#101: The Kite
“Let’s go fly a kite…”
“Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring…” When I got the chance to fly a kite last week, these lyrics were going round and round in my mind. I was standing on a beach in Pembrokeshire, a wide expanse of sand opened up by the ebbing of the tide, with the backdrop of one of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen. If ever there was a time to fly a kite, it was this.
There was a perfect amount of wind, so with only a little guidance this kite was soon launched into the sky, along with all other thoughts and worries. Only the kite, and that memorable song from Mary Poppins, were on my mind.
There is something so simple and joyful about that song, yet also emotional. It tugs on your heart strings just as the string of the kite tugs at your hand. It makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time, a little like kite flying. There is a sheer joy in seeing that kite so high in the air, yet when it suddenly descends to the ground, what was at one moment a graceful object high in the sky becomes a resounding THUMP on the ground, brought down to earth in some dramatic and wincing fashion.
But soon you are picking up the kite and dusting it off, once again sending it flying up into the air. Your focus returns to that vast and limitless sky, where all your worries fade and float away.
Kite flying, while an active activity, is full of emotion. The act of lifting that kite into the air and guiding it brings focus to your mind. One second of distraction and you turn your head to hear the crashing sound of your plummeting kite. It focusses your mind and body, as every move is calculated to offer tension and balance, and all the while your kite is also lifting up your thoughts and worries to the sky: “Up through the atmosphere, Up where the air is clear”.
In David Copperfield by Charles Dickens there is, as always, an intriguing and unique character, this one named Mr Dick. He is constantly plagued by worry and an inability to complete a written memorial, and so he turns to kite flying:
‘There’s plenty of string,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner of diffusing ’em. I don’t know where they may come down. It’s according to circumstances, and the wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of that.’
As the young David Copperfield watches Mr Dick flying his kite he has his own thoughts on the calming aspect of kite flying:
It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air […] He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies.
This is kite flying at its best, the solitary flier with their worries far away, high in the sky. Yet as soon as that kite comes tumbling down, as it must inevitably do, you need a second person to lift that kite in the air. You need a friend to help you lift your worries into the sky, so that:
When you send it flying up there
All at once you’re lighter than air
You can dance with the breeze over houses and trees
With your fist holding tight to the string of your kite
