Balloon Longings


Several years ago, I was walking down a street with three other people when I saw a white balloon moving swiftly across the sky high overhead. How high? Maybe 15-20 stories high, and I don’t even include The Velveteen Rabbit in those stories. I watched the white balloon fly freely in the blue sky and I began longing for it. I didn’t just want it. Or desire it. I longed for it.

Longing speaks to things, and I felt my longing close the distance between us. I felt the balloon respond to me as though it were a natural law; it had to respond to me. I pointed out the balloon to the others; it was almost directly over us at that point. I reached my arms up toward the balloon and it immediately—though it had been moving horizontally so far—swam downward to the very edge of a roof a few more buildings down the street. And there it stayed. Strangely. Eerily. Suddenly not moving at all. It just came down and to a rest at the edge of a roof, suspended in the air. We looked at each other, exclaiming, and I said something potentially stupid like that it was my balloon. But it turned out not to be stupid after all because I ran up the few buildings to stand directly underneath the balloon and the balloon suddenly sank in a direct vertical line down to me.

I have witnesses.

I believe that things and people are much more interconnected than we can imagine. Even if we can’t always see those connections. I was remembering that reality when I saw the balloon. I didn’t just believe I could connect with it. I knew. What happened didn’t even surprise me all that much. I’d had other strange things happen in my life. But like most people, I usually forget the interconnectedness. And, in this world at least, the “magic” doesn’t always seem to connect. Even with longing. Hell, even with love.

I know because I have loved and longed for this man. And he flies high above me. Horizontally.