Now some of you know that I work at the Empire State Building teaching English to foreigners. The coolest aspect of this job is that when things get tilted and hot in the classroom I often get a free moment to poke my head out of the windows of the 63rd floor and have a little moment with gravity. Anyone who's climbed a high rock or incline knows what I'm talking about when I say that I can actually feel the weight of the earth pulling me down. When I stick my head out that window I'm always reminded of that scene in Star Wars where Luke dangles from that t-bar in Bespin . Is anything scarier than dangling over a precipice overlooking a void? My mother posted an article on Facebook recently about gravity as a sort of swirly, quantum agreed upon illusion. If you can grok this academic paper, I've got a home for you here.

Anyways, at 63 stories up when one puts one's head out the window there is an inevitable feeling of a force being pushed down and one becomes briefly terrified that a small bit of detritus, say a penny, might hurtle to the ground and slice through my neck artery. According to this article, air resistance prevents this from happening, but it's still up for debate, so why doesn't somebody take a bumpkin off death row and FIGURE IT OUT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD?

Anyways, one's heart races when you poke your head outside of a skyscraper. Even bringing out my head and arms, there's an incredible fear that one will be suddenly propelled downwards. A carpenter who fell off a barn once told me that 50% of drops over 20 feet are fatal. That always seemed a matter of heads or tails to me. But 63 stories!? Not even the cleanest executed Parkour roll would prevent you from being tomato paste. There's an off-chance you could survive being shot in the brain or being hit by a bus, yet falling off the Empire State Building or being run over by a train is going to kill you even if you're Bruce Willis.

Only one person has committed suicide in the two years I've worked there by jumping off. He was a brainy young man of privilege and the general temper amongst the street throng was a sort immigrant's righteous confusion that a kid who went to Deerfield and Yale could actually be unhappy. People were incensed. I heard one woman say, "Why didn't he jump off the Brooklyn Bridge? It's a nice view and he wouldn't have hurt anybody." There is actually a history in New York City of entitled young men jumping out of buildings. I remember reading a story in my literary journalism class taught by the late, great Steven Bach about a 26-year-old man who stood out on the ledge of the Gotham Hotel for 11 hours before leaping to his death back in 1938. He became upset after a remark made by his sister and stepped upon the ledge. Of course, he was clinically depressed. I'm sure the New York Post macho media probably painted it as a Look-at-Me everybody, Poor Little Rich Boy death same as Andy Rooney dissed Kurt Cobain after his suicide. But, apparently that whole story garnered enough of the cultural interest at the moment to justify Joel Sayre's New Yorker article and a movie. Well, depression strikes those in Yale and jail, say I.

Most terrifying about this whole experience is the rear animal in your brain that teases you to make the front page of the New York Post. I've often suspected that most people's fear of heights is a fear that they'll jump. I don't think I own this idea, but an understanding of one's balance--both physical and mental is crucial. I always marvel at the nimble assuredness of the men who built this 102 story skyscraper in THIRTEEN FREAKING MONTHS AFTER THE STOCK MARKET COLLAPSE. Ah, they just don't build them Ford Tough anymore.

The best part, of course, is returning to class-secure, happy, and grounded- while my students look at me as though I'm crazy.