Dreams I Might Have Had

The next thing to think about is geometry. You will never be able to fly if you don't have the correct geometry. Euclid, had his Elements, Pythagorus had his theorem, and Da Vinci, well he just flew didn't he. He was flying all the time. The smile on the Mona Lisa's face was when she observed him doing aerial acrobatics in the nude.

And the Sistine Chapel... how did Michelangelo paint 12,000 square feet of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. Well he just flew. Didn't he? .

So the wings I made were more artistic than functional, more mystical than aerodynamic. They were made out to rowan. I left the leaves on cos they looked prettier that way. Forgeting about the hollowness of bird's bones, the curvature of the prefect wing, ignoring wingspan to weight ratios, I recited a snippet for the Kalevala: Rune 23 -

Rowans in the yard are sacred,
Rowan branches too are holy
And the leaves upon the branches -
And the berries even holier.

and then I launched myself off the rock in the forest, and to my utter surprise I was soaring above the Baltic. Soaring like the imagination of Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges.

A holy poem will do that for you.