Tuesday, January 17, 2006

6:21P.M. Friday, Sunday, Monday...

I have a certain fondness for helicopters--I like to think we've grown up together. I remember when the Cobra was the norm and the Apache was hot shit. I remember playing tag around the Chinooks as they sat in the hangars like sleeping elephants, and clambering over the Blackhawks as if they were bigtoys. I remember how their blades and rungs looked and felt--smooth and drowsy in a placid green skin. How fast they moved, how your brain rattled in your skull when they flew low, how the tops of the tallest trees were singed by their constant traffic. It was nothing to see six, ("no, ten! no, fourteen!") at a time, crawling in a line over the woods in your back yard. Nothing to see, but you always stopped to look.

But unhinged militarism and exaggerated pride aside, it's unnerving whenever your house off of Elmwood--so far from any post-- is buzzed by one. Three times this week in what I'm sure is simply a changed flight pattern. But it's getting to me. And I can't quite tell if it's making me paranoid or just wildly sentimental.

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