The Origin of the Gravigators
Compliance to the parameters of gravity never left the flavor anticipated on my bliss. Yet, for a time, my fingers creased paper into lofty forms lifting through these constraints, rapidly bounding over the footprints of flight. Gladly I spun propellers until it’s drive, a rubber-band bristled with dreams in its tightly wound form. I lived in my kites as they gave themselves for the goal.
Then in the litter and debris of flight I sat in my room lovingly nicknamed “The black box” by my Pop. Pop also hung the hammock that suspended me acrobatically free from the ground. As my shadow pitched and foreshortened across the room I ambled over the ads selling their goods. Always suspicious after ordering an army of toy soldiers as a child, only to receive a box smaller than the one you would receive your new checks from the bank in. Everything was as flat as a crepe; tanks, planes, soldiers. I thought to myself, Stan Lee shame on you. However, who could resist reading over the ad for a hovercraft. scanning the corners as if I could somehow see more. I couldn’t, but it didn’t stop me from dreaming of floating through the house, no more boring trips to the icebox. I almost sent away for it. Now I wonder? The only thing that stopped me was Tony.
All summer long we had collected super hero stickers. He had three complete sets. I had all but two to complete one full set. Then they stopped selling them at the end of summer, naturally I wanted to trade. Instead he stuck them to the garage floor, squirting them with lighter fluid and lighting them on fire; Exclaiming ” You’ll never have them.” That was Tony.
Don’t feel bad for me because then as always I knew I could fly. Even if Tony became the pilot he always wanted to be he would still be sitting in a cockpit never knowing the beauty our Father in Heaven had placed us in the center of. No, Tony at fifty thousand feet would always be the charred remains of stickers forever glued and grounded.
I acted like it didn’t bother me watching the flames lick and smack. As most collectors know rarely do you gaze upon the object of your desire unless it was acquired. Flight was still elusive; Enemies bloomed from friends. Life had become as confusing to me as harnessing gravity. Maybe more, at least flight and gravity were straight. Mess up and your stuff is dashed to pieces when the kiss of earth is felt. In my youth I hadn’t learned that being vulnerable is messing up.Unlike my kites and craft, the dashed remains lay hidden inside me and not on the ground.
Still I returned to that small ad that gave me such big ideas. Was it just plans to invert your mom’s vacuum cleaner only to find yourself tethered to an electrical outlet pushing along but never leaving the floor. I guess it would just be too easy if my dreams could come true in a tiny sale ad but I could dream.
I do go on and in going on I freed myself. While sitting in the “black box” scanning the carnage that I had so gleefully created, I thought not only had I failed but I had failed in the pursuit to change my predecessors successes. As badly as it had hurt I had to put down all tried and tooled forms of aviation. The planes, copters, kites balloons etc.., would mark my passing over. No longer could I look awkward to the black box in which I lived. Now it fell on me to listen to the black box that I owned and existed only in me.
In finding the black box within I had to except the rest was wreckage. I could sit and ask myself a thousand times “Why didn’t I” ? Especially when I saw people like Tony home for the holidays in his sharp uniform. Those wings heckled me as the sun fell deep into them and out into me. It’s funny how even when I think of that moment my eyes squint though the sun is not in them. It was like squinting out at an idea while my eyelashes obscured my view. I always think or say to myself ” Do you feel lucky punk ?” When I squint like Clint, Eastwood that is. I snatched up two magnets that were blissfully enamored with each other. Turn one and they were punch and Judy wanting nothing to do with each other. I thought of Dams, That great fall of water pushed by gravity spinning a wheel with magnets creating a charge within a coiled turbine.
What’s the point? I asked as if having direct access to the black box, I answered. The world spins on it’s axis, on each end north and south poles, thunderstorms, lightening, gravity, always pushing in, down. It was all right there. I started on my first model. It wasn’t much more than a toy car with magnets on either end repelling it’s way back and forth when it came in contact with stationary opposing magnets. I was not impressed with myself. Learning from my past I resisted the temptation to dissect pops watch that ran by magnetic power.
I was off track to say the least. The perfect model would half to copy the working one; the Earth itself. I came up with a cornucopia of objects many of which barely worked let alone hover or fly. You see suspending an object with magnets was one thing, but getting a free form object in the air was another. By free, I’m looking for no adjoining apparatus on the ground. Although eventually I would discuss that leaving and returning to the ground would be one of the most dynamic properties or by- products of my solution. Not to say that this crude contraption couldn’t work alone.
Out of nothing, there it was. To be brief, there were a number of floating spheres each inside the next. Then the main frame or outer hull was affixed to an old model aircraft fuselage. The center sphere had north and south pole magnets, the inner and outer ones had a network of opposing magnets. They worked like a relay team pushing and passing to one another persistently faster. The center was a braided mess of copper wire collecting and redistributing the charge. I called it my inverted internal turbine. To fight friction the whole thing was sealed and filled with a saline lubricating agent. It moved alright although usually violently, so after a few tests I got some protective gear. Most important of all was my catchers mitt that got plenty of use. Sure I was overwhelmed that it worked but it still needed help. Then I remember Pops teaching me how to use a compass and the importance of knowing latitude and longitude when we would go camping and sailing. So simple does everything seem when you figure it out. I relayed the signals from the poles into a computer constantly figuring the spheres latitude and longitude; the computer then tricks the sphere int believing magnetic north is where it’s not. There it was free floating, another moon to orbit the earth only when and where it wanted it to be. Due to the highly secretive subject I speak of I had no choice but to explain this in vagaries. Why you may ask? Well my mag engine keeps working without an outside power source. Not only that but it is creating energy as well. I can barely store and use it all.
However, I couldn’t keep this to myself so I ran my own ads for a hover craft. Crazy yes but I made sure to embed the plans within the plans. I knew that only the most curious and pure of heart would catch on to the game I was playing. Maybe a hint if you got it would lead you to my ad in The Sunday Chronicle where you might find a line of my recipe. Or maybe to a library that held a book and every fifteenth word was a key. If you turned out to be a flyer maybe you can unravel the webbing I lay before you.So I sat swinging, gazing at the ad for a hovercraft I had placed, wondering how many would get it? Who would show up at the predestined spot and time. What would they bring? All I knew was where and when. Well, I also knew why. I was a navigator of gravity. I was the first Gravigator.