Sky Lantern

When I was ten or so, I discovered the library in my grandmother's house.  Among the volumes, almost hidden, there, there was a set of encyclopaedias, The Book of Knowledge, dating from the 1920s.  Its entries were written as are none of the articles in contemporary encyclopaedias.  They were more narrative than statements of fact.  Many were written to engage rather than to simply inform.  Any given article might require the reader to interact with the narrative, much as does a video game in the hands of a child now.  The order of entries complied with a logic that would be foreign to any encyclopaedia published since the 1940s.  Their order seemed almost random.  They, along with other tomes in her library, and together with her perversely delightful habit of tearing out the last few pages of the novels, were enchanting.

One of the narratives that held my interest was on lift.  Mind you, the aeroplane was still more of a curiosity than useful invention at the time these volumes were published.   This particular article invited the reader to experience lift by building a hot air balloon, which it called a "sky lantern".  My imagination, perhaps because I had never built one, burned as brightly as the tea-light that heated the air inside the lantern to produce lift.

It is late here, as I write.  The dogs and I have just returned from the evening's last walk.  The moon, nearly half full, is still waxing.  The sky remains dark enough to afford full view of the stars in the night sky.  And, it is a lovely night indeed.  It's the good weather and the light of pubs that seem to draw people this weekend night.  As music and crowds spill out onto the street, the mood is intoxicating.  I return feeling as though I've travelled through time, to islands further south in the Caribbean jet stream.  Memories of evenings spent in places in the sun have become enmeshed with being here now.  Perhaps, as dusk settles into the light on the Eastern seaboard of America, or, still burns brightly over the West, it is more appropriate to say that I am sensing timelessness.

This evening, among the stars, there burned a light bright enough though still distant to be taken for a planet.  A sky lantern.   As I puzzled out what it might be, it too was magical.  It's yellow and orange glow signalled as might the lights of a jet bound for Tokyo - lights stilled in space, frozen on a plane that the ancients used to describe as a "crystalline sphere".   Then, it's fainting light seemed a memory of a fuller moon, as its light passed through a cloud of volcanic ash several weeks past.  No sooner had I recognized it as a sky lantern, its light had burnt out - as though knowledge had killed it.  I wondered if the anniversary that it likely was set adrift to celebrate might have ended unfortunately, perhaps even in an untimely death.

For a moment, as we passed beneath a street light, I'd lost sight of the falling craft.  It had been stolen from me.  Then, overhead, it spiralled, circled silently.  If air were water, it might have been a jellyfish above me as I swam through the cloudy confluence of north Florida's Saint Mary's River, where it meets the Atlantic, not far from where the French first attempted to settle the New World.  On closer approach, it seemed a fish taken from the sea, its jaw swung open at an angle, and, its gills simultaneously gasping for and losing breath.  In the dark, transfigured as it was, it was no longer a falling star.

I never imagined it.  The death of a sky lantern.  The article that enchanted me this long had never mentioned either what became of the lantern when the engine of lift had surrendered itself on the night.  There are sky-lights over the bed in the guest room.  I'll sleep there tonight and dream on it.

(originally published on my now defunct blog, 21 May 2010)