Free Falling - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

He stands on the edge and stares down. All of 25 floors down. The tiny termite people scurrying and the small model cars zipping across the traffic intersections. It is a clear and bright day. The warm late afternoon sunlight caresses his face and a light breeze disturbs his neatly combed hair. He shuffles closer to the edge. Why is he standing on the edge? More importantly, who is he? Do I know him? Perhaps you know him? Perhaps the son of the best friend of your mother’s knows him?

He is a writer or at least he considered himself to be one. The wider publishing world thought otherwise. His name is Linac Derdy. Derdy has been to the publishing firm on the 10th floor of the same building. His meeting with the editor was disappointing. The firm after a lengthy review process decided not to publish his book. This was the twentieth firm he had sent his manuscript to. They thought that the book lacked, to quote the editor, “the essential belief in humanity that could appeal to a wide audience”.

So perhaps he is another failed writer whose words only seem good to him. His destiny will not involve lengthy book promotion tours to the major literary capitals of the world, pompous discussions on the inner conflicts of his protagonist on prime time talk shows, or accepting big money awards with false modesty and humility. No, his destiny has brought him here, to the edge of the parapet on this tall building, watching the world do whatever it did on late afternoons far below.

Does Linac know that I’m talking about him? That at this very moment, while he stands on the edge thinking, 10 time zones away from him I’m laying his life out in the open almost in real time. How can I do that? Am I God?

I said he is thinking about something. What is he thinking about? Derdy is actually thinking about the woman who had gotten onto the elevator he was riding on the 11th floor and gotten out on the 23rd floor. For the few moments she was in the elevator she had filled the small space with a fragrance that produced in him a heavy feeling of déjà vu. He knew that fragrance. Standing on the edge of the parapet he is trying to remember where he had smelled it before. Little does he know that it was indeed his first girlfriend who had worn such a perfume.

Trivial matters, yes. People do not stand on the edge of a parapet of a tall skyscraper and think about past perfumes and fragrances. Not on a late and lovely afternoon when he should actually be lying on bare grass and dreaming about bright and shiny things. But if this was a simple incident about an obscure little man lying on bare green grass and dreaming about bright and shiny things you would not be interested in reading this, right? Right?

This is about something bigger that is present to a greater or smaller extent in all of us. This is about the sanity of fame and success. This is about finding peace in doing little things and not wanting too much from life. This is about trying not to run after guts and glory. This is about the joy of writing a simple poem only you will ever ‘get’, not the critics nor your squash buddy. This is about friendship that lasts all life. This is also about finding love and having the ability to sustain and keep it. This is about trying to live life not according to the expectations of those around you but according to the little whims and fancies of that little mass of throbbing red muscle that beats tirelessly behind your bony cage. This is about the happiness of whispering little secrets to your loved one after the lights go out. This is simply about being content.

And so he jumps. Not because I want him to so that I can finish this story soon and go to bed early. Not because his book would not get published. Derdy jumped because he had woken up that morning from a dream that was the single most beautiful dream he had ever had. A dream so real and so intense that the bed and the room around him upon waking had seemed so pale and unreal. He had dreamt about flying, flying without a care or a worry on warm thermals, soaring above the world in vast spirals, swooping through wispy clouds, and just laughing. Laughing like there was no tomorrow. Laughing like as if he had broken every bond there was. Free, completely and utterly. And as he falls, floor after floor rushing past in a windy blur, he finds that feeling again. That feeling of freedom from every silly thing the world below him, bathed in beautiful sunlight, holds foolishly dear. Linac Derdy had found the freedom of flight.