FLYING BACKWARDS by Catherine Maven © 1998 & 2018 Have you ever watch a film of a bird flying backwards?  The motion, which seen in its natural direction, appears effortless, even graceful, is suddenly seen for the complex war against gravity that it really is.  What you had always taken for simple up-and-down motions turns out to be windmillish.  Have you seen swimmers doing the breast-stroke?  Insanely difficult, forcing their bodies up out of the water by the sheer strength of their arms pushing down against the dragging force of the water.  In reverse, birds flying looks like that. The wings arc backward in curves. The feathers along the bottom flay out, and it’s as though the bird is pushing away from something in horror and revulsion. You are suddenly very much aware that air, like water, is a medium through which the bird must travel, a force against which it must beat in order to defeat gravity. It makes me tired just thinking about it. As I watched that

June 9, 1998 When I was a child on the farm, our bus-ride to school took over an hour in each direction.   When my best friend Patsy wasn't there, I would let my imagination take over, watching closely out the window as my imaginary friend, a pure white horse, galloped alongside the bus, majestically leaping fences, ditches, and the occasional house, and otherwise cavorting in the pure joy of motion that is a horse.   This horse stayed with me right through the hundreds of school bus rides till the end of high school, and even occasionally showed up to run delicately through city streets beside the bus I took to work or accompany me on long tedious car trips.   I never tried to understand the horse, just watched with awe and heart-surging joy as it leapt, trotted and cantered through the fields of my mundane world.   I once tried to draw it, once to paint it, but my clumsy hands could never capture the radiance of that powerful free spirit who somehow chose to follow at m