skydiving, continued from page 5

is the beauty of the northern shore of Pontchartrain, and the parallel clarity of the Sunday morning sky and my normally clouded but now strangely clear thoughts. Death is the farthest thing from my mind. In fact, I feel like life has never dominated my thinking more. Then Corey opens the door. I have been deceived by the steady creep of the Cessna. The relative ease of its crawl across the sky is quickly replaced by the blast of triple-digit wind resistance smacking me in the face. I instinctively retract my claws like the previously referenced cat, unconsciously grabbing what I learn later from photographic evidence is the back of pilot Kevin Coltons headrest. My fingers are sore later from this death grip. I do, however, manage to keep my limbs from excessive flailing, though I cannot say there was no flailing whatsoever. Hippie wakes up and tells me to squat like a catcher so he can connect to me. I assent robotically. When he makes the connection, he tells me to fall back into his lap, which is warm and comforting against the unexpectedly cold wind. Im too paralyzed with instinctive fear to notice that Corey has climbed out on the wing of the plane to take photos of my exit. Im too paralyzed to even notice that Im scared. Everything is a lucid dream. Tom tells me to crawl to the opening and place my foot on the external step, which looks microscopically tiny against the panorama of South Louisiana. I stick my foot out and miss the step by quite a bit. Fortunately, I correct my mistake and succeed on the second attempt. Im not really breathing at this point. Its more like the oxygen is forcing its way into my lungs, while my fear contractions force out the carbon dioxide. Hippie verifies the spot. He tells me to cross my arms, and then, my body pressing fully into his, we flip. The expression jumping out of a plane is a total misnomer and is wholly inappropriate. Jumping implies exerting a strong enough force against gravity as to move higher. At 12,000 feet, you stand no chance against gravity. Falling is the only fitting term for what happens once you make that front-flip exit out the door. The initial flip is disorienting, and once Hippie rights us, its on. I initially feel my form is somehow off, but Hippie, my guide and altitudinal guru, gently grabs my hair and pulls my head up from its improper angle. The view is no longer my purple knees, but the northern coast of Lake Pontchartrain, the causeway running to New Orleans and the bulging Mississippi River brimming in the distance. But heres the kicker: any fears I felt, however little compared to expectations, remain in the plane. The fall, instead, is peaceful not boring peaceful, but exciting peaceful, like resting in the arms of a loved one after a long separation. Maybe its the aforementioned confusion of equilibrium that abates the nerves, or maybe its subconscious pleasure that the earth wants you so much as to pull you toward itself at 120-mph speeds. It could also be the incredibly powerful faith I have in Hippie, who begins to resemble a ruddier, be-stubbled Jesus in my minds eye, his arms outstretched in sacrifice and protection. The freefall lasts from 45 to 60 seconds, but it seems both instant and eternal all at the same time. The air rushes through my nostrils and burns the back of my throat, colder as we pass through the clouds, and Im acutely aware of each and every breath in the drop. Corey catches up to us for photographs and grabs my wrist, nearly knocking me from my meditative perch 9,000 feet above the earth. I try to scream because it seems like what one should do while skydiving, but I cant hear myself, so I try to scream louder. Corey then does some really cool flips and awesome facial expressions, so I respond with an attempt at a Jordan-like tongue expulsion. The wind does not allow this, and my tongue clumsily slaps against my filtrum, spraying saliva bullets all over my goggles. After the mid air photo sesh, Corey dives down further below, dropping at a rate that seems unnatural. Hippie deploys the chute at 7,000 feet, and the rest of the fall is the best sightseeing Ill probably ever do. My thoughts begin to re-emerge, and I suddenly realize that for the first time since I finished my college basketball career (in the loosest sense of the word career), my mind had been completely still. I then realize why I love sports so much, be it basketball, soccer, or even skydiving. Its not the sound of thousands of spectators oohing and aah-ing or the thrill of victory in a heated contest. Rather, its that in sports, the excitement, the pre-game jitters, and the rambling thoughts subside at the moment the challenge begins. In any such moment of expression be it athletic, literary, musical, or scientific all is still, and we simply play, falling deeply within our finally quiet selves. There, we discover eternity, and staring death in the face, we find it non-existent.

But heres the kicker: any fears I felt, however little compared to expectations, remain in the plane.

DIG May 25, 2011 digbatonrouge.com