Missing Thought

I stood on the mountain top feeling rather top! From that height everything below looked bewilderingly empty. It was all so small that the only reality was the vast nothingness. The sky looked brightly lit with stars. It wore a wise look. The only sound was silence itself. I wondered what all this meant.

Suddenly I heard a whisper - 'F l y'. It dawned on me that I had trekked up the Himalayas to try flying. The moment was here and I was ecstatic. So in the stillness of the night I felt welcome to plunge into darkness and then into nothingness. I was eager to experience the thrill of free-fall. I stretched out my hands, felt the breeze brush my hair, the smell of new life and I let go the ground below my feet. It was a moment of exhilaration. There was nothing but empty space all around me.

I tried to think of all objects’ behavior when they are flying. Of course not stones, they never learnt the art of flying, just embraced gravity. But I thought of a leaf in Fall. How it gracefully flew down. It swayed from here to there and sometimes the wind helped it soar a little higher. I’m not sure if the leaf quite liked it but gravity sure did cuss the wind.

I thought of leaves and tried to sway like them. Hmm...it felt good though I was not doing it well. At least it delayed my fast paced drop. I felt the wind trying to hold me affectionately and lift me and take me along. The space looked so good with just me experiencing the vastness of the universe. I thought emptiness, after all, looked very beautiful. No accessories from the earth and the sky, and it still looked good. It seemed to tell me secrets that I had never heard or thought existed. My body felt like a feather and the mind...oh well, it had ceased to exist I think.

Maybe not. A thought seemed to attract my attention and so I glanced at it. It said, 'You are reaching the ground and you have to miss it.' The thought looked very forcefully at me. I realized I had to miss the thought first to miss the ground. But how could I, if I keep thinking that I will not miss the thought. So I decided to see; to delegate the task to my eyes to save me from the thought. I gave myself to the mercy of the eyes, the wind, and the space, hoping not to be pitied by gravity to claim me to itself.

Indeed the eyes found hope. It found a book flying past me. The book was having a rather wonderful flight or so it seemed. It had the look of a wizened book. So the wind pushed me towards the book. I decided to hold on to it and hoped that I could bind myself to its course of flight. I reached for it but it seemed to grin and escape from me. But fly over me, around me, and through me and still escape from me. Finally I managed to catch it and I breathed a gulp of relief. The book was titled, 'Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy' and it read, 'Flying is an art. It is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss it.'

Funny eh? It never ceases to make grand come back.

There was a lot of light. My eyes could not bear to stay closed and were being strongly urged to open and stare at the light. They did, and I saw the poster of 'Stairway to Heaven' on my wall and realized that the cause of dream was the effect of reading 'Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy.'