Kim Batchelor

Writer of magical realism and other imaginative fiction

Flying

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For most of my life, I have been acrophobic–afraid of heights. Once, when I was about ten years old, I found myself clinging to the wall, as far as I could get from the railing, while standing 12 stories above the ground at the base of the Iron Man statue in Birmingham, Alabama.

I experienced airplane travel starting at six years old, but in spite of decades traveling by air, as an adult I went through a period of white-knuckle flights during any kind of turbulence. Luckily, that only lasted a couple of years–after I learned the statistics on how rare it is to die in a plane crash.

My acrophobia sometimes creeps in during sleep. I find myself in planes without ceilings. Or I step from elevators reaching the highest floor of a building and discover that the walls haven’t been built yet. I keep my head down on the topless plane or cling to the floor of the unfinished structure trying to figure out how to get down.

But in my dream life as a child, I always loved flying. My favorite dreams were of jumping off swings and soaring over backyards in my dreamy neighborhood. Skirting the clouds, approaching the moon, experiences that, for most of us, only happen in our imaginations, or while we sleep.

In spite of my continuing fear of heights, flying often finds its way into my magical realist novels. My children’s book, The Island of Lost Children, a modern take on Peter and Wendy, is naturally full of children flying. In my novel, GEM of the Starry Skies, the main character, Gwen Mora, takes to the skies, fueled by her growing love of astrophysics. And in The Mists of Na Crainn, the main character, Lyric Doherty, experiences signs that she’s developing the ability to ‘soar’—a wind-swept capability that keeps her above ground but close to the treetops.

Me, I only wish I could fly in real life. Part of me is an acrophile, someone who loves (imaginary) heights. But I’m not inclined to slip into a hang glider or wingsuit. I satisfy my craving instead in my writing and occasionally by climbing aboard the Soarin’ ride at Disney.

If wishes were horses…then Pegasus would be real. Or maybe just a character in my dreams.

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Pablo Neruda and a Storm in Small Spaces

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When I am in the midst of a storm I often think of Pablo Neruda.

April is here, bringing promised showers and sometimes with them, tumultuous weather. A few nights ago, a thunderstorm passed us, tearing through the neighborhood, downing trees and severing the connection of thousands of my neighbors to electricity. I cursed my neglecting to charge my phone the night before and worried that we’d be without electricity for so long that my tablet and computer would also hibernate along with the power. While one February we’d suffered through four days without heat or hot water following a snowstorm that dumped several feet of snow on this city unaccustomed to much accumulation, this time the electricity returned after only a few hours.

I have often written of my appreciation of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Storms sometimes remind me of a story from his autobiography, Confeso que he vivido: Memorias, published as Memoirs in English, leaving out the “I Confess That I Have Lived” in the original Spanish title. I learned from the book that Neruda had been a diplomat and had spent a good deal of time in Asia.

On a flight from Colombo, Sri Lanka (what was then called Ceylon) to Rangoon, Burma (what is now known as Yangon, Myanmar), Neruda saw the plane crammed with “turbaned passengers, covered with colors and loaded with baskets.” A tropical storm along the way caused the plane to “shudder” and a darkness darker than true night time edged out the daytime sky. Lightning illuminate the sky accompanied by the booms of thunder, and the plane began to “stagger.”

Rain began to fall inside the plane.The water came in in heavy drops that reminded me of my house in Temuco (Chile) in winter. But ten thousand meters up, those leaks did not amuse me. The amazing thing, though, was a monk sitting behind us. He opened an umbrella and with Oriental serenity went on reading his texts of ancient wisdom.

I rarely fear the turbulence of a flight, unless it is particularly fierce. I occasionally fear the possibility of tornadoes in a storm, a fear I carry with me from my childhood. I have never found myself on a flight or in a storm as frightening as the one Neruda described. If I ever do, I hope I will find enough peace to simply open an umbrella and continue on with my reading.

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