Groundstop

It always had required a girding of the mind, even for the newer generations.

To step here, then after a few hours' confinement to step there--it rested on agreement

that we could. The fearful, whose minds would not concur, steeled them or stayed away so as not to

trap the rest aloft with less than a full cargo of belief. So it was until Tuesday.

We practiced rituals about water landings and who had packed our bags and we shuttered

the windows and complained about the strange small trays and the strange companions. There was always

someone up there somewhere, practicing the rites of radar and alloys and capacity--

and this protected all of us, the fact of the unbroken, unspoken chain letter from

one transfer to the next. Since Tuesday, we cannot send hope to twenty friends, or add our names

(simply by arriving safely) to the end of the list of those to whom hopes have returned.

We are interrupted-- already we have steeled our minds and vowed to fly again, even

though what we practiced to protect ourselves has been undone by other rites. We are betrayed,

have seen belief return against us, collapsing us except for courage. That we have, but

from this broken steel we barely knew sustained us, how can we once again build certainty?

Cyd Harrell, September 16, 2001. All rights reserved.
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