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22 A Short History of Flight with an Emphasis on Food Icarus, of course. Flatbread wrapped in grape leaves, a small wound in the cover leaking a bead of olive oil up and down the wet seam. Da Vinci wanted to glide for hours, he dreamed it, drew it, had not much thought about where to put the skin for wine past care for worries like that, just wanted to go now as would you, any of us, if we were honest and what about World War I, sandwiches and usually the whole bottle taken up, and when empty, one throws up over the sides. By then we have the photographs, can spread them on the table. This one hanged himself after the war. This one lost synchronization and shot his propeller in two. This one stalled, landed on the flat top of a dirigible, coasted the length, rolled off, and restarted halfway down. Loaves of bread, cheese. Candles like corks in the chubby Chianti bottles. This one has three dogs, enjoys getting them into each brown photograph. This one is sad. This one lied about his age. In training this one was rolled up and down tracks inside a kind of wheeled, iron grocery stall shooting at paper-on-wood silhouettes he never did learn how to hit. This one has received the Légion d’honneur; once in a crash had his joystick push right through his jaw. This one is you. The rushing air, in the cockpit, makes it so hard to breathe it feels like drowning. A trench expression, hoosh— just a heated tin of snow, lard, bully beef, hard 23 tack. Whatever’s at hand. Every morning Scott after losing the Pole still had to help make hoosh. Before that, 1902, Antarctica’s first balloon flight: Scott went as high as the rope stretched tight allowed but on the whole Scott did not approve. Like a sow playing the piano or lines of women voting, it was not natural. If not snow dead he would have been taken up two years later in the Great War and all the others with him. Just simple math. To fly only makes it come sooner. This one weighs the same as a jockey. This one they sang over softly. This one’s hands are kneading something warm in a towel and if you just wait a second he will walk back with you. ...

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