Men will always fight among themselves, sexually, politically, socially. I have realized this for years. Can it be that this realization urged me to fly, to escape perversion and mediocrity? Flying can be a celebration of the mind.
Well, sex means little to me now. Silence means more. Friendship. Calm. Hope. Ai, those workshops of my youth were so noisy. On crowded streets. Near alleys. Vendors howling their wares. Mule teams. Horsemen. One of my workshops was close to a smithy. Steel on steel mixed with palavering.
Amboise is my silent bottega, walkways, garden, flowers. Here I have so many of my favorites: nasturtiums, ranunculas, roses, poppies, violets, iris, pansies.
Maturina keeps flowers in my studio and my bedroom.
Writing in the sun along the Loire, remembering, remembering:
I recall details of my dissections of pigeons... Sketching, measuring, I concentrated on bone structure of the wings, then the tail, the balancing properties of the entire bird. Using those dimensions I calculated wing lengths and wing widths for my glider. I laid out a narrow area for a man to lie on, exactly between the wings.
I constructed the glider with the aid of my apprentices. I launched it at Mount Ceceri. Ceceri seemed the likeliest hill since wind currents had to be strong, and constant. Men lifted, pushed, yelled.
“Now...now!”
I dipped into the wind, slid with the wind, lifted. It seemed to me that I hovered for a while above a big willow. Rooftops. Then, in spite of my attempts at balancing, the wing swung down, dropped, spun... I crashed.
That wing measured 15' x 3' x 9'.