A Psychic Moment

     I always wanted to take flying lessons. This passion meant I'd even taken rides in a World-War-I cloth-covered plane that had a red and white fishing bobber attached to a coathanger wire, letting the pilot know how much fuel was left. Slipping and sliding in the air upside-down or doing a death spiral. I swooned with rapture.
     So I started taking lessons. However, from the first, there was an odd disturbance.
     Looking out over the morning's horizon, I felt the calm sensation of pure spirit--being at one with the plane and sky. But there was something else. Simultaneously, I saw and felt the plane go into a nosedive, headed toward the field below. The falling was so real my ribcage began to collapse from the pressure. My eyes crossed watching the approaching crash. Then, just as the ground was inches away, everything righted itself. I was popped from two realities back into one.
     How could I be grounded in two realities at the same time--each appearing so real?
     I took two more lessons and ten minutes into each the same thing happened--horizon ahead of me and the plummet to death below. I never took a fourth lesson, and never told the instructor what I was seeing. It sounded too crazy.
     Two weeks later a friend stopped to visit and as we chatted she said, "So you heard what happened to that plane you were flying?"
     Looking out at the calm lake where we sat, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the falling sensation I'd felt in the cockpit. "No," I said.
     "Crashed last week. Killed a father and his little boy. Something with the engine. Just conked out. Next thing you know, the plane went into a nosedive and there was no time to pull out." (300 words)