smokerings

[ Every child needs a Giant Peach ]

I woke up with the evening sky surrounding me, which was enormously comforting and serene. The crisp white rigging of the athletics stadium on one end and the bright concrete of the undergraduate dorms on the other. And I looked over to the Sears tower with it tiny blinking electric lights and wondered, wouldn’t it be wonderful if a peach were to get stuck in it?

I could live my life waking up under my coat, in train stations, airports, and big glass cages that look over Chicago. But yes, the peach. I think James and the Giant Peach was one of the best books ever written because it was so utterly believable. I remember exactly how James lost the magic green crystals the strange man gave him, I remember how neatly there was a Spider and a Silkworm who could provide bedding and ropes and all sorts of useful things. And I remember how simple it was to sail and fly away on a giant peach with perfectly benign giant insects, into shark infested waters (the sharks could do nothing, obviously, the peach was too big for them to eat and besides, their pointy noses got in the way of devouring it) and over cities of beautifully haunting cloud people. And how finally the peach powered by the magical, miraculous, ingenious and totally believable flock of a hundred seagulls deposited them neatly on top of the Empire State Building.

I could live like that forever, waking up under the great warm blanket of blue skies and falling in love with the way the sun sets the entire western surface of a tall tower ablaze. Forever being until it’s suddenly dark and cold and our hearts crave small things – familiar smells, warm food and soft brown hands. Forever being until I stumble upon moments of great joy and wish I had the courage to ask you to share them with me without being afraid of you saying “no.”

In large cities, miles and months away from home the sky can be a wonderfully comforting thing.