There was some mystery surrounding me these days: I was perhaps always free, but it had somehow never occurred to me. Life had so far been made of periods of work and rest, and that was for me the entirety of life. I had been climbing up a ladder in a crowded closet, the walls around me close enough to touch. I saw the ceiling and knew where it was and how to get there, even as it loomed overhead and the sight of land below grew further and further away. I’d grunted my way up, or maybe I had been pushed, but anyway I opened that ever-present ceiling and the bright light of the sky above blinded my unaccustomed eyes. By the time I’d recovered enough to look around, the closet around me had disappeared.

I looked downwards from where I’d come, and nothing remained except that ladder that had been the entirety of my life. The closet was gone and in its place was a blue expanse and swirling winds, and there I was caught, shaking back and forth according to the winds’ whims. There were no clouds to distract me from that piercing blue, which expanded in all directions around me. Along the dizzying wind, I smelled it: air and opportunity existed endlessly in equal proportions around me. Finally, I’d made it up to the promised ceiling and its benefits were mine to reap.

And so I did; or anyway I tried: my left arm hooked onto the ladder rung, I reached out my good right arm to grab hold of that invisible chance which I had smelled. The wind blew, the ladder shook, and along with the breeze my arm blew away. My mouth opened involuntarily, without meaning to, I breathed, “What?”, and even the sound of my tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth as ‘t’ seemed snatched away from my proximity and solidity. I had climbed and climbed and climbed, and I’d arrived up here. I missed the closet, and even what remained of my body felt wispy and loosely held together, as if all things here existed only as a precedent to the air and sky around me. The ground below me fell away into faraway steps of the shaking ladder. I looked out at the sky around me and sighed, anyway things were never easy, so I probably had better get used to it.

It had been a few weeks dealing with that mystery of mine, and I was still feeling loose and without solidity when I drifted my way into an interesting event. Outside, countries and countries of athletes were arriving to compete. Each country sent contingents of people, each for different events: solo, duet, team, acrobatic, technical, free… they seemed to keep coming and coming. I had found my way past the entrance and was sitting in a plastic bleacher looking down on the Olympic swimming pool in front of me. The whole sport took place within a 20 by 30 meter area, just a fraction of the expanse of that pool.

A team warming up as coaches watch on.

The athletes were still nowhere to be seen. It was cold up here, and I hadn’t had the foresight to bring a jacket. That chill… of course it was the air conditioner, but in my state I was half convinced it was yet another appendage snatching breeze. I was waiting, I was bored, and I was drifting. I came to anchor on those athletes I’d seen outside, but they seemed to live in a wholly different world from mine: I doubted they knew those skies that blew in the back of my mind. I didn’t exactly know, but I guess I could infer that they’d lived large parts of their lives at a similar location, and after this, they would return to their home countries and I would most likely never see them again. And if, for some reason, I’d had to take a bet as to their location, I would probably guess that they’d somehow or rather be near to or in that blue rectangle, somehow for them, a worthy substitute for the sky itself.

I sat up a little straighter in my chair: the first team had begun their routine on stage. Even still on the ground and before their performance had properly begun, they displayed incredible feats of athleticism, lifting and carrying and bending this way or another. Later I would find out that while still on the stage, the performance was not yet being evaluated, and this portion was only meant to signal the themes and overall vibe of the performance later on. Anyway, to my untrained eye I could only say, “Woah” and attach to it the full extent of my complete respect.

The audience films as a team event begins.

I reasoned, surely they had not known that blue expanse, or they would not have ended up here. This was, like most things, a choice, not an act mandated and enforced. There was an infinite sky worth of things to choose and to do, and none of them truly necessitated the struggle that was obvious from the precision of their every movement. “Did you know,” I wanted to shout, “we’re not in the closet anymore!” But somehow it didn’t seem appropriate. From the skies I stood, the pool seemed so small that it was completely puzzling. What was it that motivated their struggle to be better and keep within the confines of the pool? Moving on in their routine, they leapt high from the stage into the pool.

Duet team leaps into the pool.

Why was it that in their leaping and in their struggle they seemed so much more free than I? I, who had the entirety of the sky blowing in some overused corner of my mind. When they leapt they seemed to gain wings and enter my delusion as great white birds who flapped and soared around me. They seemed perfectly content and familiar flapping around in my private skies, and I was decidedly nonplussed.

As soon as they entered the pool, they swam in deep and came into some kind of formation underwater. From the blur of refraction I could just barely make out the scurry of limbs. And suddenly: one of them came flying out of the water, making a good three meters of height, and the arc of the tip of their foot left a greater arc of water in the air before both fell back down into the pool. That image burrowed itself into my head, I saw it still even as they were moving onto their next sequence. In that corner of my mind filled my cloudless skies–that geometry inscribed unto reality grew wider and wider till it filled and pushed against the extent of my noggin. In the distance between the flick of a leg and the arc of water existed some perfect encryption which I saw also in the beady eye of the birds as they blew past my face.

A team performs a flip.

They were both completely present and somehow removed and elevated from the current moment in which the rest of us lived, their eyes greedily gobbling that glorious present, crowds of adoring fans enraptured in their performance as they waved passionately the flags of their homes. And yet, they seemed so far away, in a place much like the one we were in right now. They were here and there, bodies prescribing motion so precisely mirrored to past motion that every turn, every kick, every fall congregated into one, like afterimages blurring into one another to present fuller and fuller images. Having left the ground, they had pulled out like magicians an express and consolidated intention, which they took on and absorbed and with it, they confronted and consumed that endless present.

I had lived, I supposed, as I was meant to, climbing up the ladder in that crowded closet. And now that I was here, and the closet was gone, what was I left with? I was nauseous, and the wind had taken my favourite arm and the ladder stopped just at my head. The sky around me left no marks in all directions, a strict expanse which seemed precisely infinite. My ladder and I were the only discernible thing in all directions, my own position was completely meaningless… I could have been at any point under that sky, and still, I would have been utterly surrounded by the air. I could only cling to the ladder and watch them as they made circles around me in the sky.

There was some fundamental difference between us. Like me, they had been confronted with endless skies, but they had taken that first leap: they had chosen. They chose and broke free where I was stuck dizzy clinging to my ladder. And after that first leap every subsequent and continuous decision was some exercise in freedom in the pursuit of something that was apparently greater than the sky. I applied the extent of my freedom to imagine the doing that it would require to do as they had, and I found that my infinite sky came up short. These skies, my freedom, which came on in its entirety scared me, and even that seemed to shrink rapidly in comparison to their effort. The sky around me felt infinite no longer, only blue and only mine.

My mystery seemed to piece itself together all at once. The swaying of the ladder made me nauseous no longer, my body felt strong and real, my right arm attached firmly to its fleshy chamber. I looked down at the faraway ground, I looked at the ladder, and I let go. Falling backwards in the sky, the wind whipped past my fluttering ear. I reached out my reacquired arm and tore a small piece of sky, just as I left my delusion and fell butt-first into my bleacher seat. I clutched that piece and reached to place it into my jean pocket for safekeeping. Surprise of surprises, I’d had a piece in there all along! They had ended their performance and were coming up to the stage to receive their grading. I was smiling, they were too. My mystery was solved, and I hadn’t spoken a single word to my benefactors.

A team waits for their grading.

About the Author

Joshua is a year one data science and analytics student who is always happy to be introduced to new music 😀