Barcelona Metropolis

My quest starts to point in the right direction the evening I think of searching ‘new experiences’ in a trend magazine that Google routinely recommends to me. There I find the first wind tunnel in the city, a dinner in the dark – with a luxurious menu that features insects in every dish –, a day of rafting, an escape room in a haunted house and a paragliding flight in Montseny. Each idea has pros and cons. I list them as my index finger continues to scroll down and discover new ideas. When I come to the idea of ​​a travelling circus that will be in the city for the next ten days, I have a bit of an epiphany: I’ve just found what I was looking for. I go to the website and check out the price, availability and safety of the somewhat whimsical gift I’ll give my mother. There is a before and an after to turning sixty-five, so I want to give her an adventure that has nothing to do with sitting through a show crammed with acrobatics and clowns, but that ties in with one of my mother’s dreams: when I was little she would often tell me that she’d like to be a bird and be able to glide through the sky. The experience promises a thirty-second flight, catapulted from inside a giant cannon with an upward trajectory of up to one hundred metres that ends with a free fall into a large net above the sea. My mother, an air surfer. My mother, a magnificent human cannonball.

She is as excited about the gift as I had imagined. All three of us head to the Mar Bella beach, where the circus tent and the star attraction are set up, thanks to which the owners have been raking it in since a user accidentally fell into the cannon after a show in France when the cannon was fired and the man was found hanging from a tree exclaiming “C’est magnifique!”.

“Are you nervous?”

That’s what my father asks her every five minutes. She starts out by saying no, then he asks her to concentrate on driving properly, and when we get to the car park she admits that she is indeed a bit on edge.

“I’m not surprised,” he says. “If you had given me something like that when I turned sixty-five...”

“You know I wouldn’t have dreamed of it,” she retorted.

“Sometimes the best gift is no gift.”

Since we have a scheduled time for the launch, we leave behind the queue of those who have not yet bought tickets and head to a room with about twenty pieces of equipment, essential for the flight, hung up.

“Son,” my mother turns to me, just after they give her a red jumpsuit, boots and a helmet. I really appreciate your original gift. I’ve always told you that I’d love to know what a bird feels like when it dives into the void and, instead of falling, can glide smoothly through the sky. But now that this dream is about to come true, I think I’d rather you be the one flying in my place.

My father lets out a snort of laughter. If we had time, I’d let him have it, because he hasn’t made an ounce of effort as far her gift is concerned and he’ll still come out smelling of roses. 

“Alright,” I say.

In five minutes I am donning the mandatory equipment and let a stocky man take me to the mouth of the cannon. He is giving me instructions in English, which I only half understand. I gather the most important thing is to keep my arms stuck to my sides, during the flight too, so I can reach the optimal speed and ensure everything goes smoothly.

The inside of the cannon smells of gunpowder. My nose is itchy. I poke out my head for a second to see my parents for the last time before the cannon is fired. He has his arm raised, as if saying goodbye to me. Do you really think you’re going to get rid of me this easily? If I had thought this experience were dangerous, we wouldn’t be here. I feel bad my mother is missing out on it, but I’ll ultimately be the one to soar into the sky, just like one of those flying creatures from Hindu mythology that my mother used to tell me about before bed. They always burst into flight at turning points in the plot. I, on the other hand, only have to spend thirty seconds in the air. My life doesn’t have to be transformed in any way. I’ll be back at the bank tomorrow. I’ll deal with some nice clients and others whose utter rudeness despairs me. I will see her, we’ll have breakfast together and I’ll tell her about my Sunday.

At the bottom of my abyss there’s no bed, but a loose net that catches my body, all alone, falling into it after thirty seconds in the air, with the dashed hope that they would have added more gunpowder that they should have and I’d have ended up much further away, in a place from where I couldn’t return.