpose of this column is not to show how I am unique, but to show why I am exactly like you. We want to know about other people not always to see how different they are, but to see how similar they are, to find the parts of ourselves that are reflected in them.

That is why we describe events to strangers and dreams to friends. Our dreams, our desires are where we are connected. But we realize that only with the precious few we are willing to be vulnerable to. With that in mind, I can no longer toss out an amusing anecdote about Attack Force or my spring break, and I suddenly realize that I have nothing left to do but tell you about flying.

I am not talking about airplanes or hang gliders. I am talking about my body, unaccompanied, gliding over patterns of streets snaking through nests of rooftops. I can't remember how long ago it started — although perhaps it was at birth. Swimming is a lot like flying, and I can imagine that my obsession with flying was born when I was thrust into the air for the first time.

Who would want to learn to walk — such a clumsy activity — if your body could glide and turn and dip in the air, untethered by gravity? What I do remember for certain is that when I was four or five, my mother bought me a pair of glittery wings for a fairy costume. I kept those wings until they finally collapsed into a pile of bent wire and tattered, sparkling gauze.

I don't remember that Halloween, but I do remember a different night, left alone in the living room while my family watched a movie downstairs. I was at the delicious age where I would believe almost anything, and I believed I could learn to fly. I pulled a chair into the middle of the living room to use as my launching pad. Dumbo's cliff. I would climb on top of the chair and jump off, flapping my arms as hard as I could. I remember thinking that sometimes I fell slower than usual, and that encouraged me even more. I practiced until I wore myself out, climbing on the chair and jumping off again, over and over.

Little kids do funny little things, don't they? But even as I lost interest in all the things kids lose interest in as they age — Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy (although I still maintain, rather stubbornly I suppose, that I did see the tooth fairy one night) — I never lost interest in flying. I did stop believing that I was hitting the ground more and more slowly. Although there are parts of me that will never give up believing that flying is possible, they are small parts, and for the most part I have stopped believing.

But I have not stopped thinking about it. Flying is not always the center of my thoughts, but it lingers on the periphery of my mind, entering with a sudden explosion, then curtsying slowly back to the outer edges. Perhaps that is where my love of the sky is from. I love the sky, I am enchanted with clouds. I often stop to stare at the sky, and when I do, I almost inevitably think of flying. Sometimes it is a nostalgic wave, a mere memory of the naive dreams of my childhood. But sometimes it is different. Every once in a while, on a particularly beautiful evening, I will stand with my head thrown back, staring into the sky, and cry because I cannot join it.

Annie Jollymore '02 is a sociology major from Oakland, Calif.

'A Glimpse Within' is a weekly column in which we ask members of the Princeton community to share personal experiences. The 'Prince' welcomes submissions of about 650 words to The Newsroom.