1.16.2010: Icarus in Small (Give me the seat by the window)

Two seats on an commerical airliner. Icarus in one, The Guy in the other.

THE GUY
This is the first time I've ever been on a plane.

ICARUS
No way. Really?

THE GUY
Yeah. I have this -- always have had this -- anxiety, I guess, is the word to use but it's more like an obsessive fixation, this CERTAINTY that I will set foot on a plane, take off, and find myself sucked into the air when the damn thing splits open, dumping me onto some field over Virginia. Splat. End of story.

ICARUS
Been there. It's not pretty.

THE GUY
I know it's irrational... but it always seemed so much easier to just listen to the fear, give into it, than face it.

ICARUS
What changed your mind?

THE GUY
Twenty-nine hours on a train to spend a week in New York. It was an adventure at 20. At 34... well, plummeting out of a plane and getting squashed seems less painful.

ICARUS
I'm not the best guy for this.
I'm myth.
My fall... it's metaphorical.

(sort of. I do actually fall,
drown,
die,
the whole nine yards,
just for me -- the end
is not really an end.

it's a temporary thing.

You fall, you die.
Game over.

THE GUY
Not helping.

ICARUS
Odds are, you won't.
And then you get to see
thepart of the flight
I never get to see.

THE GUY
What's that?

ICARUS
The destination.
The end.
The airport in New York
and your friends
and your show
and the future...

THE GUY
I'm not as scared as I thought I would be.
I'm sitting here,
and in the imagined version of this evening
I was terrified.

But I'm fine.
I'm calm.
I'm...

ICARUS
Ready.
You're ready.

When the plane takes off,
imagine the wings
as sprouting from your back
and the wind in your face
and the heat of the sun on your face
and the possibility of everything on the other side
holding you up.

The physics of flight. Just conjecture.
That's what keeps you aloft.
The possible things.

The Guy smiles. He turns, and sees that Icarus has changed. He's no longer some random boy who's a metaphor for all sorts of things. Icarus is Marc, cap, flannel shirt and scruffy beard, smiling that smile with the raised eyebrows that makes the Guy happy.

Maybe he's been Marc all along, and I'd been talking to him for years. Just waiting for that trip. The fountain. The rainy Saturday afternoon. This flight. The future.

The plane roars to life. Everything will be okay.