Darsie Bowden
Gravity
I ordered a gravity-free chair to put out on the deck. It was an impulse buy.
I barely stopped to wonder what a “gravity-free” chair was. An innovation, a liberating event, an oxymoron?
I just wanted to lie back at night to watch the stars, and then on very clear nights, observe the movement of comets. I imagined reclining without being limited by the gravitational pull of the objects around me, without restraints. During the day, I could float over the railing of the wooden deck with its peeling paint, past the blue jay poking furiously at the birdfeeder and past the azaleas in bloom, then move up through the cypress trees with their raggedy bare branches, damaged in a winter windstorm.
And then things would really start to change, as I sail over the fir trees out into the bay, then skim across the water like a loon, before rising up over the hilltop with the ease and grace of a cheetah in motion. By then my trajectory might be buffeted by gusts of unearthly wind, and I might run into the debris orbiting the earth in the upper air. Later, moving through the outer atmosphere, I might hit my head on abandoned rocket parts, and then maybe star dust. I might run out of oxygen. And have to live on Mars.
But apparently there is no such thing as anti-gravity. It is an appealing fiction, hypothetical, like a hypothetical strategy to live a good life or an abstract solution to help people out of poverty or a plan to end wars. In the world we live in, things with mass attract each other, and thus are tethered and grounded. Our life in the physical world becomes so complicated. We must attend to tides, to how we balance ourselves when we walk, to apples that could fall on our heads from trees.
And then the gravity-free chair arrived, in an ordinary brown box. It was quite heavy and difficult to remove from the carton. I dragged it out to the deck, bumping it along, dislodging the rug. The chair unfolded easily, and I installed the plastic drink-holder to the side. I positioned myself on the chair to test it out. I leaned back, reclining the chair, which raised up my legs. And in an instant, I could feel the pull of the earth, not burdensome like a heavy chain, but a gentle, unrelenting pull, like from arms in an embrace.
Later that night, I put a drink in the holder, threw a blanket over my legs, and sat back in the chair. It was a moonless night, and I waited for my eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Then there were stars, their positions fixed within the blackness. And I found myself gradually reassured by how intensely conjoined we are to the earth.
Darsie is a writer living on Bainbridge Island, WA. Previously Darsie taught writing at DePaul University where they published two books, one on authorial voice.
I barely stopped to wonder what a “gravity-free” chair was. An innovation, a liberating event, an oxymoron?
I just wanted to lie back at night to watch the stars, and then on very clear nights, observe the movement of comets. I imagined reclining without being limited by the gravitational pull of the objects around me, without restraints. During the day, I could float over the railing of the wooden deck with its peeling paint, past the blue jay poking furiously at the birdfeeder and past the azaleas in bloom, then move up through the cypress trees with their raggedy bare branches, damaged in a winter windstorm.
And then things would really start to change, as I sail over the fir trees out into the bay, then skim across the water like a loon, before rising up over the hilltop with the ease and grace of a cheetah in motion. By then my trajectory might be buffeted by gusts of unearthly wind, and I might run into the debris orbiting the earth in the upper air. Later, moving through the outer atmosphere, I might hit my head on abandoned rocket parts, and then maybe star dust. I might run out of oxygen. And have to live on Mars.
But apparently there is no such thing as anti-gravity. It is an appealing fiction, hypothetical, like a hypothetical strategy to live a good life or an abstract solution to help people out of poverty or a plan to end wars. In the world we live in, things with mass attract each other, and thus are tethered and grounded. Our life in the physical world becomes so complicated. We must attend to tides, to how we balance ourselves when we walk, to apples that could fall on our heads from trees.
And then the gravity-free chair arrived, in an ordinary brown box. It was quite heavy and difficult to remove from the carton. I dragged it out to the deck, bumping it along, dislodging the rug. The chair unfolded easily, and I installed the plastic drink-holder to the side. I positioned myself on the chair to test it out. I leaned back, reclining the chair, which raised up my legs. And in an instant, I could feel the pull of the earth, not burdensome like a heavy chain, but a gentle, unrelenting pull, like from arms in an embrace.
Later that night, I put a drink in the holder, threw a blanket over my legs, and sat back in the chair. It was a moonless night, and I waited for my eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Then there were stars, their positions fixed within the blackness. And I found myself gradually reassured by how intensely conjoined we are to the earth.
Darsie is a writer living on Bainbridge Island, WA. Previously Darsie taught writing at DePaul University where they published two books, one on authorial voice.