Go Fly a Kite (in Gaza)

Go fly a kite. Somewhere in the same zone as: Take a hike. Go jump in the lake.

In themselves, pretty good things to do. Somehow they became epithets (from cynical urbanites?).

I remember, in high school, during "0 Period Gym" (for the Dumbach Scholars), being required to fly a kite. I skipped it, and watched from a bathroom as my fellow prep school honors nerds embarrassed themselves by flying kites when the cool kids arrived in their hot rods for the regular beginning of the day.

Of course it's a stunt, having Palestinian children try for the Guinness World Record by flying more kites at the same time than anyone else. Where Palestinians have no right over their own air space, their own port space, their own borders.

How hard to take a picture of a child flying a kite, once the kite is high. Everything seems distant, distant as childhood.

"Flying a kite," as an idea, always feels cliched. It's too instantly transcendent. It's so unlike actual kite flying, which can be quite a bit of work.

That feeling, after the run and hustle to get that false bird in the air, of stretching out the string. As if it were always there, in the sky.