WORDS • IDEAS: ELODIE BARNES
Flying Lessons by Elodie Barnes
I It’s around 10am, I think. I’m not sure. I’m high above the morning, suspended in the throb of an airplane engine, that strange space where time doesn’t reach. Far below, islands spill like drops of oil on the sea’s surface; shades of turquoise and jade and aquamarine. A tiny cruise ship languishes between two blues. Wisps of cloud drop their shadows onto waves, snatches of white that appear and then vanish. The world seems to stretch out like a sapphire, a luxurious cliché of tropical beauty, and I hang above it alone, with nothing except the rucksack under the seat in front of me. Everything else has been lost, left somewhere between airports, somewhere over the other ocean I crossed yesterday. I don’t know how or where or why. Even my yoga mat has gone. How will I do yoga teacher training with no yoga mat? In the rucksack is stuffed everything useful that the airport had to offer in the two-hour shopping window between flights. Two t-shirts, two pairs of leggings, three pairs of knickers, and as many travel-sized toiletries as I could find. A pair of flipflops, a comb. A pack of tampons. After all, I’m staying where I’m going for a month. I pull my phone from my pocket, look again at the message from my ex-partner back home. Hug emoji after hug emoji. Have you ever heard the saying ‘if you want to fly, you have to let go of everything that weighs you down’? More hugs. I have heard it before. I wonder if whoever said it had ever actually tried it.
II My borrowed yoga mat smells of rubber and sea salt and lavender cleaning spray. The deep breaths I take to try and balance myself swirl all the scents together; when I open my eyes, the waves shift and glimmer as the clouds. It’s my second time
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