The Fuzz

         As I stand here, on the road, facing the great forrest in the night, I think of how much I hate flying. I hate it with a profound passion. A passion that comes from so deep inside me, it’s completely uncontrollable. It can’t even be confronted. As I sat in my seat, legs bunched up against the seat of the faceless entity in front of me, all I could think is I hate this. I hate what this experience is doing to me. I hate it and I can’t get off, I couldn’t get off if I wanted to, even if I went crazy. Even if I went insane and screamed, writhing in the aisle for them to let me off, it would still take a half hour to get off, unless I just jumped out, but is that fair? Should I fall to my death because it’s the only other way? I hate this.
         The first thing anyone says about a fear of flying is “statistically speaking, driving is far more dangerous than flying. Flying is safer and faster! What is there to be afraid of.” I think of a car crash. I think of what it would be like to die in a car. It would be like nothing. It wouldn’t be like anything. There would be a swift moment of panic, over compensation, of trying to save yourself. Then what would happen? When you hit the tree, what would happen then? Nothing would happen I think. Nothing because you are everything, to you, and if something is so fast you can’t see it then it doesn’t happen, to you, and when there is no you than there is nothing, to you. That’s not what flying is like. When you realize it’s happening, there are moments of waiting. Waiting to meet the ground, or the ocean. Not trying to save yourself. Not doing anything. Just sitting there, in your uncomfortable chair, doing nothing, wide-eyed, waiting. Into the great unknown. But you have time to realize everything, that’s what’s important. You have enough time that you have to realize everything. It has time to sink in, to get to you. And what are statistics then? You push your head into your uncomfortable seat, close your eyes, and think calmly this shouldn’t be happening, statistically speaking. Statistically speaking, there’s almost no chance that this is happening! But you know it is, no amount of statistics will ever be able change your mind about that. No amount of statistical “safety” is worth the possibility of an experience so real, so imprisoning, as that.
         Every dive starts with a tiny dip. For a fraction of a second, every engine failure has felt, to the passengers, exactly the same as a little bit of turbulence. Once I realized this, I could never fly again. With every dip, I could only think, This is It. This might as well be It. This could be It, until This stops, but the only difference between This and It is that It never stops. It keeps going. But This hasn’t stopped, not yet. So for now, This is It. I’d look around at the other passengers. Doing the same things they’d be doing in the waiting room at the doctors’ office. They do their sudokus, their crosswords, they read their books, they watch their movies, they sleep. They sleep! They let themselves sleep during It! They would all look so stupid if It ever never stopped. I hate thinking of that awful point, should it come, when people start to realize. “It isn’t stopping… why isn’t It stopping!” And the screaming, there would probably be screaming. Torture! Torture that no man can imagine! That awful balance between primal fear and sleeping, tipped off by the prolonged diving, and then the screaming. But at first they’re both the same, the turbulence and the great unknown. It all starts the same way. So I have to prepare myself. So I have to prepare myself! So I have to prepare myself I have to be ready
         So I look out the window, to make myself and my thoughts feel small, insignificant, to forget myself. To be lost in the utter size of everything. I see cities, sprawling suburbs, tiny cars, which from up there just look like tiny lights, roads, roads, roads. Never people. You can’t see people, they’re too small. You can only see their resultants. I saw a car crash from a plane, once. At least, I think I did. It’s hard to tell. Two white lights and two red lights approached each other, it looked like their paths would cross… and they did. Or they almost did. At the last instant, just before the red lights would be in the white lights, the red lights veered off to the right and became white lights… then red again, then white again, then back to red. The reds had stopped. The whites had stopped, too. They had been going pretty fast. I thought maybe I should call for help. I imagined what would happen.
         911, what’s you’re emergency?
          
        I just witnessed a high speed car accident.
         Is anyone hurt?
         I don’t know.
         Where was the accident?
          Down there. On a road. Right down there!
         I need you to be a little more specific.
         It was… there! I could see it! I could see it with my eyes! And they might be hurt!
         Are you okay?
         I just saw a car accident! And they might be hurt and it was right down there and it was red and white and red and white and red! And now they’ve stopped and they might be hurt!
         Where are you?
         I’m on a plane right now. And I’ve witnessed a high speed car accident and they might be hurt.
         You can’t talk on a cell phone while you’re on a plane. Without even knowing a general location, there’s nothing we can do to help.
         And so what would I do? What could I do? I knew exactly what I would do… nothing at all. And I would do my best to forget it, and eventually I would. Those people could have been hurt! But it would have no bearing on my life, literally none at all. That could have been my future wife, right there in that car. She died there, and now she isn’t my wife. But that would have been my wife only in the life where they didn’t spin… the red and the white and the red. But that’s not my life. That might as well be someone else’s. Worse, it’s no one else’s. I loved that person in that car in that life but that life didn’t happen. And so it didn’t matter to me, there. There in that plane.
         All you could see, for as far as you could see. Scars cut deep into the trees. The trees looked so nice, a green fuzz covering the gently sloping contours, blue lakes, brown rivers, all against the brilliant red and yellow and orange of the sun dipping below the edge of the fuzz. And then the roads slicing. Cutting through the fuzz. We shave the fuzz to make room for ourselves to play golf. Hitting a ball with a stick into a tiny hole. “Get rid of it! All of it! For I can cut down a whole forest of fuzz if I feel like it, and I want to hit a white ball with a stick into a tiny hole!” The roads destroy the fuzz. The humans build the roads. Cells build humans. Cells build the fuzz. It’s the same process, with only the slightest distinctions, but it’s become destructive. It’s still just as reproductive, but now it will destroy everything around it, even though it needs everything around it, until everything else can’t sustain itself anymore, and both things are over. The absolute definition of a cancer! The human is the cancer of the earth. Maybe our own cancer is the cure! The cancer of the human is the chemotherapy of the cancer of the earth. What a thought, I thought. I’d lost myself too much in the utter size of everything, again. I started to feel sick. The thoughts made me sick. So I slid the window down and tried to pretend I was on the ground. No use.
         We bounced to the ground with a jolt, a jolt that could easily have been a smash, if it hadn’t stopped. Because every smash has to start with at least a jolt. But it wasn’t a smash, it was just a jolt, and so we taxied over the tarmac. The tarmac, where a plane could have just so easily come along to wipe us all away, just one botched direction out of just one air traffic controllers wet pink mouth. But no plane came, and we got to the terminal. Terminal, like cancer, I thought. Terminal like the end. That seatbelt light, seatbelt order, seatbelt order light, went off, we were free! to move about the cabin. All those stupid, ugly people, who never even saw it coming, stood to collect their belongings, which may have shifted during the various dips and bumps, the various spirals to our deaths, of the flight.
         When they stand, and I know that nothing went wrong, that nothing will go wrong, that’s when I know I’m insane. No matter how sane I may be to myself, no matter how wrong everyone else may be, I’ll forever be wrong to them. To all of them. Even if I’m right, because I’m right and they’re wrong but they’re them, and I’m just me, so I’m wrong. And it doesn't matter what they are, right or wrong, I’m wrong. They say you can’t tell if you’re insane. That isn’t right. Not for me. You can tell more than anything else in your life. You can see exactly why, too. It’s because you’re right. You’re right and they’re wrong! But they aren’t in the same place as you are, so to them you look just as wrong as they look to you. It’s like being on top of a great column, a mile high in the sky, looking down on everyone else. They’re milling around, down there, you can see everything they’re doing, but you can’t understand any of it, you can’t understand why, because it’s just too far away. Your problem isn’t that you don’t know where you are - that much is more clear to you than anything else. Your problem isn’t even that you can’t figure out how to get down, it’s much worse than that. Your problem is that you know for a fact that there is no way to get down, that you’ll be up there, correct but alone, forever. We didn’t crash. But we could have! We didn’t but we could have! Can’t they see just how close we came? Correct but alone.
         I look at the great fuzz in front of me. I’m at it’s level now, and now it isn’t fuzz. The brown shoots up into the night, brown becoming green becoming black becoming emptiness. Not darkness but emptiness. Past the brown, in front of me, there is more emptiness. Great columns become needles, darker and darker, and fade into emptiness. I’m standing on a road looking into the fuzz and the emptiness. I’m looking at them both and not thinking a single thing about them, just seeing. And I think the only way to get down from way up here is to jump. And that isn’t fair and I couldn’t survive a mile-high fall but it’s the only way. It’s the only way and I’ll fall, I’ll fall all the way down to where I’m with them, at their level, but I won’t be with them for long. I’ll be with them for a fraction of a second at the most, but then I’ll see things as they’ve always seen things. For a fraction of a second at the most, and then what will there be? There won’t be anything. There won’t be anything after I’m with them. There will be something for them, there always will be something for them, but for me there will be nothing and I’m me so there will be nothing. But everything is better than up here, alone, even nothing. And so it isn’t fair but I have to jump off. It’s the only way to get down from up here.
         I take a step forward. One step. And then I use the momentum of that first step to take another. And another and another and another, and I’m falling and falling and falling. I could never turn around, no matter how much I wanted too. I couldn’t turn around anymore than a man in free fall could turn around and walk back to where he jumped. I can’t turn around and I’m falling, off the road into the fuzz, and behind the fuzz emptiness.