Flying, not floating

Lucille Clifton (poet) somewhere says that we need both mirrors and windows, the first to look at ourselves and the second to see others and the world. In A. Saint-Exupéry’s Wind, Sand, and Stars, we see evidence of the whimsical and serious and sudden joys that come from this. Our narrator wonders if every innovation brings us closer together, from printing to sloop to plane. He leaves us with human transcendence: “Every doctrine swears that it can breed men but none can tell us in advance what sort of men it will breed.”