satyapriya

Yesterday, after meeting BusinessMarketingGirl at lunch (one of those chance conversations when you share a table), I realised that I had given her the advice of: 'go do the things, because you never know', but I was not living it. I'd joked that 'maybe I'll go hang gliding'.
After lunch, I walked straight down to one of the many 'sign the backpackers up to do stuff' places on Jonson St (I'm in Byron Bay for my semi-annual family retreat). A very enthusiastic Geordie young man got me in to do hang gliding.
I walked out, my head already floating off my shoulders with impending stress. I hauled myself straight into Planet Corroboree, a co-op that sells Aboriginal Art. I'm rather fond of the place, because I bought my favourite tie-dye skirt there a year ago.
I went to the small section devoted to nature-themed oracle decks, and without shuffling, cut three decks where they felt right. Creativity, Creativity, Homecoming. I'd asked what I'd get from hang gliding.
Well...okay....

Today dawned, and I was awake to the beautiful sound of the restaurant bins being emptied. I don't need an alarm clock in this little airbnb apartment I rent on Bay Lane, up above Fish Mongers, and Asia Joe's.
"Oh yeah, hang gliding." No excitement, just a vague feeling of dread, which is what I feel about most things these days. Excitement - my brain gives dread. Comfy in bed - dread that it won't last. Oh fuck off, brain.
10am, and Neil picked me up outside the Collins Booksellers store. Up to the launch point, near the Byron light-house. The launch platform is a simple wooden ramp that juts out over the cliff face. Well-maintained (it would want to be), and green, to blend in with foliage. Another company was launching also, and helped Neil with his equipment. Neil's own assistant was off-road, car broken down. I carried my own harness. Ta-dah! I did not act helpless female. I knew that if I helped with the glider, I'd hurt my shoulder again, and I can't afford to re-tear the rotator cuff. Five years, and I still don't have full mobility.
Neil set up his glider. I was pleased to see it had a stripe of purple on it. Following the logic of my first tandem parachute jump, where they handed me a purple a jumpsuit, and I randomly thought: "Good. Nothing bad can happen to me while I wear purple", I again figured I'd be okay, because The Purple.
Into the faded blue harness, which is like a body suit that covers from collar bones to mid-thigh, the crotch dangling. Well, I felt attractive....
On with a bright orange crash helmet, but not so much emphasis on the crash, please, Satya.
I was still joking at this stage, pretending to pose for glamour shots, while Neil checked and rechecked the struts of the glider. 15th best hang glider in the world, with trophies to prove it. 40 years of hang gliding. Taken up over 14.000 people. Safer to do this than drive a car. All the reassuring talk, which I heard but didn't take in.
Neil and I rehearsed the take off. I stand behind him, slightly to the right. My left hand holding the back of his harness, my right holding the front of the right arm of his harness. We run together, and take off.
We try it. I trip over, and go to my hands and knees on the gritty ashphalt. I skin one knee, my hands tingle, and later I discover I've taken a bit of skin off the top of each foot.
"Why did you do that?"
"I tripped."
"Oh, well, don't do that next time."
I don't. The next 3 times we try it, I run with my knees pumping high, like a puppet. Two more people are preparing to launch, and all have family with them. They, and the other team are watching me prance-run behind Neil, bobbing like a little squat bird.
The dodo comes to mind, but they were flightless. A goose or gannet, perhaps, I and I cover my fear with jokes to the crowd, and funny faces of mock fear, and self-deprecation. I feel like a silly, middle-aged, short, squat, dumpy woman who is turniing fussy and fearful as she ages. I want to be one of those chilled Byron Bay women I see gliding around the streets, and along the beaches early morning, and at sunset. Serene, stream-lined, at peace with themselves.
I suspect that at least some of them have chemical help of some sort. I have chemical help too, but there's a much stronger streak of fussy chook in me than I want to admit.
Neil, and another man walk the glider up the launch platform, and Neil hooks himself in. I stand at the bottom of the platform, and suddenly, the dread is overwhelming.
I shake my head.
"I can't do this."
Neil holds out his weathered hand. "Come on, darling, yes you can. You walk up here beside me."
I walk, as though to execution, up the platform, but I'm ready to call it off. This is stupid. I've nothing to prove to anyone. I've done tandem parachuting, tandem parasailing, ziplining, and white water rafting. Twice I've lain down on the labour table, as millions of women have, not completely sure they'll get up again. For the sake of my children, I've faced down barking dogs, pigs of doctors, surgeons, specialists, and been in the operating theatre with both kids and seen Black & Decker drills waiting to carve out pieces of their skulls. I've died, and come back.
"I can't do this," I say, starting to sob.
Neil hooks me up, his low voice talking all the while in quiet, calming ways. Yes, you can, he says, over and over.
Like an automaton, he instructs me to hold on, and I hold on. I scream that I've forgotten what to do with my hands once we take off, and he goes through it again, and says he'll remind me once we're up.
No. I can't. I won't.
"Run now, darling," he says.
I start my goose high-step. Two steps, light ones, and we're up. My body memory feels the steps, but my vision has nothing recorded of the take-off, but suddenly, we are up high, alive, and it's quiet.
My harness has a sort of body bag behind it. Neil asks me to step, one foot at a time, back into it, and keep my legs straight. I do so. He zips me up, and there I am, a half-encased mummy. It takes some coaxing, but I quit clutching Neil's harness and hold my own. He steers us up and around.
"Right now, we are the most easterly people in Australia," he says, casual. I look down. Those black rocks there, beyond the light house, that's where our continent, and country, ends. I'm above it. Beyond it. Between the worlds. Clear blue sky. Down below, vivid blue, postcard blue ocean, yellow-white sand with a high tide mark. A couple of people on the beach, and back behind us, the launch platform, now tiny, another couple getting ready to soar, and beyond them, Byron Bay township, and Main Beach full of swimmers, sunbakers, and walkers. Over to our right, a man is solo-ing. The red streamer on his glider indicates he's a learner.
The tops of the trees look like broccoli, and on a nearby hills, stripes of grey and green scrub flow upwards to the peak. Some trees sport white flowers, which are an invasive vine.
On the beach below, a woman stands, flips her pink and white striped towel, and resettles herself to bake some more.
The white light house is picture perfect against te cerulean ocean.
I am conscious of my left hip nestled into Neil's right buttock, or perhaps his butt crack, and the strain of keeping my legs straight, feet pushed against the solid bottom of the body bag. My lower back aches a little, and I know my neck is arched back to see down and forward. My stomach muscles work to keep me from flopping.
The wind is cool, and I don't feel the sun's heat, even though it must be 11.30am. I have sun factor 50+ sunscreen over me, but with my fair skin, that might not mean a lot. I don't feel myself burning, but I'm glad the glider provides shade.
We stay up for 20 minutes or so. We do one spectacular turn, which is much gentler than the whirlies that the idiot parasailer guy did with me in New Zealand.
Landing: Neil takes me slowly through the procedure. We'll come lower, then he'll unzip my body bag and I'll dangle my feet. I'll grip his harness again, and we'll zoom down, skim for about 15 seconds, come down. No lifting my legs and him landing first, like parachuting.
Gently, we float lower, he unzips me. My feet dangle. The air is cool on them. I look down at them, and for a moment, I hallucinate I have my brown sandals on, instead of my grey ones. I look again. Still brown. A third time. Grey.
We are lower, and lower. I've his harness in a death-grip. I'm expecting an awful bump, to go arse-over, face-plant, something.
We glide in, the sand rushing underneath us, everything quiet, then down, one step, and done. My knees turn to jelly and I lock them while Neil unhooks me.
One of the men from the other team helps Neil stagger the glider off the beach and through a break in the foliage.
The girl with the pink and white towel sits with her knees up, covering her bare breasts.
"How was it?"
I burble something at her. "Good," most likely.
My brain isn't working yet.
I trudge through the warm sand, willing my knees to work. I am waddling, I know it.
Behind the scrub is a small car park, a couple of camper vans, and a three cars. A few trees and some grass to sit on. I wait, again, stiff-legged, for Neil and his friend to bring the glider to rest on the grass, and Neil then takes me out of my harness. I sink down on the grass, cross-legged.
"Give us a hug, darlin'. Well done, you did it. You were a brave, brave girl," Neil says. I get up, shaking, and stiffly hug Neil. I plaster a shaky smile on my face.
"You should be so proud of yourself."
I nod. I can't process that yet. I can't get to proud yet. I'm still jelly, still between matter and ether.
Right now, I don't mind the 'darling' and 'good girl'. Yes, I am a good girl. A very, very good girl. Good girl, Satya, even if you are a grown feminist woman. You did a scary thing. Good, good girl.
I sit again, and only then notice the man with the deep tan, and the tattoos on his legs, sitting in the doorway of his camper van, rolling a home grown something cigarette. He and I talk hang gliding, how it was, how he thinks he might do it.
He and Neil talk. Ciggie Man loves this little nook. Said he nearly stepped on a red-bellied black snake just before. He didn't see it, but his girlfriend did. I'm sitting on the grass. Snakes? There are black snakes around? I try to be grateful that if there are red-bellied blacks, they are eating the more venomous browns.
Snakes.
"He was reared up, ready to strike," says Ciggie Man.
Neil talks of a red-bellied black he saw last week, reared up to strike, his red deep on the edges, to a flame-orange in the centre, and so black he looked polished.
Ciggie Man and Neil love snakes, love all animals. Except mozzies, and ticks. Neil says mozzies will be humanity's downfall, with malaria, and Ross River fever.
Snakes. Maybe mozzies and ticks. I'm sitting on grass. The ants are big black ones. But I'm in the shade, not sunburning, and it's cool enough, and my knees won't let me move yet.
"Look at her, calm as a Buddha," says Neil. "Hey, do you think you could play her some blues? Something a bit Muddy Waters?"
Ciggie Man gets out his guitar and plays me a song he wrote after the death of his eighteen year old dog. She died with her eyes open, her head in his lap, looking up at him, and he buried her in his guitar case. It's still fresh after two months.
I think of how badly I reacted earlier this year when I thought Angel had died.
I want to ask him to play some Johnny Cash, but I'm too shy suddenly.
Neil hitches a ride with the other team back up to his car, and quickly enough reappears. Ciggie Man helps him load the glider onto his roof rack, and soon we are away.
It's done.
My head is still floating, I'm still shaking, I have a memory card with video of the flight in my purse, and Neil is telling me that green tea will help calm the adrenaline rush. He drops me at Red Ginger, a cafe where there might be free green tea. I thank him, wait till he's driven off, and walk back up along Jonson St to Manna Haven, for some bland and safe food from the Seventh Day Adventist vegan cafe.
I text PizzaBoy and TwentiesGirl. I shovel in vegan lasagne, but am numb.
I did it.
I did it. My head spins throughout lunch and my body recalls my feet dangling, those two steps before launch, and the broccoli of the trees below me.
My anti-depressant sees to it that I don't feel much, and that it will take about 12 hours for me to really come to terms with what just happened. Maybe longer, if my brain perceives the immediacy of it all is too much.

Back in my room, I blog this. I think of Neil telling me: "I think you doubt yourself too much. You are braver than you think. I think you've got to stop doubting, and just go for it."
He did, forty years ago. He saw hang gliding, and five months later, became an instructor. He's not looked back.
I think about my writing. What if I were braver? What if I said fuck it to what friends, family, and everything else thinks, and wants to me to not say, and just write it all? What if?
This blog is a start.