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pauraque_bkI dreamed this -- exactly this, pretty much. I fixed the internal logic a bit, but didn't really add any details. It was like watching a movie. WTF brain.
++
The summer that horses flew
That year, when I felt the first breaths of summer coming in, I knew it would be time soon for me to train horses to fly.
I was only a little boy when it came to me to do it. When I walked home from school I passed by the freeway out near the hospital, and I walked under the billboards, I crept among their metal skeleton legs like Imperial Walkers.
One day I looked up, and I can't remember what the advertisement was for. But there were horses, and they were jumping off a cliff towards me into the open air, and I knew -- they knew -- there was nothing in front of their hooves. They were flying.
I sat down on my backpack in the dry grass, cars thundering past just a few feet away, and I gazed up at these monsters, set to fly right over my head. They were painted, not photographed, and everyone knows paintings are more real. Bright roan and impossible white, and their sky was clear and crazy blue, and the straight border of it brushed up against the washed-out gray beyond.
I stopped and sat there every day, as long as I dared, and my heart just ached. I wanted to be there. I knew it was the real world, Dorothy opening the door.
On the first of the month I found it was gone, and there was another billboard, something with lawyers. But it didn't matter. I was better off, since I kept landing in trouble for being late, and anyway I didn't need to look. I could close my eyes and see them.
I suppose I grew up mostly ordinary after that. I was working at the movie theater the first time I saw you. I knew you were a foreigner right off from the way you stood, tall and elegant, and the warmth of your smile. When you asked me when Back to the Future was playing, there was no other voice that could have come from that mouth, just that soft Swahili accent. That was you. And that was that.
Do you remember, there was never any awkwardness between us? When we sat in the dark, your shoulder against mine, and we looked up into the bright flickering window, lost in worlds. A time of not thinking about how people looked at us in the light. Even in the city, they looked.
I liked it better when we moved out east. I still didn't fit in, but I wasn't supposed to. White faces everywhere, even more than now. So there's an excuse for why I'm strange this way. Sometimes they thought I was foreign too.
There was a little job open at the stable, just fetching and carrying, and of course I had to prove myself a long time before I got to do much with the horses. The people were all surprised I could ride.
When I came home and told you about it, you smiled and said, "Will you teach them to fly?"
Of course I'd told you about the billboard long before.
"Yeah," I said, and we both laughed, and I put my arms around you.
Animals see color. More likely, they see how people treat each other, and remember. Not all the horses liked me straight off, and when I exercised them I thought about which ones might trust me enough to fly. I knew all you needed was to believe it; I learned that even younger, even before the billboard. Dumbo didn't need the magic feather. All you needed was to be fooled into it first -- a matter of who, and how.
I got the idea for the ramp when I was watching the ski jump in the Olympics. It was flight, and it took nothing more than gravity and a little curve to get them going enough. It was just because the skiers expected to come down that they did.
This was around the time when you were working for Dewey & Bonham, and not liking it much. You never complained, but I saw it in the set of your shoulders, the line of your mouth. We rented more comedies.
I thought about you as I was building the ramp down on the hillside where the kids sled in the winter. You've never ridden a step on horseback, but I think that might help -- you wouldn't have expectations weighing you down.
I finished the curve around October. I'd looked up everything I could about ski jumps, how they were built, what the proportions should be. I thought it would work, it would be enough. When I stood up at the top of that hill and looked down, I can't deny I had some heavy thoughts. I didn't want the horses to get hurt. But I had to believe they wouldn't. Winter came, and I knew I'd have to wait to train them anyway; it was too icy to take any horse down that hill.
I remember riding Jack out in the woods when there wasn't too much snow on the ground, his hooves crunching softly in the quiet. Every breath was so cold, it felt more real, more solid. Through the gaps in the trees, the sky was painted stark blue.
Jack was already a trained jumper and liked to do it; I could feel it in him when we went over the bars. So when it was summer, and the mud was gone, I knew it had to be him.
I was about to take him up the hill when I heard the car, and saw you pulling up near me. Jack fidgeted; he doesn't like cars. You got out and your jacket was off, your tie hanging down loose.
"They said you were out here. What are you doing?"
I hesitated as you looked the ramp over.
"I always thought you were joking," you said.
"Not really," I said.
"Do you think it's a bit crazy?" you asked mildly, scratching your shoulder.
"Not much more than teaching a horse to carry you," I answered, "or a wolf to play fetch."
"That took a few thousand years, though."
I smiled.
"Well, go on then," you said, and crossed your arms. "Can he do it?"
I was nervous at first, standing with Jack up at the top of the hill, seeing you way down there leaning against the car and shading your eyes. But as soon as we started down, I wasn't nervous anymore -- I was quite calm. What was there to worry for? Jack moved like joy itself, and the curve was coming up, and I closed my eyes, and we jumped.
++
The summer that horses flew
That year, when I felt the first breaths of summer coming in, I knew it would be time soon for me to train horses to fly.
I was only a little boy when it came to me to do it. When I walked home from school I passed by the freeway out near the hospital, and I walked under the billboards, I crept among their metal skeleton legs like Imperial Walkers.
One day I looked up, and I can't remember what the advertisement was for. But there were horses, and they were jumping off a cliff towards me into the open air, and I knew -- they knew -- there was nothing in front of their hooves. They were flying.
I sat down on my backpack in the dry grass, cars thundering past just a few feet away, and I gazed up at these monsters, set to fly right over my head. They were painted, not photographed, and everyone knows paintings are more real. Bright roan and impossible white, and their sky was clear and crazy blue, and the straight border of it brushed up against the washed-out gray beyond.
I stopped and sat there every day, as long as I dared, and my heart just ached. I wanted to be there. I knew it was the real world, Dorothy opening the door.
On the first of the month I found it was gone, and there was another billboard, something with lawyers. But it didn't matter. I was better off, since I kept landing in trouble for being late, and anyway I didn't need to look. I could close my eyes and see them.
I suppose I grew up mostly ordinary after that. I was working at the movie theater the first time I saw you. I knew you were a foreigner right off from the way you stood, tall and elegant, and the warmth of your smile. When you asked me when Back to the Future was playing, there was no other voice that could have come from that mouth, just that soft Swahili accent. That was you. And that was that.
Do you remember, there was never any awkwardness between us? When we sat in the dark, your shoulder against mine, and we looked up into the bright flickering window, lost in worlds. A time of not thinking about how people looked at us in the light. Even in the city, they looked.
I liked it better when we moved out east. I still didn't fit in, but I wasn't supposed to. White faces everywhere, even more than now. So there's an excuse for why I'm strange this way. Sometimes they thought I was foreign too.
There was a little job open at the stable, just fetching and carrying, and of course I had to prove myself a long time before I got to do much with the horses. The people were all surprised I could ride.
When I came home and told you about it, you smiled and said, "Will you teach them to fly?"
Of course I'd told you about the billboard long before.
"Yeah," I said, and we both laughed, and I put my arms around you.
Animals see color. More likely, they see how people treat each other, and remember. Not all the horses liked me straight off, and when I exercised them I thought about which ones might trust me enough to fly. I knew all you needed was to believe it; I learned that even younger, even before the billboard. Dumbo didn't need the magic feather. All you needed was to be fooled into it first -- a matter of who, and how.
I got the idea for the ramp when I was watching the ski jump in the Olympics. It was flight, and it took nothing more than gravity and a little curve to get them going enough. It was just because the skiers expected to come down that they did.
This was around the time when you were working for Dewey & Bonham, and not liking it much. You never complained, but I saw it in the set of your shoulders, the line of your mouth. We rented more comedies.
I thought about you as I was building the ramp down on the hillside where the kids sled in the winter. You've never ridden a step on horseback, but I think that might help -- you wouldn't have expectations weighing you down.
I finished the curve around October. I'd looked up everything I could about ski jumps, how they were built, what the proportions should be. I thought it would work, it would be enough. When I stood up at the top of that hill and looked down, I can't deny I had some heavy thoughts. I didn't want the horses to get hurt. But I had to believe they wouldn't. Winter came, and I knew I'd have to wait to train them anyway; it was too icy to take any horse down that hill.
I remember riding Jack out in the woods when there wasn't too much snow on the ground, his hooves crunching softly in the quiet. Every breath was so cold, it felt more real, more solid. Through the gaps in the trees, the sky was painted stark blue.
Jack was already a trained jumper and liked to do it; I could feel it in him when we went over the bars. So when it was summer, and the mud was gone, I knew it had to be him.
I was about to take him up the hill when I heard the car, and saw you pulling up near me. Jack fidgeted; he doesn't like cars. You got out and your jacket was off, your tie hanging down loose.
"They said you were out here. What are you doing?"
I hesitated as you looked the ramp over.
"I always thought you were joking," you said.
"Not really," I said.
"Do you think it's a bit crazy?" you asked mildly, scratching your shoulder.
"Not much more than teaching a horse to carry you," I answered, "or a wolf to play fetch."
"That took a few thousand years, though."
I smiled.
"Well, go on then," you said, and crossed your arms. "Can he do it?"
I was nervous at first, standing with Jack up at the top of the hill, seeing you way down there leaning against the car and shading your eyes. But as soon as we started down, I wasn't nervous anymore -- I was quite calm. What was there to worry for? Jack moved like joy itself, and the curve was coming up, and I closed my eyes, and we jumped.
