Derek

Derek thought he could fly, he truly believed that if he was completely committed, both mentally to the act and physically to the action then he would be able to fly.  There could be no doubt.  Frequent failed attempts from trees and walls and lower storey windows had left Derek with bruises, sprains and the occasional broken bones.  These failures did not however discourage him from his self created destiny; to achieve naturally (mentally if not physically) propelled aviation.  While his actions may suggest otherwise Derek was not a stupid character, he was not merely a crazy person throwing himself from differing heights in the vain hope that some miracle would take place.  He was in fact acting under the calculated certainty of belief.  His failures thus far were merely demonstrations of a flaw in that belief, a flaw which he intended to fix so he could subsequently explore the dizzying heights which, for him: master of the skies, would know no bounds.

 

Derek had reached a stage in this developmental process where, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he knew that his conscious mind had been completely free from self doubt.  His mental preparation and positive realisation had been absolute.  Thus empowered he had leapt from a tall oak in his local park, arms flung wide, legs trailing behind.  He looked like a crucifix fallen on its face, this analogy lasted all the way to the ground and he was still in that position when the paramedics found him some time later.  The Doctors said the fact that he was so relaxed was what had saved him, that and the previous nights rain which had softened the grass a little.  It was in the following weeks of bed bound by body-cast boredom that he was able to truly address and understand his problem.  This was no longer an issue of the conscious mind.

             Derek reasoned, perhaps in a small amount of pain killer induced delirium, that if you were to take the ability to fly as unquestionable (as we know he did) then it was a simple matter of believing in the act.  He had known, on his last attempt, that he had been so saturated with belief in his innate ability to fly that he even thought the squirrels themselves should have been inspired to leap from the branches with him, and float upon part of his radiating and compelling conviction.  But still he had fallen?  Now he knew why, if there was no single cell of doubt within his physical or spiritual self then why had he jumped from a survivable height?  Why had he jumped above the wet grass?  These questions resonated with subconscious doubt; he was simply a victim of his inner self.  With the knowledge that it would be some weeks before he could walk again, let alone fly, Derek resigned himself to an inner struggle.

By the time Derek was released from the hospital, he had only a slight limp in his left leg.  The inner battle, while fought with stamina and endurance, had not faired well.  This was mainly because Derek had experienced difficulty getting in touch with the subconscious; it had always seemed to transfer straight to conscious thought, something which he had already wholly mastered.  This left him desperately trying to influence his own dreams and catching himself unawares, it had not been easy for him and he was still not convinced whether his inner self was on side or not.  In the later stages of his stay on the ward Derek had logically reasoned that his inner self, his sub conscious mind, was simply not taking the conscious Derek seriously.  Although the thought angered him, Derek was ready to concede that perhaps he was being mocked by his inner self.  This led to the natural conclusion that the time for parley and compromise was past, Derek had effectively thrown down a gauntlet within his own mind, to prove emphatically his seriousness in the act of flying.

             This self challenge of sorts led him to consider his final attempt, the penultimate jump in which success was guaranteed.  In which his inner self could not fail to be convinced and would therefore be forced to throw its own weight of belief in with his.  The options were endless but Derek wanted to prove a point, if he were being honest he would admit a slight feeling of betrayal at himself and therefore didn’t just want to fly, he also wanted a small degree of justice, a statement of ‘I told myself so’.  Being the son of a rich entrepreneur meant that Derek’s resources were fairly far ranging, what he had lacked in emotional and moral support as a young child, old child and adult, had always been compensated for financially.  Derek had decided that the showdown with himself should be a day to remember.  He spent a week looking at travel brochures; he considered Paris and the Eiffel Tower; New York and the Empire State Building; Dubai and the Burj Al Arab.  He thought he could fly from a sphinxes head in Egypt or off the edge of Niagara Falls on the Canadian side.  With all these options arose logistical difficulties, especially when he considered the need for careful mental preparation.  It was not as if Derek could storm a building and fling himself recklessly from its roof before he was arrested and locked away.  It was not as if he wanted to do something crazy. 

           Finally Derek struck upon the perfect solution and he was pleased with himself.  He would acquire his ballooning license, purchase a balloon and float towards the heavens in careful, uninterrupted meditation, at a height were his subconscious could no longer doubt him he would fly.  Once he was flying he would rescue the balloon and give it to charity, for he would certainly have no more need of it.  He embarked upon this plan with the zealotry he had previously only applied to the art of flight, and in many ways he didn’t feel as though learning to pilot a balloon was straying too far from the point.  His teachers were impressed, amazed even at the speed with which he learnt the ropes and mastered the principles of flame injection, weight distribution, trim and balance.  He was a natural flyer they said; born to fly.  Derek was pleased with this but it only substantiated what he already knew, in the end it was the administrative side of the licensing procedure which slowed him down.  Derek suffered the proceedings patiently; even so by the time he got the stamped aviation approval he was more than ready to set things straight with his subconscious.   

           It was a clear luminescent blue-sky morning; the lack of a single bird in the whole hemisphere of sight was proof that today was a day of reckoning.  Derek was not a strutting man but on that day, as he walked across the open tarmac to his anchored and already inflated balloon, he came close.  As planned it was to be a solo flight, just Derek and himself.  He climbed confidently into the basket, beneath the roaring jet, without preamble he cast away the retaining lines and began his ascent.  The balloon maintained a steady upward speed; it felt like a rapid acceleration as the landscape quickly dwindled, and then a gradual slowing as reference points were lost, until finally the only tell tales of a gain in altitude were the trusty needles of the altimeters.  Derek had decided that 3,000ft would be high enough to prove to his subconscious that he was serious about flying, while he would happily have gone higher he had decided that a dulling of the senses due to the cold could only negatively affect the outcome. 

           And so at that appointed height Derek threw himself from the basket and assumed his typical crucified pose.  It was at this moment that his subconscious fully believed the seriousness of Derek’s commitment to flight and therefore, decided to have an appropriately timed out of body experience.  Conscious and subconscious Derek descended side by side, accelerating towards terminal velocity.  Slightly startled Derek recognized his subconscious, he was however happy that the cowardly fool had scampered, without the weight of his self doubt Derek would now surely be able to fly.  Subconscious Derek closed his eyes and shook his head in pity, then, shouting above the noise of air resistance; he informed Derek that there was a dam good reason for subconscious doubt.  Surely Derek had read the survival stories about failed parachutes, landing on bushes or large mammals and surviving, albeit miraculously, the fall?  All things can be defined in moments; slices of time.  Conscious Derek had a moment of fateful uncertainty.   

He had come closer than most but still had failed the final test.  Subconscious Derek sprouted angelic wings and returned to heaven while Derek crossed his fingers for a soft landing, opportune bush or unfortunate mammal.