25 stories up isn’t that high. Whenever they have a ‘jumper’ scene the ledge is always like 6 inches across and cracked, with pebbles falling down in a brittle state – anything to heighten the drama. This isn’t at all that narrow, a foot maybe with no cracks. I believe the building got erected in the early 70’s, so perhaps the architects were sensitively thinking with us jumpers in mind?
It isn’t that I want to jump really. Mom would say I was testing limits again. She liked to say that when I was my angriest just to watch me roll my eyes. She said I always pushed limits. I'd sarcastically reply that I learned from the best. Mom who reminded me in a continual stream of creative ways that my sole accomplishment was quitting things and burning bridges. Mom who never held a job or boyfriend for longer than two years liked to pour out her inner angst on me instead of the mirror. The game of life is easier played that way.
It’s weird looking at the world from this angle. Usually one looks up to see what’s going on. But from here you have to look down because everything north is stagnate – almost on pause. Like the sky is waiting for something to happen. The cars look like bugs, all filing down rows in no real importance. I’m suddenly reminded of a pez dispenser. The little plastic doohicky that pretends to have a function but really doesn’t. We’re all like that. We busy ourselves in our cars, going to our jobs we hate just so we can go home and bitch and pretend were important when none of it matters at all. If everyone stopped getting in their pez dispensers and going to work, if everyone dropped dead, the sky would still be stagnate waiting in its passive aggressive way as if to say, “Is that the best you got?” I suddenly feel a strange kin to the north, to the clouds- the blue, vast blanket of air, of nothing, waiting there so patiently, not giving a fuck really what happens down here at all. I suddenly love her. The sky is a lover I want. The unobtainable mystery dripping with allure, The locked lips of secrecy. The one place nothing happens, or needs to happen to be utterly whole and complete. I want to dip into her whispers for good and own her truth. It’s perfectly fitting that the skie's gender be female.
When I think of god, I think that he/she/it gave us two gifts. The gift of life and what we choose to do with it, and the gift of calling it quits whenever we want. The way I see it we are all pieces on a grandiose size monopoly board and God is Hasbro. He designed it all with a sly smile and we are his sick entertainment until the end of time. Well, I say fuck your thimble! Your horse-head, iron and dog. I want my goddamn luscious cloud to sail away on. God never put that game piece in as a possibility. Then again, why would he? Giving us the idea to ‘sail away’ from the gameboard would provide less entertainment for him. But ya know, I’m one step ahead of that crucified martyr, he can keep his monopoly and heaven, I want the space between – I want the vast, beautiful, lax, secret sky. I want to languor lusciously in love with soft clouds between my toes and all the unpretentious time in the world. I wanna look down and laugh at the pez people in their purple P.T. Cruisers pretending they have somewhere important to be. I wanna look up and faintly see gates closed to me, which is fine since the sin I own I'm told won't allow me access anyway. I want to feel complete where I am, house certainty for once in my pitiful – pez life. I wonder if anyone ever thought of grabbing on? Not trying to die, mind you but gutsily jumping out to those clouds with every intention of holding on? Is that the secret? Have I discovered the answer?
Does intention define result?
Christians intend themselves to god fully and believe through their faith their rightful place in heaven. Why should it be any different for me? If I believe enough in my rightful place among the secrets of the sky, will my deep faith grant me a cloud?
Unintentionally my excited feet have shuffled dare I say, a dramatic pebble from the ledge. I wouldn’t believe it either if I didn’t feel sand grit from under my high-tops. Is this how it really unfolds? I’ve noticed now after this occurrence of looking down that the monopoly pieces have ceased moving below. I can make out a blinking light from under the building I’m on and realize now that it is in the form of an ambulance – in other words, the highest official pez dispenser under Hasbro designed to keep all game-pieces playing correctly, do-not-pass-go. Once they get up here they will send me a ‘go to jail’ card and smile up at their manufacturer for a pat on the head. A job well done. Game-pieces resume play.
My toes feel a tingle from the excitement. I wait only for the chance I get to view disappointment in such grandeur. I close my eyes and attempt faith at max warp speed for the skies secrets and all it holds in store for me. The voices that predictably show up from behind me urging me down are no surprise, merely the helpful push I needed.
At that moment the adrenaline coursing through my body was I imagine a parallel to a junkie on their best high. Five seconds tops I guess. And I think I did grab on – even momentarily. What did my faith grant me as it slid through my fingers? A moments touch of dancing dangerously close to the secrets of the sky? What would Mom say at me pushing this limit? The sad truth is that I think I already know. What if she's right? What if my biggest and perhaps only success is forever attempting to obtain the unobtainable? Who is to say I haven't?
I am not able to tell you what they found in my tight-fisted grip as the ambulance surrounded my form. I'm choosing to believe it looked a bit like faith, the purest most honest leap of faith...
