Proof of Heaven

mind), feeling the familiar buffeting as I fell beneath the prop blast,
watching from upside down as the belly of the enormous silvery plane
started to shoot skyward, its huge propellers whirling in slow motion,
earth and clouds below mirrored on its underbelly. I was musing over the
odd sight of flaps and wheels down (as if landing) while still miles above
the ground (all to slow down and minimize wind shock to the exiting
jumpers).
I tucked my arms in extra tight in a head-down dive to accelerate
briskly to over 220 miles per hour, nothing more than my speckled blue
helmet and shoulders against thin upper air to resist the tug of the huge
planet below, moving more than the length of a football field every
second, the wind roaring by furiously at thrice hurricane speed, louder
than anything—ever.
Passing between the tops of two enormous puffy white clouds, I
rocketed into the clear chasm between them, green earth and sparkling
deep blue sea far below, in my wild, thrilling rush down to join my
friends, just barely visible, in the colorful snowflake formation, growing
larger every second as other jumpers joined in, far, far below . . .
I was flipping back and forth between being present there in the ICU
and being out of my mind in the adrenaline-soaked delusions of a
gorgeous skydive.
I was between nutty—and getting it.
For two days I blabbered about skydiving, airplanes, and the Internet
to all who would listen. As my physical brain gradually recovered its
bearings, I entered a strange and exhausting paranoid universe. I became
obsessed with an ugly background of “Internet messages” that would
show up whenever I closed my eyes, and that sometimes appeared on the
ceiling when they were open. When I shut my eyes I heard grinding,
monotonous, anti-melodious chanting sounds that usually went away
when I opened them again. I kept putting my finger in the air, pointing
just like ET, trying to guide the Internet ticker flowing past me, in
Russian, Chinese.
In short, I was a little crazy.
It was all a little like the Realm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View, only