Top Gun Dreams and Unlimited Limits
Bogeys and tallyhos. Streaking F-14s and dark MiG-28s. NZTs and enhancers. Blinking cursors on blank monitor screens and stunted brain legs. Oh, and those dreams nipped way before they were even buds. I could go on and on and wax whatever Mr. Miyagi had—I could say wax lyrical or poetic or frustrated or whatever, but I won’t, because the phrase is as worn out as post-trudge soles. I’d stick with Mr. Miyagi’s then.
Whoa, my friend, back up a bit. Where are all these coming from? What are you getting at—
Newp, you back up. Okay, first things first, or better yet, let’s start with the second question. Where I’m getting at, we’ll get to it. Just bear with me a bit.
These, all these, were borne on the wings of Steve Steven’s slow electric riffs, vibrating memories of guys in yellow on a floating giant chunk of metal, those guys whose hand signals heralded irreverent mavericks and unflinching icemen. In fact, Top Gun Anthem is blaring on my headphones right now, sending impulses of energy to my brain and coming off my fingertips in the form of jumbled letters and words. The continuous loop makes my head heavy, as if I’m donning that uber-cool bone dome, visors down.
“Wingman, bogey eleven o’clock high,” I hear myself transmit. “Come right with me. Second element, break left. On three. Three. Two. One. Break.” A half a minute later, I raise the AWACS, “Eagle, Seeker. We’ve just overshot Sector 12-B, levelling at Angels 13. Confirm, Eagle.”
“Confirmed. Got your eyes.”
The third loop is fading, and so are the blue sky and the wispy clouds. The streaks of my wingman drift. The two shadows on my eight o’clock low blur away. Radio transmissions in my headset break up. And just like that, I’m back staring at my monitor when just moments ago it was my HUD. Stop trying to sound like Mr. Clancy, idiot. You’re not making sense! was the last thing I got from my fighter helmet. On the left panel of my desk sits my glinting silver Aviators. I stare at it wistfully for a bit. Take a lungful of air. And blow thorny raspberries.
Once, we were dead certain of what we’d be when we’d have to shed those childhood playacting.
I was in a rowdy gang back then. Our noses may have been snot free, but we were street urchins all the same. For rumbling Harleys, we had BMXs. For pieces, slingshots were slung on our necks. And we had no respect for the unknown, “respect” being “fear.” We owned the town streets and alleys. We heeded not the granny stories when we ventured into foot-wide dirt tracks leading to the woods. Smiling, we’d emerge on the other side of the town. Each and every one of us knew that those smiles weren’t the smiles of the brave conquistadors. Those were the smiles of relief. Yep, there was nothing more relieving than emerging into familiar surroundings after an hour or two of suffering the shadows of the woods, goosebumps popping out on the back of our necks each second. We owned it all—even those which were not ours.
Perhaps we knew that those afternoons weren’t slated for forever, for we drank it to the dregs, making the most of each moment. Or maybe, and closer to the truth, we didn’t have the slightest idea. We just did it the way we did it, which in looking back, I realize was just the perfect way. But we, and I most certainly, didn’t know that the unknown was going to eat up what we knew.
We knew what we dreamt of, and we knew that we were going to get it. When I was walking back and forth to school, the other kids whizzing past me on their bikes, I wished for a bike. It wouldn’t come for a year or two, but on each of those walking days, I knew that however late it would be, I’d get that bike. Same thing happened with the rollerblades. And with the PlayStation. And with the Jordan XIIs. So when Maverick and his F-14 Tomcat came into my consciousness, I knew what I was going to be. It would take a long, long time, but I’d get there.
Life, however, has this great way of bursting your bubble. And it’s called life. Yes, that cocksure. After first lifting me up to the heavens by allowing me to dream of the heavens, it slammed back to the hard-packed earth. It really does not matter what happened. What does matter is that it seems that life has a totally different plan. Maybe that’s why I bought into the whole determinism concept when I got into college. I just hope I don’t sound too fatalistic. After all, I still subscribe to the free will illusion.
So where have all those Vulcan cannons and screaming Phoenixes dreams come to?
Dead. Cause of death, limits.
And what am I really saying here?
I could make a whole thesis of it, just as I did with that Tolstoy one-liner. But it’s simple really, one that didn’t require a thousand words. In one moment or another in our adult lives, we sometimes find ourselves going back to our childhood playacting. And then in the middle of it all, we attempt to talk to that little kid a bit, ask him a few questions maybe. Most of the time though that kid will most certainly look into our eyes and say, “Mom says I should not be talking to strangers.” He’ll walk away without looking back.
Steve Stevens is still blaring out my headphones, but the jumbled letters and words it produces are becoming too difficult to decipher, right up to the moment that they might as well be hieroglyphs. I have to stop. I have nothing again.
Oh, and one last thing, if you didn’t get what NZTs are, and what they have to do with blinking cursors, you’ve got to watch Robert de Niro and Bradley Cooper’s Limitless.
Dang, I’ve used way too many conjunctions here.
hora somni 