It is not very often that I have awoken from a restful siesta to find myself sitting above the clouds, watching them in their seemingly great mass rolling and swaying, dipping and rising just as the sea does. There is a special feeling about it, being higher up than anyone else, being able to see that gorgeous streak of orange rising gently into a cosmic green, which transforms as instantly as it appears to that familiar sky blue and finally fading into the black wilderness of deep space. It’s peaceful and it’s heavenly, it gives you a taste of what the deities must feel like when they are perched up here looking over our world.
Then suddenly the plane begins to jolt and shake around you, tearing you violently away from the soft ambience of the cushioned white paradise. Your heart begins to race. Faster and faster. It beats off the inside of your chest. The cabin shudders left, with screeches and cries of metallic pain, that makes your imagination run away with itself. It takes you places that you never want to tread, that deep dark pit of your mind. The place to be entered at your own risk, nothing good can come from letting your mind stray here. It is bitter, bleak and barren of any sense of reason or rational thought. The plane stoops, rattles and swerves right. The force makes your stomach jump and in its surprise you begin to feel sick.
Scared to death by the thought of what is to come – you see the flames crackling around scorched and barely recognisable faces, there complexions missing, replaced by the hideous black residue. You can only breathe deeply and grip the arm rests, stiffening your spine up against the seat, desperate for it to make you feel safe again. But it does no good. The plane dips towards those clouds once more, throwing the contents of your stomach upwards. Stomach retching you try to claw for the paper bags. You know one more jolt, a tiny shudder or a sudden dip will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end as your stomach convulses, sending its contents plummeting into the bottom of the bag. But just as it all seems so desperately close, the turbulence fades to a stop. The sea of clouds parts, the miracle happens before your very eyes and all you can do is gaze in appreciation as the roads and lights of civilisation are revealed to you in their most sparkling glory. The lit up streets etch a pattern across the earth, like the veins of the great cities. And you realise your home again.
