contrail

Many times I look up into the sky and wish I were a contrail. To be something so fleeting, but to have that perspective. To be suspended in the sky for a moment, over cities, countries, continents...people. To find meaning in minutes and not years - what an amazing idea.

    
When I was little and dreamed about the future it extended to ranches with a zillion horses that I would ride all day, and never have the bother of jobs, work, money - all of those horrible things that make the world go round. I dreamt of simplicity.

    
Now, I dream of places, things I want see, stuff I want to eat. To attain that cultural, palatable, visual realm of exploration and experience. And the older I get the more I wish it could be true that I could just go, and maybe (just maybe) come back.  

    
I’ve never had that satisfying taste of adventure that Mark Twain would say is necessary. I read the books, and I watch the shows, and all it does is whet my appetite, it makes me hunger for those experiences that are as exciting as they are terrifying.

    
When I look out of my window the contrail in that picture is now a highlighter pink stripe across the sky, a testament to the vibrant beauty that comes from that magical scientific process of the refraction of light - I have scarcely seen a thing so beautiful, so enticing.

    
To be a thing left in the sky for all to see, to make poor dreamers like me wonder, and to aid in the desire to be on the plane that left that mark. To be the white flesh of a scar on Earth’s wide atmosphere, but to be impermanent. Wow. It’s truly terrifying...and yet, what I want most.

    
These thoughts make me feel young and ill-prepared for what my future will really hold. But I really hope that someday I get to be on something that makes contrails, going somewhere strange and wild...maybe to stay.