Come Fly With Me!

 

As a kid, I wanted to be able to fly. I never took it to the extreme of actually climbing up on the roof and jumping, but there were several small hills that substituted. When flinging myself off of them only resulted in bruised elbows and knees and torn clothes, my mother decided I was accident prone and took me to several doctors who all confirmed that there was nothing physically wrong with me. (Some would still argue that no adequate testing was ever done of my mental acuity.)

My nighttime dreams (as well as most daytime ones) were filled with flights of fancy. I would run toward the edge of a cliff and keep running until my precipitous fall towards the waiting ground. Of course, I never hit bottom. At the last minute, the forces of gravity would release me to float above the valley, soaring two or three feet above the sidewalk. For some reason I was never able to gain much more altitude than that. The one Halloween I wanted to trick-or-treat as Superman I wore blue jeans, a blue t-shirt with a red 'S' pinned on my chest, and a red towel tied around my neck. My parents were hard-working, middle-class people who wouldn't splurge on a costume I was only going to wear one time! So at every neighbor's door I was asked "And who are you supposed to be?"

Superman and Batman poster by Alex Ross

Batman had the right idea all along. Protect your secret identity with a mask. On the other hand, Superman only gave lip service to the idea. I mean, if he's working all day at The Daily Planet, then whips off his glasses, we're supposed to believe everyone's going around asking, "Where's Clark? He was here a minute ago!" Maybe the blue tights and red cape distracted his co-workers. But come on, Lois Lane's a top investigative reporter. And she falls for that?

This technological age we now live in makes it even more difficult to maintain any kind of daily anonymity. The moment a celebrity, politician, pseudo-celebrity, or pseudo-politician steps over the line, someone is there to snap a photo, or publish a blog about the transgression. So, obviously, Natsumi Hayashi is unconcerned about her secret identity. Though she does not shy away from publicity- photographing herself as she levitates and flies around the city and countryside- all I am able to come up with is that she lives in Tokyo, is female, and is not a 17 year old school girl. I don't even know if she uses her gift of flight for good or evil. 

But she sure is having fun!

http://yowayowacamera.com/banana/