If working extremely late in an empty office on a very tedious project, do not listen to bleak and somber music because such a combination will make you want to follow Franz Reichelt's plummeting footsteps.
Who is Franz Ferdinand Reichelt? Or rather, who was Franz Reichelt?
Franz belongs to that rara avis of brotherhoods in human history, who like Icarus dare to fly as high into the heavens as possible--not metaphorically, poetically or symbolically--but actually, literally. These men don't just dream. They act and do with a temerity you and I dream of, yet fear. Unlike men like Icarus, Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, and R. Kelly, who were obsessed with believing they can fly, touching the sky, and thinking about it every night and day, Franz on the other hand, was preoccupied with teasing gravity and floating gently down from the sky (or from the top of the Eiffel Tower...) like the very first snowflake of a winter.
Ignoring the naysayers and their vociferous doubts, with their heads looking forward and up (into the future?), these demi-gods strap on their proverbial wings or in Franz's case, looking forward and down to walk the proverbial plank.
On February 4, 1912, Franz climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower and looked calmly out into the cool Paris cityscape. He wore an overcoat, but it was no ordinary overcoat. It also doubled as a parachute. Ingenuity! Passion! Art! Function! Fashion!
Did he test this jacket on a dummy to ensure that it worked properly as you or I would have done? No. When you want to climb Mt. Olympus to look Zeus in the eye, you don't send a sherpa up there first.
And so we go back to Franz, the humble tailor with a big dream, standing atop the world. Just him and his parachute-overcoat. A paracoat, if you will.
And then?
Icarus flew too close to the sun and plunged back to where the meek and mortals dwell. Chuck Yeager found that his ceiling was the sky and the great black space beyond was forever closed to him. R Kelly pissed on underage girls.
Moral of this story: Kids, keep those dreams of grandeur locked up as just that, dreams. Martin Luther King had a dream and look what happened to him. Wow, that was terrible. I can't believe I just wrote that (although will that dream ever come true?).
Actually, the moral of the story is this: Kids, dream and follow those dreams. Just don't follow a crazy man with a parachute-jacket over the edge. Let him test it out while you take the stairs down. Yea, that's the message of this entry: Kids, take the stairs...and avoid R. Kelly. Always.