on feeling + flying

"Having begun to feel,  people's desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions. It's possible that this is how art was born. New kinds of joy were forged, along with new kinds of sadness: The eternal disappointment of life as it is; the relief of unexpected reprieve; the fear of dying.

Even  now, all possible feelings do not exist. There are still those who lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact."

(Nicole Krauss, The History of Love)

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I don't always love flying, but I love the way I feel when I fly—the clarity of skimming the earth at such a great speed. Of having nothing to do but sit, wait, and watch the light stream by.

It is such a feeling:

You descend through the air. 

First, through light, bright and unwavering.

Then, through cloud cover, softly. 'Till finally you are hovering above the frozen land, watching the thick ice on the river form shapes as you pass overhead. 

It is the opposite of cloud gazing; from the air, you look down and your eyes trace the shape of the earth.