I wasn’t the smartest kid in the physics department.
By: Jesse Bastide
Tags: Adventure, Philosophy, Meaning, Fatherhood, Wellbeing

Photo by Senad Palic on Unsplash

I’m thinking about how to become a marginally better human being. At the moment, the desire comes from a place of feeling well and wanting more. Lukas and Noah are in the next room, in bed. I’m their father. I want to give them more, be more, do more. It’s hard sometimes, to look at my own limitations. I’ve chosen this life. I’ve chosen to chase this flying dream, and that pulls me away from them more than I’d like. And there’s a part of me that wants it all. I want to have a place closer to where they live, with a porch and a lawn and an apple tree or two. I want to spend days with them and also adventuring. I want to keep teaching and learning in airplanes.

It’s funny that some of the best moments and greatest adventures came when I said ‘yes’ on a whim. A yes brought me to the South Pole. I wasn’t the smartest kid in the physics department, and I wasn’t the tallest or the strongest. But going to the ass-end of the world was an adventure and I raised my hand.

If I have regrets now, they’re around not saying yes more times. And at the same time, I’m still 42 and full of energy. I feel like my fire is still burning hot. Adventure still calls. I yearn for that. Maybe that’s part of the allure of flight. To go skyward is unpredictable. You mentally prepare for what others might find the unthinkable. Before you line up on the runway, you rehearse what you’ll do if your single engine fails and your airplane becomes a heavy glider full of fuel. Stick forward, get best glide speed, aim for open terrain. At low altitude, you’re lucky if you have time to switch tanks and check the fuel pump. The first priority (as always) is to fly the damn airplane.

The Rolling Stones are playing Angie in my kitchen. The entire band fits in a tiny little green speaker that gets a radio signal from my phone. If you were born before 1896 that might sound like a miracle. The refrigerator sounds like it’s humming with life. Its pipes are gurgling and giggling. As it gets older, it gets bolder. Louder. A lot like an old relative. On the table, there’s an apple I picked from the tree outside my front door. The apple is still green with just a touch of pink. It’s going to be sour, but I don’t mind that. It wakes up my mouth.

I’m safe here, living under my friend’s house. He and his family have taken me in as part of their family. I feel grateful. We went to the skatepark the other day and rode in the concrete bowl like the 40+ year old amateur skateboarders that we are: tentative, appreciative of not getting injured, getting cheap thrills on boards like heavier versions of teenagers with a few more grey hairs.

Getting back to the habit of writing, I realize that I’d let the fear of failure block me. I’d allowed myself to believe that I’d never amount to much when it came to my writing. And that’s a poor reason not to put in the effort to get better.

I hereby step back into the worn leather shoes of a writer trying to become good. I’m going to stumble, and I’ll get up, and I’ll read and write some more. I’m reading Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker, and I find myself feeling marvelous champagne bubbles of appreciation as I read. Tom’s mind is so full of metaphor and simile and absurd humor. It’s like watching a genius on mushrooms write poetry in pink clouds with his index finger.

Now and then, I catch him spewing some bullshit when it comes to his aviation references, but it’s brilliant bullshit and it doesn’t matter. I’m not from the FAA or the EAA or any of the other AAs. I’m just a writer and a reader and I love how he tells a story that makes you feel something. Lest we forget, bullshit can also be a source for new life.

It’s getting late. The music has changed to AC/DC. Midnight crept past without a sound. She’s riding away with her red hair flowing in the wind, on a motorcycle powered by moonbeams, and telling me not to think too much about the morning. The refrigerator has quieted down its geriatric wheezing. Somehow it continues to hold on.

We’re pinballs making meaning, one collision at a time, one yes at a time.

Take care of yourself.

Best,

Jesse