Illusions

Informationen zum Autor Richard Bach is the author of Stranger to the Ground , Biplane , Nothing by Chance , Jonathan Livingston Seagull , A Gift of Wings , Illusions , There's No Such Place as Far Away , The Bridge Across Forever , One , and Running from Safety . Klappentext In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders . . . until he meets Donald Shimoda-former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar. . . . In Illusions, the unforgettable follow-up to his phenomenal bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar . . . that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them . . . and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places-like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves. Zusammenfassung In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity! a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach! belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders . . . until he meets Donald Shimodaformer mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar. . . . In Illusions! the unforgettable follow-up to his phenomenal bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar . . . that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them . . . and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest placeslike hay fields! one-traffic-light midwestern towns! and most of all! deep within ourselves. ...

Auteur

Richard Bach is the author of Stranger to the Ground, Biplane, Nothing by Chance, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Gift of Wings, Illusions, There's No Such Place as Far Away, The Bridge Across Forever, One, and Running from Safety.

Texte du rabat

In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders . . . until he meets Donald Shimoda-former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar. . . .

In Illusions, the unforgettable follow-up to his phenomenal bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar . . . that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them . . . and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places-like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves.

Échantillon de lecture
It was toward the middle of the summer that I met Donald Shimoda. In four years’ flying, I had never found another pilot in the line of work I do: flying with the wind from town to town, selling rides in an old biplane, three dollars for ten minutes in the air.
 
But one day just north of Ferris, Illinois, I looked down from the cockpit of my Fleet and there was an old Travel Air 4000, gold and white, landed pretty as you please in the lemon-emerald hay.
 
Mine’s a free life, but it does get lonely, sometimes. I saw the biplane there, thought about it for a few seconds, and decided it would be no harm to drop in. Throttle back to idle, a full-rudder slip, and the Fleet and I fell sideways toward the ground. Wind in the flying wires, that gentle good sound, the slow pok-pok of the old engine loafing its propeller around. Goggles up to better watch the landing. Cornstalks a green-leaf jungle swishing close below, flicker of a fence and then just-cut hay as far as I could see. Stick and rudder out of the slip, a nice little round-out above the land, hay brushing the tires, then the familiar calm crashing rattle of hard ground under-wheel, slowing, slowing and now a quick burst of noise and power to taxi beside the other plane and stop. Throttle back, switch off, the soft clack-clack of the propeller spinning down to stop in the total quiet of July.
 
The pilot of the Travel Air sat in the hay, his back against the left wheel of his airplane, and he watched me.
 
For half a minute I watched him, too, looking at the mystery of his calm. I wouldn’t have been so cool just to sit there and watch another plane land in a field with me and park ten yards away. I nodded, liking him without knowing why.
 
“You looked lonely,” I said across the distance between us.
 
“So did you.”
 
“Don’t mean to bother you. If I’m one too many, I’ll be on my way.”
 
“No. I’ve been waiting for you.”
 
I smiled at that. “Sorry I’m late.”
 
“That’s all right.”
 
I pulled off my helmet and goggles, climbed out of the cockpit and stepped to the ground. This feels good, when you’ve been a couple hours in the Fleet.
 
“Hope you don’t mind ham and cheese,” he said. “Ham and cheese and maybe an ant.” No handshake, no introduction of any kind.
 
He was not a large man. Hair to his shoulders, blacker than the rubber of the tire he leaned against. Eyes dark as hawk’s eyes, the kind I like in a friend, and in anyone else make me uncomfortable indeed. He could have been a karate master on his way to some quietly violent demonstration.
 
I accepted the sandwich and a thermos cup of water. “Who are you, anyway?” I said. “Years, I’ve been hopping rides, never seen another barnstormer out in the fields.”
 
“Not much else I’m fit to do,” he said, happily enough. “A little mechanicking, welding, roughneck a bit, skinning Cats; I stay in one place too long, I get problems. So I made the airplane and now I’m in the barnstorming business.”
 
“What kind of Cat?” I’ve been mad for diesel tractors since I was a kid.
 
“D-Eights, D-Nines. Just for a little while, in Ohio.”
 
“D-Nines! Big as a house! Double compound low gear, can they really push a mountain?”
 
“There are better ways of moving mountains,” he said with a smile that lasted for maybe a tenth of a second.
 
I leaned for a minute against the lower wing of his plane, watching him. A trick of the light … it was hard to look at the man closely. As if there were a light around his head, fading the background a faint, misty silver.
 
“Something wrong?” he asked.
 
“What kind of problems did you have?”
 
“Oh, nothing much. I just like to keep moving these days, same as you.”
 
I took my sandwich and walked around his plane. It was a 1928 or 1929 machine, and it was completely unscratched. Factories don’t make airplanes as new as his was, parked there in the hay. Twenty coats of hand-rubbed butyrate dope, at least, paint like a mirror pulled tight over the wooden ribs of the thing. Don, in old-English gold leaf un…