The Individual Is At The Apex Of

A Certain Amount Of Danger Is Essential To The Quality Of Life.

I May Be Flying A Complicated Airplane, Rushing Through Space, But In This Cabin I'm Surrounded By Simplicity And Thoughts Set Free Of Time. How Detached The Intimate Things Around Me Seem From The Great World Down Below. How Strange Is This Combination Of Proximity And Separation. That Ground - Seconds Away - Thousands Of Miles Away. This Air, Stirring Mildly Around Me. That Air, Rushing By With The Speed Of A Tornado, An Inch Beyond. These Minute Details In My Cockpit. The Grandeur Of The World Outside. The Nearness Of Death. The Longness Of Life.

This Is Earth Again, The Earth Where I've Lived And Now Will Live Once More ... I've Been To Eternity And Back. I Know How The Dead Would Feel To Live Again.

Pilots Are Drawn To Flying Because It's A Perfect Combination Of Science, Romance And Adventure.

These Phantoms Speak With Human Voices — Friendly, Vapor- Like Shapes, Without Substance, Able To Vanish Or Appear At Will, To Pass In And Out Through The Walls Of The Fuselage As Though No Walls Were There. At Times, Voices Come Out Of The Air Itself, Clear Yet Far Away, Traveling Through Distances That Can't Be Measured By The Scale Of Human Miles; Familiar Voices, Conversing And Advising On My Flight, Discussing Problems Of My Navigation, Reassuring Me, Giving Me Messages Of Importance Unattainable In Ordinary Life.