Afloat by N. Barry Carver (pdf ebook reader txt) 📖

Driving fast, in a rented convertible, along

a rough road twenty-nine miles east of Winslow, Arizona, I spied a small white object hovering over the middle of the worn out blacktop ahead. I slowed to evaluate the UFO, finally coming to a stop almost directly beneath it.

As I stared at it in the low, hot afternoon sun of late February, it descended just enough for me to discern its true nature: it was a large, plastic shopping bag.

All in white except for the red bull’s-eye logo of its maker, it simply hung there in the calm air. The side with the target was a little higher than the other, and I guessed that was an effect of the red ink heating up better than the rest of the bag.

The deep sigh that burst from chest caught me off guard–but not the reason for it.

If there were one super power I could have, I would not ask for invulnerability. I’d love to protect the weak and subdue the wicked–but I’d need that particular power to be extended to all my family and friends, so that I could act without worrying for them. I would not ask for x-ray vision, super-speed or invisibility. Those are great things and, if by some strange miracle, I could have one, I’d be happy with any. But what I’ve always dreamt of, wished upon and prayed for is the ability to hang in the air–like that discarded bag: to rise from the ground without wire or wing and drift, sail, speed or tumble up to the clouds and back again.

Would it be so wrong to ask God for that?

Just a few minutes, with or without any witnesses, to take in the aether, slice through the wind or do anything other than the one thing I am designed to do in the air: fall like a stone.

The bag slowly drifted away, off to where I could not follow. I pulled myself out of oncoming traffic only to lose sight of it forever and turn my attention, slowly, back to driving away and on to my forty-sixth birthday.

I never thought I would envy a garbage bag on a hot day… but it seems I do.

Text: © 2012 Barry Carver
Images: © 2012 Barry Carver
Publication Date: 02-14-2012

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