Elodie Barnes

W O R D S • I D E A S : E L O D I E B A R N E S

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

in sirsasana, the headstand, upside down on this wooden platform that has the sea lapping at its feet while my own toes stretch towards the sky. Dark wood, polished only by bare feet and sunlight and the salt of the waves. Breath-soaked wood, whispered mantras held in the grain that curves towards the bay. Citronella wood; the bugs also love a view, and some of the mosquitoes here are as big as a fingernail. Swollen wood, split with the waters of birth. Here is where time loses all meaning, and where it could have been yesterday or the day before that we were taught about vairagya, the concept of non-attachment to the world around us. Attachment causes desire, said the swami, robes ruffling in the breeze, and desire causes pain and suffering. Release yourself from attachment and you will know an element of freedom. If you want to fly, you have to let go of everything that weighs you down. Later, wrapped in a borrowed sweatshirt against the evening chill, I’ll send my ex-partner another message: 'I think you’d do well here. ' There’s nothing I can think of in the lost bag that I really miss.

III

The ocean swims around my body in shades, not so much of blue but of green: the same turquoise and jade that I saw from the plane, and a deeper green, too, like liquid palm trees. Drops run down my skin, catching on the purple of the borrowed bikini. Bottle-glass in blinding sunlight. The lush ashram gardens seem to be in the water, or even to be the water itself, shifting hues of jasmine and oleander and bougainvillea, flowers glinting on the surface that disappear when I reach for them. The illusion of reality. Only when you stop grasping will you know freedom, the swami said, and sure enough when I hold my body as still as I can, treading water with the current, the tropics overflow around me. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. I think it’s a moment that I’ll remember forever, but then wonder whether memories hold the same weight as things. Will I need to let those go, too? There are other moments too precious to lose: the vibration of the meditation bell on my skin; the warm breeze of the morning when it’s still dark, soft and rustling and tinged with sea salt. But already they have a slight haze to them. Maybe, in the end, they won’t be memories at all, but stories I’ll tell myself over and over again until something resembling a memory has no choice but to form. Maybe the echo won’t weigh as much as the original sound. Later, I’ll send my ex-partner another message: I wish you could see this place. It seems I’m still attached to certain things, certain people, certain ways of being. I haven’t yet learned to fly on my own.

IV

I put my rucksack under the seat in front. It’s even emptier now, without all the toiletries I jammed in at this same airport just four weeks ago. I’m going home with almost nothing of what I left with; luggage now is of a different kind, a much more pleasant kind. The remnants of the sea on my skin are warm, the anticipation of what’s ahead so light as to be almost weightless. This is how far I’ve come, and how far I have still to go. True vairagya takes lifetimes to cultivate. Across the aisle, a couple struggles with cases that push the carry-on limit in both size and weight, voices angry and cheeks dripping with sweat. I don’t think they notice the sun glinting off the wing as we take off. They don’t look out of the window, down, watching what they’ve left behind fade to pinpricks on the map.

Elodie Barnes is a writer and editor. Her work has been recently published / is forthcoming in Gone Lawn, Wild Roof Journal, and Amethyst Review, and she is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform. When not travelling, she lives on the edge of a wood in northern England and bakes vast quantities of apple cake. Find her online at elodierosebarnes.weebly.com, and on Instagram @elodierosebarnes.